| Caliber | 8x50R Mannlicher and others |
| Weight | 20 kg (gun body) + 3 kg (water) + 20 kg (tripod) |
| Length | 1067 mm |
| Barrel length | 527 mm |
| Feed | belt |
| Rate of fire | 400 rounds per minute |
German arms designer Andreas Wilhelm Schwarzlose patented a basic design for a machine gun in 1902. He subsequently sold his patent rights to the Steyr arms factory in Austria, which produced the first guns of the Schwarzlose pattern in 1905. After two years of trials and development, the military forces of the Empire adopted the Schwarzlose machine gun in 1907; this gun was also later adopted in a range of calibers by the Netherlands and Sweden (who both manufactured Schwarzlose machine guns under licence until the 1930s), and by Greece, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey – all before the World War I. In 1912 it was modified with the introduction of stronger parts and slightly reshaped retarding levers (struts). The primary visible difference between original M1907 guns and modified M1907/12 guns is the lack of the gap between the hump on the receiver and the barrel jacket on the latter guns.
After the WWI and the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a great many Schwarzlose guns were adopted by smaller countries that emerged from the remains of the Empire, such as Czechoslovakia (which put the gun into production) and Hungary. Many Schwarzlose guns also went to Italy as war reparations, and subsequently saw some use during WW2, mostly in Africa in the original 8x50R caliber. Another user of Schwarzlose machine guns was Russia, which captured several thousands of Austrian machine guns during the early parts of World War One.
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