There are a very few guns made as prototype vent rib guns as early as 1915. I believe someone wrote an article for the Double Gun Journal years ago featuring a high grade gun that had a very unusual "rippled" trigger guard bent to match the contours of the hand and fingers, and also a vent rib. I don't remember the SN of the gun nor the issue of DGJ that it appeared in.
These few prototype guns are identifiable as factory original vent ribs by the length of the stem rib last segment ending in the doll's head (rib extension), and the lenth and depth of the groove milled into it to pick up the eye when mounting the gun. These very early VR guns have the radius of their barrels tuned over the top at the breech and meet the side of the rib at the rear, as opposed to the later more conventional "flat top" breech across the doll's head well
I owned one of these early prototype guns, BHE sn 183562, a 30-inch straight grip vent rib which was built with 2 forends, the conventional splinter as well as the large beavertail (trap) forend. Howard Miller, son of the inventor of the Miller Single Trigger, swore he saw the gun when his father took him to the Grand American Handicap in 1919. It was owned my J.S. McCarty, the founder of what would become the ATA. He said he remembered the gun for two distinct reasons: it was the first high-grade Parker gun he'd ever seen and the first vent rib he had ever seen on a Parker Gun. The VR became catalogued and available in the early 1920s, but Parker Bros. had a number of them out there for the big shots to use and promote.
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