These guns are not separated by so many years in design. Both are lineal descendants and product improvements of another gun, the Browning from the Colt M1911 and the Luger from the Borchardt C.93.
The Luger is the pinnacle of the toggle-locked handgun.
The Browning is the beginning of the wonder-nines. It's such an establishing pattern that someone familiar with a modern gun has no troubles at all with it. In many ways modern polymer framed guns are simply High-Powers upgraded to modern materials.
The Luger... last of its kind. Even with all of the machining that the Browning has, you can see how rationalized the design is for mass production on an assembly line. The parts on the Luger aren't made for the high-rate production processes of the 1930's any more than the Browning is suited to today's production methods. Just about the only thing on the Luger that's common today is it's striker firing rather than hammer fired.
Still it's a neat window into a world where the best way for a service pistol to function had not been shown, let alone decided. There's a romance to these older guns.
Nice comparison, and those guns have 'character', unlike the plastic fantastics today...
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