Innovator William Dunn: Iowa Time Machine January 30, 1883

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On January 30, 1883, William G. Dunn, founder of Clarinda’s Parris-Dunn Company, who made more than 50,000 practice guns for WWI, was born. The wooden guns provided droops with the opportunity to prepare for the trenches of the Western Front without firing a single round.

Dunn came of age during a period of rapid industrialization and innovation in small-town America. Clarinda, Iowa, where he would establish his enterprise, sat in Page County near the Missouri border, a community built on agriculture and modest manufacturing. When Dunn founded the Parris-Dunn Company, he initially focused on various manufactured metal products marketed to hardware stores. World War I would transform the company’s purpose entirely.

The United States military's entry into the Great War created immediate logistical problems. Training camps sprang up across the country, filled with young men who had never held a rifle. Live ammunition was expensive, dangerous for training purposes, and desperately needed overseas. The Parris-Dunn Company's practice guns offered a simple solution.

The weighted wooden rifles, built to the exact specifications and balance of the Springfield Model 1903, allowed recruits to master drill movements, marching formations, and weapons handling without risk or cost. Dunn's facility in Clarinda operated at full capacity, churning out thousands of these training rifles that became standard equipment at military installations nationwide. The practice guns proved so effective that they remained in use well beyond the November 1918 armistice. #Iowa #OTD #WorldWarI #Innovation #History