Beretta’s oldest record is a 1526 bill for 185 gun barrels, paid in 296 ducats.
Bartolomeo Beretta, a master barrel maker, sold them to the Venice Arsenal, and his family has run the company for 15 generations since. Its pistols armed the US military from 1985 and James Bond in Ian Fleming’s first novels. For its 500th year it made a pistol in a run of 296, one for each ducat.
Beretta on Brandseum