Handguns and Pistols
Handguns and Pistols
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On February 25, 1836, Samuel Colt patented the first multi-shot revolving-cylinder pistol enabling the firearm to be fired multiple times without reloading. From the article:
"Samuel Colt
In 1836, Connecticut-born gun manufacturer Samuel Colt (1814-62) received a U.S. patent for a revolver mechanism that enabled a gun to be fired multiple times without reloading. Colt founded a company to manufacture his revolving-cylinder pistol; however, sales were slow and the business floundered. Then in 1846, with the Mexican War (1846-48) under way, the U.S. government ordered 1,000 Colt revolvers. In 1855, Colt opened what was the world’s largest private armament factory, in which he employed advanced manufacturing techniques such as interchangeable parts and an organized production line. By 1856, the company could produce 150 weapons per day. Colt was also an effective promoter, and by the start of the U.S. Civil War (1861-65) he had made the Colt revolver perhaps the world’s best-known firearm. He died a wealthy man in 1862; the company he founded remains in business today.
Early Years
Samuel Colt was born on July 19, 1814, in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of textile manufacturer Christopher Colt and wife Sarah. By visiting his father’s mill in Ware, Massachusetts, and helping out at a nearby farm, the young Colt gained an interest in all things mechanical and often dismantled objects–including his father’s firearms–to discover how they functioned. At age 16, he enrolled at Amherst Academy in Massachusetts to study navigation; however, his youthful hi-jinks later got him expelled from the school. His father then gave the teen the opportunity to study navigation firsthand, sending him out to sea on the Corvo, a ship that embarked on a nearly yearlong voyage in 1830.
Aboard the Corvo, Colt became fascinated with the ship’s wheel, particularly the way it could alternately spin or be locked in a fixed position through the use of a clutch. He translated this controlled rotation to firearms and a means whereby a single-shot pistol could be adapted to fire multiple rounds in quick succession. During his time at sea, Colt carved a six-barrel cylinder, locking pin and hammer out of wood. Although this prototype for a pistol featured multiple rotating barrels, in later versions Colt would opt instead for a rotating cylinder containing multiple bullet chambers to reduce the gun’s weight and bulk.
After returning from his adventure at sea, Colt spent two years traveling North America under the name Dr. Coult, hosting a road show during which he entertained and educated crowds on the uses of nitrous oxide (laughing gas). The profits he saved through his skill as a promoter enabled him to perfect his revolver mechanism, and he hired gunsmiths to create a series of prototypes.
Patents for the Revolving Pistol
Colt’s revolver mechanism is considered by some to be more innovation than invention because it improved upon a revolving flintlock (a firing mechanism used in muskets and rifles) already patented by Boston inventor Elisha Collier (1788-1856). The British patent for Colt’s mechanism was acquired in October 1835, and on February 25, 1836, the American inventor received U.S. Patent No. 138 (later 9430X) for his revolving-cylinder pistol. The enhancements listed in this patent include greater “facility in loading,” changes in “the weight and location of the cylinder, which give steadiness to the hand,” and “the great rapidity in the succession of discharges.” Colt’s Patent Arms Manufacturing Company began making the Paterson pistol in 1836 at its Paterson, New Jersey, factory using funds advanced by Colt’s family.
Initially, Colt produced three “revolving” handguns–belt, holster and pocket pistols–and two rifles. All models incorporated a revolving cylinder into which gunpowder and bullets were loaded. Primer was placed on a strike plate outside the cylinder, and combustion was initiated by pulling the trigger and releasing the hammer onto the strike plate. The ability to fire six shots without reloading–a task that required 20 seconds using a single-shot firearm–provided a crucial advantage to soldiers and settlers encountering danger in the nation’s frontier regions. Colt continued to refine his initial design, obtaining patents on such components as a cylinder-locking mechanism, fluted cylinders, longer grips and beveled-cylinder mouths to eliminate igniting adjacent chambers. A savvy businessman, he retained rights to these patents, making his applications as an individual rather than through the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company.
A Business Failure
Seeking a government contract for his guns, Colt visited the office of the U.S. secretary of war, but the Army judged the use of a percussion cap in Colt firearms too innovative and therefore potentially unreliable. Scattered sales in the newly formed Republic of Texas and in Florida, where the Second Seminole War (1835-42) was ongoing, did not translate into the revenue required to maintain the veneer of success Colt needed to impress potential clients. Eventually, the company’s shareholders took control of Patent Arms Manufacturing, and Colt was relegated to sales agent. In 1842, the company was forced to close, and its fixtures and inventory of guns and gun parts were auctioned off to the highest bidder.With his company failing, Colt turned to another interest: perfecting an underwater mine for use in harbor defense. His remote-ignition “submarine battery” required him to develop a waterproof cable capable of transmitting electricity underwater. As with his revolver mechanism, Colt’s innovative cable was adapted from an earlier design: a cable developed by telegraph inventor Samuel F.B. Morse (1791-1872). The relationship between the two inventors led to a partially implemented scheme to install a telegraph line from the New York Merchant’s Exchange to Sandy Hook, New Jersey. (The line went only as far as Fire Island, New York, before the project was abandoned.)
Busy with these new projects, and discouraged by the failure of Patent Arms Manufacturing, Colt also found himself caught up in a national scandal after his brother, John Colt, murdered a printer with whom he did business.
U.S. Expansionism Sparks a Need for More Guns
The 1844 election of President James K. Polk (1795-1849) saw the implementation of Polk’s plans for outward expansion into Texas and the Western territories. Seeing a new opportunity, Colt submitted a sample of his enhanced revolving holster pistol to the U.S. war department. In 1846, with the Mexican War under way, Colt had a visit from Captain Samuel H. Walker (1817-47) of the U.S. Mounted Riflemen. After Colt and Walker collaborated on the design for a new and improved gun, General Zachary Taylor (1784-1850) ordered 1,000 Colt revolvers. The guns were delivered to the Army in 1847.
