Firearms — 20th century — 1920s
About this product
About this collection
This collection covers 142 firearms from the 1920s, delivered across 313 images in 25 ZIP assets. The 1920s saw surplus WWI weapons flood civilian markets, the rise of organised crime drive demand for new police weapons, and the first serious development of semi-automatic pistols for civilian self-defence. The collection spans military surplus, law enforcement, and commercial market examples from this transitional decade.
Why it matters
The 1920s is a pivotal but often overlooked decade in firearms history — the era that shaped American gun culture, saw the Thompson submachine gun become iconic through criminal use, and produced many of the self-loading pistol designs that would become 20th-century classics.
Use cases & time to value
- Game & film production design: Accurate period reference for 1920s-era weapons in historical games, film, and television
- AI training data: Large labelled firearms dataset for object-recognition, period-classification, and type-identification models
- Military history research: Primary visual source for comparative study of 1920s firearms technology and design evolution
- Publishing & editorial: Ready-to-license imagery for histories, encyclopaedias, and military reference works
- Museum education: Accessible digital collection for academic and public programming on 1920s arms development
Data schema
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| object_number | string | Royal Armouries catalogue number (XII. prefix + sequence) |
| object_name | string | Standardised object type name as catalogued |
| class | string | XII (Firearms) |
| period | string | 1920s |
| image_filename | string | Original filename as catalogued by the museum |
| image_format | string | tif (archival high-res), jpg (catalogue), or bmp (legacy) |
| width_px | integer | Image width in pixels |
| height_px | integer | Image height in pixels |
| file_size_bytes | integer | Uncompressed file size in bytes |
Collection stats
25 assets · 142 objects · 313 images · 1920s
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