This is a beautiful example of an extremely scarce, all original Armalite designed AR-10 fully automatic rifle as produced by the Dutch company of Artillerie-Inrichtengen (AI). As noted this rifle is a fully functional, fully transferable class III weapon that is in remarkable like new condition. The left side of the receiver is marked "Patents pending/ARMALITE/AR10/mfg. by AI Nederland/004242". It is fitted with the half-wooden forend/hand guards with the perforated metal front section with the brown fiberglass buttstock (with no butt trap) and pistol grip. The complete bolt and bolt carrier assembly is correctly all chrome plated. It has the original grenade launcher fitted to the end of the barrel with the original front and rear sight. This exceptional rifle is complete with an original web sling mounted on the left side along with an original "Armalite" marked waffle pattern 20 round magazine. These rifles are extremely rare today as very few were actually produced, with most rifles seeing considerable heavy use over the years with almost no examples of original fully automatic rifles ever imported into the United States. The company that started this all can trace their origins to the efforts of two men; engineer/attorney George Sullivan and inventor Jacques Michault who teamed up together and sought to design and build military-style rifles that represented a radical departure from all others in the form of rifles that featured lightweight aluminum receivers, straight-line fiberglass stocks, high-line sights, and receiver-mounted carrying handles. Sullivan later met with Richard S. Boutelle, president of Fairchild, and told him of his efforts. Boutelle was interested in this project, and as a result, the ArmaLite Division was founded in 1954 as a subsidiary of Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation. Later that year Eugene Stoner, a former U.S. Marine and ordnance technician, became ArmaLite's chief engineer. Stoner, along with designer L. James Sullivan and supervisor Robert Fremont, who as a team later developed several designs under the Armalite name that could be licensed to manufacturers for actual production. By early 1957, three successive prototypes had been built, tested, and improved upon to the point where serious efforts could be made to find a production facility to handle the proposed manufacturing quantities. ArmaLite-Fairchild partner Richard Boutelle used his inside track with the Dutch Government to secure a deal with the government-owned firm of Artillerie-Inrichtingen, to invest and produce these new radical designed rifles for sale on the world wide market. Unfortunately, there were some significant production delays due to the problems converting the Technical Data Package from the US standard "inches" to European standard "metric" dimensions. Because of this, it is estimated approximately 3,000-4,000 rifles in total were actually produced, split between the Guatemala, Sudan and Portugal, contracts, with several large orders lost to the Belgian-designed FN-FAL rifle. In 1959, ArmaLite revoked the Dutch license and awarded it to the famous American gunmaker Colt. The US Army never adopted an AR-10 type of rifle until the early 1960s when the company of Fairchild-Hillar and Colt approached then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara with the totally redesigned Colt AR15/M16 rifle in 5.56mm and the rest is history.