Colt’s guns were now produced in Hartford, where his factory was managed by mechanic-minded supervisor Elisha K. Root (1808-65). Under Root’s guidance, the renamed Colt Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company hired talented mechanics and engineers who continued the innovations Colt had begun. In the early 1850s, a company branch was established in England, and in 1855 a new Hartford factory–the largest privately owned armament manufacturing plant in the world–was built overlooking the Connecticut River. By 1856, the company could produce 150 weapons per day using interchangeable parts, efficient production lines and specially designed precision machinery. The Colt brand was now recognized worldwide through savvy promotion and was associated with quality and dependability. A masterful promoter, Colt positioned his firearms within the American mythos, even hiring artist and explorer George Catlin (1796-1872) to create paintings depicting Colt guns in use by sportsmen and explorers encountering exotic predatory animals in North and South America.
The Civil War and Beyond
During the late 1850s, while tensions mounted between the North and South that would soon lead to the American Civil War, Colt continued to do business with longstanding customers in Southern states. However, when war was finally declared on April 12, 1861, he turned his focus almost exclusively to supplying the Union army. He also outfitted the 1st Regiment Connecticut Rifles, a volunteer regiment from his company’s home state. Colt’s Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company operated at full capacity and employed over 1,000 people in its Hartford factory. By that time, Samuel Colt had become one of the wealthiest men in America and owned a Connecticut mansion called Armsmear.
The strain of supplying the war effort eventually took its toll on Colt. Suffering from chronic rheumatism, the 47-year-old gun manufacturer died at his home on January 10, 1862, leaving behind an estate worth millions. The company, which manufactured more than 400,000 firearms during Colt’s lifetime, was left to its founder’s wife, Elizabeth, and Root was appointed president. In 1901, the Colt family sold the company to a group of investors.
Still in business today, the Colt’s Manufacturing Company went on to produce the Colt Single Action Army handgun, also known as the Colt .45 or the Peacemaker, the standard service revolver of the U.S. military between 1873 and 1892. To date, the company founded by Samuel Colt has produced more than 30 million pistols, revolvers and rifles."
"Samuel Colt
In 1836, Connecticut-born gun manufacturer Samuel Colt (1814-62) received a U.S. patent for a revolver mechanism that enabled a gun to be fired multiple times without reloading. Colt founded a company to manufacture his revolving-cylinder pistol; however, sales were slow and the business floundered. Then in 1846, with the Mexican War (1846-48) under way, the U.S. government ordered 1,000 Colt revolvers. In 1855, Colt opened what was the world’s largest private armament factory, in which he employed advanced manufacturing techniques such as interchangeable parts and an organized production line. By 1856, the company could produce 150 weapons per day. Colt was also an effective promoter, and by the start of the U.S. Civil War (1861-65) he had made the Colt revolver perhaps the world’s best-known firearm. He died a wealthy man in 1862; the company he founded remains in business today.
Early Years
Samuel Colt was born on July 19, 1814, in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of textile manufacturer Christopher Colt and wife Sarah. By visiting his father’s mill in Ware, Massachusetts, and helping out at a nearby farm, the young Colt gained an interest in all things mechanical and often dismantled objects–including his father’s firearms–to discover how they functioned. At age 16, he enrolled at Amherst Academy in Massachusetts to study navigation; however, his youthful hi-jinks later got him expelled from the school. His father then gave the teen the opportunity to study navigation firsthand, sending him out to sea on the Corvo, a ship that embarked on a nearly yearlong voyage in 1830.
Aboard the Corvo, Colt became fascinated with the ship’s wheel, particularly the way it could alternately spin or be locked in a fixed position through the use of a clutch. He translated this controlled rotation to firearms and a means whereby a single-shot pistol could be adapted to fire multiple rounds in quick succession. During his time at sea, Colt carved a six-barrel cylinder, locking pin and hammer out of wood. Although this prototype for a pistol featured multiple rotating barrels, in later versions Colt would opt instead for a rotating cylinder containing multiple bullet chambers to reduce the gun’s weight and bulk.
After returning from his adventure at sea, Colt spent two years traveling North America under the name Dr. Coult, hosting a road show during which he entertained and educated crowds on the uses of nitrous oxide (laughing gas). The profits he saved through his skill as a promoter enabled him to perfect his revolver mechanism, and he hired gunsmiths to create a series of prototypes.
Patents for the Revolving Pistol
Colt’s revolver mechanism is considered by some to be more innovation than invention because it improved upon a revolving flintlock (a firing mechanism used in muskets and rifles) already patented by Boston inventor Elisha Collier (1788-1856). The British patent for Colt’s mechanism was acquired in October 1835, and on February 25, 1836, the American inventor received U.S. Patent No. 138 (later 9430X) for his revolving-cylinder pistol. The enhancements listed in this patent include greater “facility in loading,” changes in “the weight and location of the cylinder, which give steadiness to the hand,” and “the great rapidity in the succession of discharges.” Colt’s Patent Arms Manufacturing Company began making the Paterson pistol in 1836 at its Paterson, New Jersey, factory using funds advanced by Colt’s family.
Initially, Colt produced three “revolving” handguns–belt, holster and pocket pistols–and two rifles. All models incorporated a revolving cylinder into which gunpowder and bullets were loaded. Primer was placed on a strike plate outside the cylinder, and combustion was initiated by pulling the trigger and releasing the hammer onto the strike plate. The ability to fire six shots without reloading–a task that required 20 seconds using a single-shot firearm–provided a crucial advantage to soldiers and settlers encountering danger in the nation’s frontier regions. Colt continued to refine his initial design, obtaining patents on such components as a cylinder-locking mechanism, fluted cylinders, longer grips and beveled-cylinder mouths to eliminate igniting adjacent chambers. A savvy businessman, he retained rights to these patents, making his applications as an individual rather than through the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company.
