History of the .45 caliber
The U.S. Cavalry had been buying and testing various handguns in the late 1890s and early 1900s. The .45 Colt Single Action Army had largely been replaced, even by some double action versions of the same. The Cavalry had fielded some double action revolversin .38 Long Colt. They determined that the .38-caliber round was significantly less effective against determined opponents, such as the warriors encountered in the Moro Rebellion of the Philippine–American War, than the .45 Colt. The current issue rifle at the time, the .30-40 Krag, had also failed to stop Moro warriors effectively. The British had similar issues switching to the .303 British, which resulted in the development of the Dum-dum bullet. This experience, and the Thompson-LaGarde Tests of 1904 led the Army and the Cavalry to decide that a minimum of .45-caliber was required in the new handgun.
Colt had been working with Browning on a .41-caliber cartridge in 1904, and in 1905 when the Cavalry asked for a .45-caliber equivalent Colt modified the pistol design to fire a .45-caliber version of the prototype .41-caliber round. The result from Colt was the Model 1905 and the new .45 ACP cartridge. The original round that passed the testing fired a 200 grain (13 g) bullet at 900 ft/s (275 m/s), but after a number of rounds of revisions between Winchester Repeating Arms, Frankford Arsenal, and Union Metallic Cartridge, it ended up using a 230-grain (15 g) bullet fired at about 850 ft/s (260 m/s). The resulting .45-caliber cartridge, named the .45 ACP, was similar in performance to the .45 Schofield cartridge, and only slightly less powerful (but significantly shorter) than the .45 Colt cartridges the Cavalry was using. The cartridge case shared the same head dimensions as the .30-03 and later .30-06 Springfield rifle cartridges in use by the military at the time.
By 1906 bids from six makers were submitted, among them Browning's design, submitted by Colt. Only DWM, Savage, and Colt made the first cut. DWM, which submitted two Luger P08 pistols adapted to the .45 ACP cartridge, withdrew from testing after the first round of tests, for unspecified reasons. One of the DWM pistols, serial number 1, was destroyed in testing; the remaining instance, serial number 2, is considered one of the most desirable collectors handguns in existence.
In the second round of evaluations in 1910, the Colt design passed the extensive testing with no failures, while the Savage design suffered 37 stoppages or parts failures. The resulting Colt design was adopted as the Model 1911.