  carl walther gmbh sportwaffen or walther is a german arms manufacturer. for more than 100 years, walther made major breakthroughs in the development of pistols. some are iconic, like the ppk and the p99 &ndash; both pistols carried by the fictional character james bond &ndash; and the p38, the standard-issue sidearm of the german military in world war ii. == pronunciation of the name walther == in german, w sounds like /v/ and th sounds like /t/. however, it is common for english speakers not familiar with german phonology to pronounce the w and th in the usual english manner. (as for the -er ending, both german and english have several typical variations, depending on the speaker's regional accent.) == history == the firm was founded in 1886 by carl walther in zella-mehlis, in what was then hesse but is today thuringia. the company originally manufactured hunting and target rifles. it was not until 1908 that, under the initiative of fritz walther, the oldest son of carl walther, they began to make pistols. models 1 through 5 and 7 through 9 were in calibers 6.35 and 7.65. the model 6 was walther's first attempt at a 9mm luger pistol. it used blowback rather than a locked breech and proved unsuccessful, with only around 1,000 made. its rarity has made it highly sought after on the collectors market. in 1929 they began to make the popular polizeipistole (police pistols) or pp models. this was followed in 1931 by the first of the ppks (polizeipistole kriminalmodell, or police pistol detective model). both pp and ppks were manufactured in .22 long rifle, .32 acp (the most common caliber), .380 acp and a very small number in .25 acp. the pp models were the first mass-produced pistols with stamped parts, but the overall increase in dependability and high quality of production with lower relative manufacturing costs made them the best option to replace the p-08 luger. in 
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