A Business Failure
Seeking a government contract for his guns, Colt visited the office of the U.S. secretary of war, but the Army judged the use of a percussion cap in Colt firearms too innovative and therefore potentially unreliable. Scattered sales in the newly formed Republic of Texas and in Florida, where the Second Seminole War (1835-42) was ongoing, did not translate into the revenue required to maintain the veneer of success Colt needed to impress potential clients. Eventually, the company’s shareholders took control of Patent Arms Manufacturing, and Colt was relegated to sales agent. In 1842, the company was forced to close, and its fixtures and inventory of guns and gun parts were auctioned off to the highest bidder.With his company failing, Colt turned to another interest: perfecting an underwater mine for use in harbor defense. His remote-ignition “submarine battery” required him to develop a waterproof cable capable of transmitting electricity underwater. As with his revolver mechanism, Colt’s innovative cable was adapted from an earlier design: a cable developed by telegraph inventor Samuel F.B. Morse (1791-1872). The relationship between the two inventors led to a partially implemented scheme to install a telegraph line from the New York Merchant’s Exchange to Sandy Hook, New Jersey. (The line went only as far as Fire Island, New York, before the project was abandoned.)
Busy with these new projects, and discouraged by the failure of Patent Arms Manufacturing, Colt also found himself caught up in a national scandal after his brother, John Colt, murdered a printer with whom he did business.
U.S. Expansionism Sparks a Need for More Guns
The 1844 election of President James K. Polk (1795-1849) saw the implementation of Polk’s plans for outward expansion into Texas and the Western territories. Seeing a new opportunity, Colt submitted a sample of his enhanced revolving holster pistol to the U.S. war department. In 1846, with the Mexican War under way, Colt had a visit from Captain Samuel H. Walker (1817-47) of the U.S. Mounted Riflemen. After Colt and Walker collaborated on the design for a new and improved gun, General Zachary Taylor (1784-1850) ordered 1,000 Colt revolvers. The guns were delivered to the Army in 1847.
Colt’s guns were now produced in Hartford, where his factory was managed by mechanic-minded supervisor Elisha K. Root (1808-65). Under Root’s guidance, the renamed Colt Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company hired talented mechanics and engineers who continued the innovations Colt had begun. In the early 1850s, a company branch was established in England, and in 1855 a new Hartford factory–the largest privately owned armament manufacturing plant in the world–was built overlooking the Connecticut River. By 1856, the company could produce 150 weapons per day using interchangeable parts, efficient production lines and specially designed precision machinery. The Colt brand was now recognized worldwide through savvy promotion and was associated with quality and dependability. A masterful promoter, Colt positioned his firearms within the American mythos, even hiring artist and explorer George Catlin (1796-1872) to create paintings depicting Colt guns in use by sportsmen and explorers encountering exotic predatory animals in North and South America.
The Civil War and Beyond
During the late 1850s, while tensions mounted between the North and South that would soon lead to the American Civil War, Colt continued to do business with longstanding customers in Southern states. However, when war was finally declared on April 12, 1861, he turned his focus almost exclusively to supplying the Union army. He also outfitted the 1st Regiment Connecticut Rifles, a volunteer regiment from his company’s home state. Colt’s Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company operated at full capacity and employed over 1,000 people in its Hartford factory. By that time, Samuel Colt had become one of the wealthiest men in America and owned a Connecticut mansion called Armsmear.
The strain of supplying the war effort eventually took its toll on Colt. Suffering from chronic rheumatism, the 47-year-old gun manufacturer died at his home on January 10, 1862, leaving behind an estate worth millions. The company, which manufactured more than 400,000 firearms during Colt’s lifetime, was left to its founder’s wife, Elizabeth, and Root was appointed president. In 1901, the Colt family sold the company to a group of investors.
Still in business today, the Colt’s Manufacturing Company went on to produce the Colt Single Action Army handgun, also known as the Colt .45 or the Peacemaker, the standard service revolver of the U.S. military between 1873 and 1892. To date, the company founded by Samuel Colt has produced more than 30 million pistols, revolvers and rifles."
Samuel Colt
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Gunsmithing Firearms and Guns Handguns and Pistols American History World History
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Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that on February 25, 1836 Connecticut-born gun manufacturer patented the first multi-shot revolving-cylinder pistol enabling the firearm to be fired multiple times without reloading.
Images:
1. Colt Frontier Breech-Load Revolver, Invented by Samuel Colt
2. Samuel Colt portrait
3. Armsmear - the home, the arm, and the armory of Samuel Colt in Hartford, Connecticut
4. Exterior and Interior view of Colt Revolver
COLT LEGEND & LEGACY 1997
https://youtu.be/mzOXuIbGKds?t=57
Biographies
1. pbs.org/wgbh/theymadeamerica/whomade/colt_hi.html
2. history.com/topics/inventions/samuel-colt]
1. Background from {[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/theymadeamerica/whomade/colt_hi.html]}
Born July 19, 1814, Hartford, CT
Died January 10, 1862, Hartford, CT
In the time it took to ram a charge and a lead ball down the barrel of a single shot rifle, Comanche Indians could shoot six arrows or run 150 yards with spear and tomahawk.
Samuel Colt
A Mass Market
He invented a gun that fired multiple times without reloading, advanced manufacturing, and created a mass market. The Colt revolver was a godsend to Western settlers -- and the ultimate threat to Plains Indians.
Interest in Guns
In the nineteenth century, Sam Colt's name was synonymous with his revolving-breech pistol, a weapon that was said to have "won the West." The second youngest of seven children, Colt was born in Hartford, Connecticut on July 19, 1814. A confident, even reckless boy, he showed an early interest in explosions and weapons. While on a voyage to India as an apprentice sailor, young Colt designed an innovative gun with an automatic, revolving chamber.
Multiple Shots
In 1835, Colt took out his first patent and founded the Patent Arms Company in Paterson, New Jersey. His pistol was different from others; its design allowed several shots to be fired in succession without reloading. A single-shot weapon took 20 seconds to reload -- a dangerous interval, especially for frontiersmen and soldiers fighting Indians who could fire six arrows in that time. Army officers used Colt's weapon in the 1830s, but production defects prevented widespread approval of the firearm. Colt would resolve to improve manufacturing, and by 1848 his guns would be safer.
War-Tested
Colt received a boost in sales during the Texas Revolution and the Mexican American War. His weapons contributed to the U.S. Army's success, and to the resulting westward expansion of American territory. A Texas Ranger, Captain Samuel Walker, wrote Colt a testimonial that read, in part:"Your pistols...[are] the most perfect weapon in the World... to keep the various warlike tribes of Indians and marauding Mexicans in subjection."
