Mondragón rifle The Mondragón was the world ' s first semi - automatic rifle , and was designed by Mexican general Manuel Mondragón . He began work in 1882 and patented the weapon in 1887 . It was gas - operated with a cylinder and piston arrangement , now very familiar but unusual at the time , and rotating bolt , locked by lugs in helical grooves in the receiver ; it was also possible to operate it as a simple straight - pull bolt action . The caliber was 7 mm ( . 284 in ) Mauser with an 8 - round box magazine ; a trial LMG version had a 20 - round box and provision for a bipod , like the BAR ; the Mexican Army also used a 100 - round drum magazine for a light machine gun variant produced in 1910 . Features and uses . The Mondragón was known for its stopping power but suffered from high recoil and poor accuracy when their automatic variants were fired on fully automatic setting . The Mondragón also had a light machine gun variant that could be used with a 100 - round magazine . . For this reason , the Mexican army used an improved light machine gun variant of the Mondragón up until 1943 , when it was replaced with the Mendoza M - 1943 general purpose infantry machine gun . Initial production . Because of the Mexican Revolution , few facilities in Mexico were able to mass - produce it and those that could were not able to shut down their assembly plants for the required retooling time needed to initiate production of the new rifles . Mondragón attempted to interest a U . S . firm , without success as they thought that semi - automatic rifles were not practical and could not be produced in the numbers that Mexico wanted . He then turned to Schweizerische Industrie Gesellschaft ( SIG ) , of Neuhausen am Rheinfall , who agreed to manufacture the rifle . In 1901 the first rifles were shipped to Mexico and issued to the army as the Fusil Mondragón Modelo 1900 with an 8 round magazine . In 1908 During the Mexican revolution a completely Mexican manufactured version was again issued to the Mexican Army as the Fusil Porfirio Diaz Sistema Mondragón Modelo 1908 this time with the 20 round magazine . By 1910 however adequate facilities were completed in the Mexican cities of Veracruz , Ciudad Juárez , Guanajuato , Guadalajara and Mexico City where they were produced until 1943 . Use in World War I . With World War I , Germany bought the remainder of SIG ' s stock that had not been sent to Mexico , issuing them to the infantry , where they proved highly susceptible to mud and dirt in the trenches ( a problem familiar even to less complex bolt action rifles such as the Ross ) . Instead , realizing their potential as portable yet powerful semi - automatic weapons , they were withdrawn by the Central German command and reissued , with 30 - round helical magazines , to aircraft crews as the " Fliegerselbstlader Karabiner " 1915 ( Pilot ' s Selfloading Carbine Model 1915 ) , until enough numbers of machine guns were available . International sales . In the early 1930s , the Mexican government decided that they could make a profit trying to market the weapon on the international stage . At the time the Mondragón was still considered a quite advanced weapon with its only true rival being the BAR . It was sold to many Mexican allied nations including Chile , Brazil , Peru and Nationalist China . The Weimar Republic of Germany and later Nazi Germany purchased rights to licence manufacture the weapon along with Austria and Japan . Japan however manufactured less than five thousand , as Japanese machine tools at the time were not advanced enough to mass - produce the delicate firing mechanism . When Mao Zedong ' s People ' s Liberation Army declared victory over nationalist forces in 1949 many of the nationalist ' s weapons were seized by the communist forces and almost all of the Chinese Mondragón rifles were redistributed to the People ' s Liberation Army where they remained in active service as sniper rifles and support weapons until the late 1950s , when it was completely phased out due to the widespread introduction of the SKS and Type 68 self - loading rifles . There is no documentation that shows the Mondragon was made anywhere except Switzerland . No rifle with a serial number higher than 4 , 000 has been documented or found . The BAR was designed as a squad automatic weapon and would have issued sparingly , the Mondragon was designed as the infatryman ' s primary weapon . The Mondragon rifle would have been issued as the M1 Garand would have been issued , to every infantryman . World War II and later . During World War II there were still many of the Mexican rifles in German stocks left over from World War I . These were given as auxiliary weapons to the Waffen SS or sometimes as replacements or complementary weapons to the Kar 98k in the early parts of the war . During the siege of Stalingrad some Wehrmacht troops used them instead of the Kar 98k as they were less susceptible to the frigid climate , and during the later part of the war they were issued to many Volkssturm groups . They also found their way into France when they were given as a donation by the Third Reich to the German allied Vichy French army , many would later be captured and used by the French resistance . Few of the German versions with the helical magazine survive , however the Mexican army still uses the Mexican version in parades and other military celebrations as a ceremonial rifle .