I'm not asking the earliest time an AK could be made. I'm asking at what point would it make sense for the technology of the era to allow someone to invent an AK analog. WW1? Before? What would its effect be.
actually in reality we have a real life example of what you want, the BAR was invented in 1917, although not as legendary as the AK, it is probably one of the best automatic rifles ever made, in fact as I recall it was so good at the time the allies refused to allow its use in the front lines of WWI for fear that it would fall into the hands of the enemy. It had a comparable length service life for approximately 50 years. Although not quite the AK-47, I think one could safely say it was the 1917 equivalent to the AK.
The earliest fielded production rifle that comes close to meeting the specs for an assault rifle - intermediate cartridge (1200-2000 J muzzle energy), selective fire, 300-600 m effective range - would be the Russian Federov Avtomat (1914), although the Italian's had an earlier design. Give the Federov Avtomat a proper cartridge and you have a WWI era AR.
The M1 Carbine rifle was initially scheduled to have shorter ammunition, and to be capable of fully automatic fire. Just make that version more suffesfull, and you've got the USA storming Okinawa with assault rifles.
Yes, what pretty much killed BAR as individual weapon was overpowered cartridge. Anything chambered in .30-06/7.92x57/7.62x54/.303 is incapable of being light enough to be carried by ordinary infantryman and controllable in Full Auto mode. However, early introduction of intermediate cartridge is unlikely due to Curse of the Horse (anything adopted before Dragoons became completely obsolete have to be capable of immobilizing horse at half-mile distance with single hit or it wouldn't be adopted).actually in reality we have a real life example of what you want, the BAR was invented in 1917
To tell you the truth, Avtomat was pretty lousy and temperamental construction (beign constructed around barrel recoil design). It was useful in hands of elite troops, but much too jam-prone for average soldier.Give the Federov Avtomat a proper cartridge and you have a WWI era AR.
Popenker says that BAR had been developed as a Rifle and was converted to LMG role only after field tests proved it being too heavy.Not really. The BAR was really a light machine gun used as a squad support weapon, not a rifle at all.