Building a Legend
Throughout the 1850s, Colt continued to make improvements on his now famous Colt revolvers. His operation became a model of precision manufacturing, automation, and process integration. He saw the value of myth-making; he marketed his gun as an essential part of the American frontier, working to promote his brand and build his market. In addition to the military, his customers included Forty-Niners heading to the Gold Rush; migrating settlers; Texas cowboys; and lawmen on the nation's western frontier. His slogans included,"God created men equal, Col. Colt made them equal..." Colt died a year after the Civil War broke out, at the young age of forty-six, having never fired a gun at another person.
2. Background from {[http://history.com/topics/inventions/samuel-colt]}
In 1836, Connecticut-born gun manufacturer Samuel Colt (1814-62) received a U.S. patent for a revolver mechanism that enabled a gun to be fired multiple times without reloading. Colt founded a company to manufacture his revolving-cylinder pistol; however, sales were slow and the business floundered. Then in 1846, with the Mexican War (1846-48) under way, the U.S. government ordered 1,000 Colt revolvers. In 1855, Colt opened what was the world’s largest private armament factory, in which he employed advanced manufacturing techniques such as interchangeable parts and an organized production line. By 1856, the company could produce 150 weapons per day. Colt was also an effective promoter, and by the start of the U.S. Civil War (1861-65) he had made the Colt revolver perhaps the world’s best-known firearm. He died a wealthy man in 1862; the company he founded remains in business today.
Early Years
Samuel Colt was born on July 19, 1814, in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of textile manufacturer Christopher Colt and wife Sarah. By visiting his father’s mill in Ware, Massachusetts, and helping out at a nearby farm, the young Colt gained an interest in all things mechanical and often dismantled objects–including his father’s firearms–to discover how they functioned. At age 16, he enrolled at Amherst Academy in Massachusetts to study navigation; however, his youthful hi-jinks later got him expelled from the school. His father then gave the teen the opportunity to study navigation firsthand, sending him out to sea on the Corvo, a ship that embarked on a nearly yearlong voyage in 1830.
Did you know? Samuel Colt hired engravers and craftsmen to decorate special presentation pistols that were given to European kings, Russian czars and military officials, among other dignitaries. These firearms were often lavishly engraved and inlaid with gold.
Aboard the Corvo, Colt became fascinated with the ship’s wheel, particularly the way it could alternately spin or be locked in a fixed position through the use of a clutch. He translated this controlled rotation to firearms and a means whereby a single-shot pistol could be adapted to fire multiple rounds in quick succession. During his time at sea, Colt carved a six-barrel cylinder, locking pin and hammer out of wood. Although this prototype for a pistol featured multiple rotating barrels, in later versions Colt would opt instead for a rotating cylinder containing multiple bullet chambers to reduce the gun’s weight and bulk.
After returning from his adventure at sea, Colt spent two years traveling North America under the name Dr. Coult, hosting a road show during which he entertained and educated crowds on the uses of nitrous oxide (laughing gas). The profits he saved through his skill as a promoter enabled him to perfect his revolver mechanism, and he hired gunsmiths to create a series of prototypes.
Patents for the Revolving Pistol
Colt’s revolver mechanism is considered by some to be more innovation than invention because it improved upon a revolving flintlock (a firing mechanism used in muskets and rifles) already patented by Boston inventor Elisha Collier (1788-1856). The British patent for Colt’s mechanism was acquired in October 1835, and on February 25, 1836, the American inventor received U.S. Patent No. 138 (later 9430X) for his revolving-cylinder pistol. The enhancements listed in this patent include greater “facility in loading,” changes in “the weight and location of the cylinder, which give steadiness to the hand,” and “the great rapidity in the succession of discharges.” Colt’s Patent Arms Manufacturing Company began making the Paterson pistol in 1836 at its Paterson, New Jersey, factory using funds advanced by Colt’s family.
Initially, Colt produced three “revolving” handguns–belt, holster and pocket pistols–and two rifles. All models incorporated a revolving cylinder into which gunpowder and bullets were loaded. Primer was placed on a strike plate outside the cylinder, and combustion was initiated by pulling the trigger and releasing the hammer onto the strike plate. The ability to fire six shots without reloading–a task that required 20 seconds using a single-shot firearm–provided a crucial advantage to soldiers and settlers encountering danger in the nation’s frontier regions. Colt continued to refine his initial design, obtaining patents on such components as a cylinder-locking mechanism, fluted cylinders, longer grips and beveled-cylinder mouths to eliminate igniting adjacent chambers. A savvy businessman, he retained rights to these patents, making his applications as an individual rather than through the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company.
A Business Failure
Seeking a government contract for his guns, Colt visited the office of the U.S. secretary of war, but the Army judged the use of a percussion cap in Colt firearms too innovative and therefore potentially unreliable. Scattered sales in the newly formed Republic of Texas and in Florida, where the Second Seminole War (1835-42) was ongoing, did not translate into the revenue required to maintain the veneer of success Colt needed to impress potential clients. Eventually, the company’s shareholders took control of Patent Arms Manufacturing, and Colt was relegated to sales agent. In 1842, the company was forced to close, and its fixtures and inventory of guns and gun parts were auctioned off to the highest bidder.With his company failing, Colt turned to another interest: perfecting an underwater mine for use in harbor defense. His remote-ignition “submarine battery” required him to develop a waterproof cable capable of transmitting electricity underwater. As with his revolver mechanism, Colt’s innovative cable was adapted from an earlier design: a cable developed by telegraph inventor Samuel F.B. Morse (1791-1872). The relationship between the two inventors led to a partially implemented scheme to install a telegraph line from the New York Merchant’s Exchange to Sandy Hook, New Jersey. (The line went only as far as Fire Island, New York, before the project was abandoned.)
Busy with these new projects, and discouraged by the failure of Patent Arms Manufacturing, Colt also found himself caught up in a national scandal after his brother, John Colt, murdered a printer with whom he did business.
