Henri Pieper (1840 – 1898) was originally from Westphalia in German and was a mechanic by trade. In 1859 he moved to Belgium and set up shop at the rue des Bayards in Liège. At that stage, most firearm manufacturing was made up of a myriad of small factories. The one thing that Pieper did that was revolutionary for his time was to mechanise the manufacturing process into one factory, being one of the first industries in Belgium to incorporate precision manufacturing of interchangeable parts. That lead to Liège becoming one of the foremost firearm manufacturers in the world, with Pieper being the owner of one of the largest firearm factories in Belgium. He was instrumental in combining most of the smaller factories like Jules Ancion, Dumoulin, Joseph Janssen, Pirlot-Fréres, Dresse-Laloux & Cie, Albert Simonis and the brothers Emile and Leon Nagant that culminated in him being a founding member and managing director of Fabrique Nationale. He is also the name closely associated with the gas seal design solving the problem of gas leakage caused by the cylinder gap. He had two designs on this, the first being a revolving carbine that proved unsuccessful, and the revolver design, both being adopted by the Mexican Government. (Erlmeier, Brandt Ref. 97).
