Ceska Zbrojovka (CZ) has started a monthly series of social media posts called History Monday where they will be sharing pictures and stories of some of the most interesting and rare specimens of their firearms. For this month, in the first edition of History Monday, they published pictures of the very first CZ 75 pistol, the serial number 00001.

Designed in 1975 by a talented small arms designer František Koucký, the CZ 75 became one of the most successful and iconic handguns of the world. It combines the tried and true Browning type short barrel recoil action with tilting barrel lockup with a set of other good design solutions such as the reverse long slide and frame rails which make it extremely accurate. No wonder why to this day a lot of competition shooters prefer the CZ 75 or its derivatives that share the same basic design. The successful design of this handgun has been cloned by a number of other manufacturers and both original CZ and cloned pistols have been adopted by militaries and law enforcement agencies throughout the world.

This first pattern of CZ 75 pistols is referred to as Short Rail because the frame/slide rails are shorter ending right in front of the trigger guard. In later improved models, the slide and dust cover portion of the frame were redesigned allowing to extend the rails to the front end of the frame.

The hammer spur has a rather interesting shape.

Follow CZ on their social media pages and keep reading our Photo Of The Day article series to see the gems the company will show in next and following History Mondays.