U.S. Expansionism Sparks a Need for More Guns
The 1844 election of President James K. Polk (1795-1849) saw the implementation of Polk’s plans for outward expansion into Texas and the Western territories. Seeing a new opportunity, Colt submitted a sample of his enhanced revolving holster pistol to the U.S. war department. In 1846, with the Mexican War under way, Colt had a visit from Captain Samuel H. Walker (1817-47) of the U.S. Mounted Riflemen. After Colt and Walker collaborated on the design for a new and improved gun, General Zachary Taylor (1784-1850) ordered 1,000 Colt revolvers. The guns were delivered to the Army in 1847.
Colt’s guns were now produced in Hartford, where his factory was managed by mechanic-minded supervisor Elisha K. Root (1808-65). Under Root’s guidance, the renamed Colt Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company hired talented mechanics and engineers who continued the innovations Colt had begun. In the early 1850s, a company branch was established in England, and in 1855 a new Hartford factory–the largest privately owned armament manufacturing plant in the world–was built overlooking the Connecticut River. By 1856, the company could produce 150 weapons per day using interchangeable parts, efficient production lines and specially designed precision machinery. The Colt brand was now recognized worldwide through savvy promotion and was associated with quality and dependability. A masterful promoter, Colt positioned his firearms within the American mythos, even hiring artist and explorer George Catlin (1796-1872) to create paintings depicting Colt guns in use by sportsmen and explorers encountering exotic predatory animals in North and South America.
The Civil War and Beyond
During the late 1850s, while tensions mounted between the North and South that would soon lead to the American Civil War, Colt continued to do business with longstanding customers in Southern states. However, when war was finally declared on April 12, 1861, he turned his focus almost exclusively to supplying the Union army. He also outfitted the 1st Regiment Connecticut Rifles, a volunteer regiment from his company’s home state. Colt’s Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company operated at full capacity and employed over 1,000 people in its Hartford factory. By that time, Samuel Colt had become one of the wealthiest men in America and owned a Connecticut mansion called Armsmear.
The strain of supplying the war effort eventually took its toll on Colt. Suffering from chronic rheumatism, the 47-year-old gun manufacturer died at his home on January 10, 1862, leaving behind an estate worth millions. The company, which manufactured more than 400,000 firearms during Colt’s lifetime, was left to its founder’s wife, Elizabeth, and Root was appointed president. In 1901, the Colt family sold the company to a group of investors.
Still in business today, the Colt’s Manufacturing Company went on to produce the Colt Single Action Army handgun, also known as the Colt .45 or the Peacemaker, the standard service revolver of the U.S. military between 1873 and 1892. To date, the company founded by Samuel Colt has produced more than 30 million pistols, revolvers and rifles."
FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarter SPC Michael Duricko, Ph.D GySgt Thomas Vick SGT Denny Espinosa SSG Stephen Rogerson SPC Matthew Lamb LTC (Join to see)Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. PO1 William "Chip" Nagel PO2 (Join to see) SSG Franklin Briant SPC Woody Bullard TSgt David L. SMSgt David A Asbury SPC Michael Terrell SFC Chuck Martinez CPT Richard Trione
Images:
1. Colt Frontier Breech-Load Revolver, Invented by Samuel Colt
2. Samuel Colt portrait
3. Armsmear - the home, the arm, and the armory of Samuel Colt in Hartford, Connecticut
4. Exterior and Interior view of Colt Revolver
COLT LEGEND & LEGACY 1997
https://youtu.be/mzOXuIbGKds?t=57
Biographies
1. pbs.org/wgbh/theymadeamerica/whomade/colt_hi.html
2. history.com/topics/inventions/samuel-colt]
1. Background from {[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/theymadeamerica/whomade/colt_hi.html]}
Born July 19, 1814, Hartford, CT
Died January 10, 1862, Hartford, CT
In the time it took to ram a charge and a lead ball down the barrel of a single shot rifle, Comanche Indians could shoot six arrows or run 150 yards with spear and tomahawk.
Samuel Colt
A Mass Market
He invented a gun that fired multiple times without reloading, advanced manufacturing, and created a mass market. The Colt revolver was a godsend to Western settlers -- and the ultimate threat to Plains Indians.
Interest in Guns
In the nineteenth century, Sam Colt's name was synonymous with his revolving-breech pistol, a weapon that was said to have "won the West." The second youngest of seven children, Colt was born in Hartford, Connecticut on July 19, 1814. A confident, even reckless boy, he showed an early interest in explosions and weapons. While on a voyage to India as an apprentice sailor, young Colt designed an innovative gun with an automatic, revolving chamber.
Multiple Shots
In 1835, Colt took out his first patent and founded the Patent Arms Company in Paterson, New Jersey. His pistol was different from others; its design allowed several shots to be fired in succession without reloading. A single-shot weapon took 20 seconds to reload -- a dangerous interval, especially for frontiersmen and soldiers fighting Indians who could fire six arrows in that time. Army officers used Colt's weapon in the 1830s, but production defects prevented widespread approval of the firearm. Colt would resolve to improve manufacturing, and by 1848 his guns would be safer.
War-Tested
Colt received a boost in sales during the Texas Revolution and the Mexican American War. His weapons contributed to the U.S. Army's success, and to the resulting westward expansion of American territory. A Texas Ranger, Captain Samuel Walker, wrote Colt a testimonial that read, in part:"Your pistols...[are] the most perfect weapon in the World... to keep the various warlike tribes of Indians and marauding Mexicans in subjection."
Building a Legend
Throughout the 1850s, Colt continued to make improvements on his now famous Colt revolvers. His operation became a model of precision manufacturing, automation, and process integration. He saw the value of myth-making; he marketed his gun as an essential part of the American frontier, working to promote his brand and build his market. In addition to the military, his customers included Forty-Niners heading to the Gold Rush; migrating settlers; Texas cowboys; and lawmen on the nation's western frontier. His slogans included,"God created men equal, Col. Colt made them equal..." Colt died a year after the Civil War broke out, at the young age of forty-six, having never fired a gun at another person.
