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The Fabrique Nationale Baby Browning is a small blowback-operated semi-automatic pistol designed by Dieudonné Saive based on a design by John Browning. The pistol features a 6 round magazine capacity and is a striker-fired, single action, blow back mechanism. The manual thumb operated safety locks the slide in the closed position when engaged using side thumb pressure.

Fabrique Nationale (FN) introduced the revolutionary model in 1905. Despite the name FN used for this pistol, it was later marketed as the "M1906", the "V.P..25", The M1905/M1906 Vest Pocket pistol incorporated a grip safety mechanism that constituted the entire rear section of the grip. This particular safety mechanism required a significant amount of hand palm pressure to disengage and allow the trigger to release the striker to fire the pistol. 

Colt would license and manufacture the FN pistol as the Model 1908 Vest Pocket pistol. The M1908 also incorporated a small safety lever on the left side of the receiver which locked the striker. In addition, this safety lever mechanism locked the slide about a half inch back from the front of the pistol to enable easy dis-assembly. FN also added this safety lever mechanism to its pistol, but did not add the magazine safety mechanism that Colt introduced in 1916. 

Pressured by dozens of imitations and the proliferation of blatant unlicensed copies, FN began work in earnest on a successor product to the Model 1908 Vest Pocket pistol. The basic Vest Pocket pistol design was used as a starting point for the new design. Dieudonné Saive (who would later design the Browning Hi-Power pistol and FN FAL rifle) was asked during 1926-1927 to design the new pistol. His design was smaller, lighter, and incorporated several refinements and improvements to the M1908 version. For example, the hand palm activated grip safety mechanism was eliminated and the small safety lever on the left side of the receiver was extended under the grip so that the thumb of a right-handed shooter could easily engage and disengage it using pressure applied to the side of the safety lever - rather than pushing it down into the receiver- without having to release one's grip on the pistol. This improvement was at the cost of the slide hold-back feature that was eliminated in the new design and which has made Baby Browning pistols not federally classified as Curio & Relics illegal for commercial sale in the state of California as of late 2006. 

The receiver has a full-length dust guard extending to the end of the slide and an area behind the trigger is relieved to allow a user to maintain a more substantial grip on the pistol. The Dieudonne Saive design also introduced a magazine safety mechanism similar to the one utilized on the Colt Vest Pocket pistol. Parts are not interchangeable between these pistols. This model was marketed under the name "Baby" - and some of the original nylon impregnated polymer grips were molded with both the initials "FN" at the top of the grip in a circle and the word "BABY" at the bottom of the grip under a raised crescent. 

This particular pistol was and continues to be known worldwide as the "Baby Browning" pistol and is the pistol reflected in the picture accompanying this article, excepting the BROWNING marked grip which indicates a more recent production model. The Baby Browning made its reputation during WWII when it became the pistol of choice of the French Resistance Movement. It was standard issue survival pack gear for US Air Force Pilots during the Vietnam conflict. 

FN manufactured and marketed the Baby Browning pistol from 1931 until 1979, though exports to the USA only took place between 1953-1968. About 500,000 units were produced
(Ref. ‘Pistols and revolvers’ p133 by JE Smith, ‘Famous pistols and handguns’ by A J R Cormack, ‘Pistols of the world’ by Hogg and Weeks p100, Dictionary of guns and gunmakers by John Walter p 49)
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