2. Background from {[http://history.com/topics/inventions/samuel-colt]}
In 1836, Connecticut-born gun manufacturer Samuel Colt (1814-62) received a U.S. patent for a revolver mechanism that enabled a gun to be fired multiple times without reloading. Colt founded a company to manufacture his revolving-cylinder pistol; however, sales were slow and the business floundered. Then in 1846, with the Mexican War (1846-48) under way, the U.S. government ordered 1,000 Colt revolvers. In 1855, Colt opened what was the world’s largest private armament factory, in which he employed advanced manufacturing techniques such as interchangeable parts and an organized production line. By 1856, the company could produce 150 weapons per day. Colt was also an effective promoter, and by the start of the U.S. Civil War (1861-65) he had made the Colt revolver perhaps the world’s best-known firearm. He died a wealthy man in 1862; the company he founded remains in business today.
Early Years
Samuel Colt was born on July 19, 1814, in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of textile manufacturer Christopher Colt and wife Sarah. By visiting his father’s mill in Ware, Massachusetts, and helping out at a nearby farm, the young Colt gained an interest in all things mechanical and often dismantled objects–including his father’s firearms–to discover how they functioned. At age 16, he enrolled at Amherst Academy in Massachusetts to study navigation; however, his youthful hi-jinks later got him expelled from the school. His father then gave the teen the opportunity to study navigation firsthand, sending him out to sea on the Corvo, a ship that embarked on a nearly yearlong voyage in 1830.
Did you know? Samuel Colt hired engravers and craftsmen to decorate special presentation pistols that were given to European kings, Russian czars and military officials, among other dignitaries. These firearms were often lavishly engraved and inlaid with gold.
Aboard the Corvo, Colt became fascinated with the ship’s wheel, particularly the way it could alternately spin or be locked in a fixed position through the use of a clutch. He translated this controlled rotation to firearms and a means whereby a single-shot pistol could be adapted to fire multiple rounds in quick succession. During his time at sea, Colt carved a six-barrel cylinder, locking pin and hammer out of wood. Although this prototype for a pistol featured multiple rotating barrels, in later versions Colt would opt instead for a rotating cylinder containing multiple bullet chambers to reduce the gun’s weight and bulk.
After returning from his adventure at sea, Colt spent two years traveling North America under the name Dr. Coult, hosting a road show during which he entertained and educated crowds on the uses of nitrous oxide (laughing gas). The profits he saved through his skill as a promoter enabled him to perfect his revolver mechanism, and he hired gunsmiths to create a series of prototypes.
Patents for the Revolving Pistol
Colt’s revolver mechanism is considered by some to be more innovation than invention because it improved upon a revolving flintlock (a firing mechanism used in muskets and rifles) already patented by Boston inventor Elisha Collier (1788-1856). The British patent for Colt’s mechanism was acquired in October 1835, and on February 25, 1836, the American inventor received U.S. Patent No. 138 (later 9430X) for his revolving-cylinder pistol. The enhancements listed in this patent include greater “facility in loading,” changes in “the weight and location of the cylinder, which give steadiness to the hand,” and “the great rapidity in the succession of discharges.” Colt’s Patent Arms Manufacturing Company began making the Paterson pistol in 1836 at its Paterson, New Jersey, factory using funds advanced by Colt’s family.
Initially, Colt produced three “revolving” handguns–belt, holster and pocket pistols–and two rifles. All models incorporated a revolving cylinder into which gunpowder and bullets were loaded. Primer was placed on a strike plate outside the cylinder, and combustion was initiated by pulling the trigger and releasing the hammer onto the strike plate. The ability to fire six shots without reloading–a task that required 20 seconds using a single-shot firearm–provided a crucial advantage to soldiers and settlers encountering danger in the nation’s frontier regions. Colt continued to refine his initial design, obtaining patents on such components as a cylinder-locking mechanism, fluted cylinders, longer grips and beveled-cylinder mouths to eliminate igniting adjacent chambers. A savvy businessman, he retained rights to these patents, making his applications as an individual rather than through the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company.
A Business Failure
Seeking a government contract for his guns, Colt visited the office of the U.S. secretary of war, but the Army judged the use of a percussion cap in Colt firearms too innovative and therefore potentially unreliable. Scattered sales in the newly formed Republic of Texas and in Florida, where the Second Seminole War (1835-42) was ongoing, did not translate into the revenue required to maintain the veneer of success Colt needed to impress potential clients. Eventually, the company’s shareholders took control of Patent Arms Manufacturing, and Colt was relegated to sales agent. In 1842, the company was forced to close, and its fixtures and inventory of guns and gun parts were auctioned off to the highest bidder.With his company failing, Colt turned to another interest: perfecting an underwater mine for use in harbor defense. His remote-ignition “submarine battery” required him to develop a waterproof cable capable of transmitting electricity underwater. As with his revolver mechanism, Colt’s innovative cable was adapted from an earlier design: a cable developed by telegraph inventor Samuel F.B. Morse (1791-1872). The relationship between the two inventors led to a partially implemented scheme to install a telegraph line from the New York Merchant’s Exchange to Sandy Hook, New Jersey. (The line went only as far as Fire Island, New York, before the project was abandoned.)
Busy with these new projects, and discouraged by the failure of Patent Arms Manufacturing, Colt also found himself caught up in a national scandal after his brother, John Colt, murdered a printer with whom he did business.
U.S. Expansionism Sparks a Need for More Guns
The 1844 election of President James K. Polk (1795-1849) saw the implementation of Polk’s plans for outward expansion into Texas and the Western territories. Seeing a new opportunity, Colt submitted a sample of his enhanced revolving holster pistol to the U.S. war department. In 1846, with the Mexican War under way, Colt had a visit from Captain Samuel H. Walker (1817-47) of the U.S. Mounted Riflemen. After Colt and Walker collaborated on the design for a new and improved gun, General Zachary Taylor (1784-1850) ordered 1,000 Colt revolvers. The guns were delivered to the Army in 1847.
Colt’s guns were now produced in Hartford, where his factory was managed by mechanic-minded supervisor Elisha K. Root (1808-65). Under Root’s guidance, the renamed Colt Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company hired talented mechanics and engineers who continued the innovations Colt had begun. In the early 1850s, a company branch was established in England, and in 1855 a new Hartford factory–the largest privately owned armament manufacturing plant in the world–was built overlooking the Connecticut River. By 1856, the company could produce 150 weapons per day using interchangeable parts, efficient production lines and specially designed precision machinery. The Colt brand was now recognized worldwide through savvy promotion and was associated with quality and dependability. A masterful promoter, Colt positioned his firearms within the American mythos, even hiring artist and explorer George Catlin (1796-1872) to create paintings depicting Colt guns in use by sportsmen and explorers encountering exotic predatory animals in North and South America.
The Civil War and Beyond
During the late 1850s, while tensions mounted between the North and South that would soon lead to the American Civil War, Colt continued to do business with longstanding customers in Southern states. However, when war was finally declared on April 12, 1861, he turned his focus almost exclusively to supplying the Union army. He also outfitted the 1st Regiment Connecticut Rifles, a volunteer regiment from his company’s home state. Colt’s Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company operated at full capacity and employed over 1,000 people in its Hartford factory. By that time, Samuel Colt had become one of the wealthiest men in America and owned a Connecticut mansion called Armsmear.
The strain of supplying the war effort eventually took its toll on Colt. Suffering from chronic rheumatism, the 47-year-old gun manufacturer died at his home on January 10, 1862, leaving behind an estate worth millions. The company, which manufactured more than 400,000 firearms during Colt’s lifetime, was left to its founder’s wife, Elizabeth, and Root was appointed president. In 1901, the Colt family sold the company to a group of investors.
Still in business today, the Colt’s Manufacturing Company went on to produce the Colt Single Action Army handgun, also known as the Colt .45 or the Peacemaker, the standard service revolver of the U.S. military between 1873 and 1892. To date, the company founded by Samuel Colt has produced more than 30 million pistols, revolvers and rifles."
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Pocket Bio's E52: Samuel Colt (1814-1862)
Samuel Colt was an American inventor and industrialist. He founded Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company.
Pocket Bio's E52: Samuel Colt (1814-1862)
Samuel Colt was an American inventor and industrialist. He founded Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVbCT92g2Sk
Images:
1. Colt began construction on the Armory, a firearms manufacturing factory, in 1855
2. Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt with her son Caldwell, 1865 [widow of Samuel Colt]
3. Colt 1851 Navy Revolver Squarebeck
4. Portrait of Col. Samuel Colt, engraving by George Catlin after a painting by Charles Loring Elliott
Background from {[ https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-samuel-colt]
UPDATED: SEP 4, 2018
1. Colt was an early adopter of assembly-line production.
More than a half-century before Henry Ford used assembly lines in his automobile factories, Colt employed them to produce his revolvers in his enormous Hartford armory beginning in the 1850s. Using interchangeable parts, Colt’s armory could turn out 150 weapons per day by 1856. The mass production allowed Colt to make his weapons more affordable to gun-buyers settling the West.
2. He pioneered product placement.
Colt was a masterful marketer and self-promoter who relied on more than just advertisements. He personally commissioned artist George Catlin, famous for his depictions of Native Americans and life in the West, to incorporate Colt revolvers into a dozen paintings, six of which were reproduced as mass-market lithographic prints. In one painting, Catlin even depicted himself on horseback wielding one of Colt’s “revolving pistols” to gun down buffaloes on the Plains. Colt also hired authors to pen stories about his revolvers for magazine features and traveled the world to present heads of state with lavishly engraved, gilded pistols. The gifts were good for business. After Colt presented an Ottoman sultan with a gold revolver, the Turks ordered 5,000 of his pistols. Ever conscious of building his brand, Colt even trademarked his sprawling signature.
3. Colt produced his own version of July 4th fireworks.
As a teenager, Colt experimented with gunpowder and electricity. While working in his father’s textile factory in Ware, Massachusetts, in 1829, he posted printed notices that announced: “Sam’l colt will blow a raft skyhigh on Ware pond, July 4. 1829.” Using a wire wrapped in tarred rope to connect an underwater explosive device to an onshore detonator, the experiment worked, although it drenched onlookers dressed in their holiday finery in pond water and mud. The following year on July 4, another of Colt’s experiments set a building ablaze at his Amherst, Massachusetts, school. In the 1840s Colt returned to his youthful experiments and partnered with telegraph inventor Samuel Morse to improve waterproof cables.
4. A ship voyage as a teenager gave Colt the idea for a revolver design.
Banished from school following his Fourth of July pyrotechnics, Colt was put on a ship bound for London and Calcutta in 1830 by his father. During the voyage, the 16-year-old became fascinated by how the ship’s wheel could spin or be locked in an affixed position through the use of a clutch. Reportedly, this observation sparked his idea for a revolving chamber capable of holding six bullets that could lock into place. During the voyage, he whittled a rudimentary model out of scrap wood, and upon his return to the United States, Colt worked with more experienced gunsmiths to perfect a prototype of a pistol that could fire multiple rounds in quick succession.
Colt began construction on the Armory, a firearms manufacturing factory, in 1855.
5. He spent three years as a traveling huckster.
After returning from his voyage, Colt toured the lyceum and fairground circuit in the United States and Canada as the “celebrated Dr. Coult of New York, London and Calcutta.” Posing as a “practical chemist” with a portable laboratory, he entertained crowds by administering nitrous oxide—laughing gas—to audience members. The money Colt earned provided seed capital for his planned firearms business.
6. His first firearms company flopped.
Colt was only 21 years old when he received a patent in 1836 for his revolver design, which improved upon a revolving flintlock already patented by Elisha Collier nearly two decades earlier. That same year, Colt’s Patent Arms Manufacturing Company opened its doors in Paterson, New Jersey. The company saw scattered sales in Texas and in Florida for use in the Seminole War, but the business floundered. Without significant military contracts, the factory closed in 1842. Its fixtures and inventory were auctioned off to the highest bidder, and Colt was left deep in debt.
7. His brother was convicted of murder in a sensational trial.
In 1842, Colt’s older brother, John, was sentenced to death for murdering a printer to whom he owed money. Because of the Colt family connection, the New York City press covered the murder closely. Hours before the scheduled hanging, however, a fire broke out in the prison and John Colt was found dead in his cell from what was believed to have been a self-inflicted stab wound.
8. The Mexican-American War revived Colt’s fortunes.
“I hardly knew where the dinner of tomorrow would come from,” Colt said of the years following the shuttering of his first gun factory. Unbeknownst to Colt, however, his five-shot revolvers became a favorite of the Texas Rangers in the mid-1840s. “Without your pistols we would not have had the confidence to have undertaken such daring adventures,” Texas Ranger Captain Samuel H. Walker wrote to Colt. After the launch of the Mexican-American War in 1846, U.S. Army soldiers serving alongside the Texas Rangers grew impressed by them as well. Colt and Walker collaborated on the design of an improved .44-caliber gun, and General Zachary Taylor ordered 1,000 Colt revolvers in 1847.
9. Colt built an industrial utopia.
After the revival of his firearms business, Colt built a 200-acre company town along the banks of the Connecticut River in his birthplace of Hartford. Coltsville included the world’s largest private armament factory along with parks, orchards, a railroad depot and even a beer garden for German immigrant workers who lived in replica Swiss cottages. Colt introduced a 10-hour day for his workers and mandated one-hour lunch breaks.
10. He never held a Colt .45 in his hand.
The Colt Single Action Army handgun, better known as the Colt .45, was not released until a decade after Colt’s death in 1862. Dubbed the “Peacemaker” and “the gun that won the West,” the Colt .45 served as the standard service revolver of the U.S. military between 1873 and 1892."
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Samuel Colt was an American inventor and industrialist. He founded Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVbCT92g2Sk
Images:
1. Colt began construction on the Armory, a firearms manufacturing factory, in 1855
2. Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt with her son Caldwell, 1865 [widow of Samuel Colt]
3. Colt 1851 Navy Revolver Squarebeck
4. Portrait of Col. Samuel Colt, engraving by George Catlin after a painting by Charles Loring Elliott
Background from {[ https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-samuel-colt]
UPDATED: SEP 4, 2018
1. Colt was an early adopter of assembly-line production.
More than a half-century before Henry Ford used assembly lines in his automobile factories, Colt employed them to produce his revolvers in his enormous Hartford armory beginning in the 1850s. Using interchangeable parts, Colt’s armory could turn out 150 weapons per day by 1856. The mass production allowed Colt to make his weapons more affordable to gun-buyers settling the West.
2. He pioneered product placement.
Colt was a masterful marketer and self-promoter who relied on more than just advertisements. He personally commissioned artist George Catlin, famous for his depictions of Native Americans and life in the West, to incorporate Colt revolvers into a dozen paintings, six of which were reproduced as mass-market lithographic prints. In one painting, Catlin even depicted himself on horseback wielding one of Colt’s “revolving pistols” to gun down buffaloes on the Plains. Colt also hired authors to pen stories about his revolvers for magazine features and traveled the world to present heads of state with lavishly engraved, gilded pistols. The gifts were good for business. After Colt presented an Ottoman sultan with a gold revolver, the Turks ordered 5,000 of his pistols. Ever conscious of building his brand, Colt even trademarked his sprawling signature.
3. Colt produced his own version of July 4th fireworks.
As a teenager, Colt experimented with gunpowder and electricity. While working in his father’s textile factory in Ware, Massachusetts, in 1829, he posted printed notices that announced: “Sam’l colt will blow a raft skyhigh on Ware pond, July 4. 1829.” Using a wire wrapped in tarred rope to connect an underwater explosive device to an onshore detonator, the experiment worked, although it drenched onlookers dressed in their holiday finery in pond water and mud. The following year on July 4, another of Colt’s experiments set a building ablaze at his Amherst, Massachusetts, school. In the 1840s Colt returned to his youthful experiments and partnered with telegraph inventor Samuel Morse to improve waterproof cables.
4. A ship voyage as a teenager gave Colt the idea for a revolver design.
Banished from school following his Fourth of July pyrotechnics, Colt was put on a ship bound for London and Calcutta in 1830 by his father. During the voyage, the 16-year-old became fascinated by how the ship’s wheel could spin or be locked in an affixed position through the use of a clutch. Reportedly, this observation sparked his idea for a revolving chamber capable of holding six bullets that could lock into place. During the voyage, he whittled a rudimentary model out of scrap wood, and upon his return to the United States, Colt worked with more experienced gunsmiths to perfect a prototype of a pistol that could fire multiple rounds in quick succession.
Colt began construction on the Armory, a firearms manufacturing factory, in 1855.
5. He spent three years as a traveling huckster.
After returning from his voyage, Colt toured the lyceum and fairground circuit in the United States and Canada as the “celebrated Dr. Coult of New York, London and Calcutta.” Posing as a “practical chemist” with a portable laboratory, he entertained crowds by administering nitrous oxide—laughing gas—to audience members. The money Colt earned provided seed capital for his planned firearms business.
6. His first firearms company flopped.
Colt was only 21 years old when he received a patent in 1836 for his revolver design, which improved upon a revolving flintlock already patented by Elisha Collier nearly two decades earlier. That same year, Colt’s Patent Arms Manufacturing Company opened its doors in Paterson, New Jersey. The company saw scattered sales in Texas and in Florida for use in the Seminole War, but the business floundered. Without significant military contracts, the factory closed in 1842. Its fixtures and inventory were auctioned off to the highest bidder, and Colt was left deep in debt.
7. His brother was convicted of murder in a sensational trial.
In 1842, Colt’s older brother, John, was sentenced to death for murdering a printer to whom he owed money. Because of the Colt family connection, the New York City press covered the murder closely. Hours before the scheduled hanging, however, a fire broke out in the prison and John Colt was found dead in his cell from what was believed to have been a self-inflicted stab wound.
8. The Mexican-American War revived Colt’s fortunes.
“I hardly knew where the dinner of tomorrow would come from,” Colt said of the years following the shuttering of his first gun factory. Unbeknownst to Colt, however, his five-shot revolvers became a favorite of the Texas Rangers in the mid-1840s. “Without your pistols we would not have had the confidence to have undertaken such daring adventures,” Texas Ranger Captain Samuel H. Walker wrote to Colt. After the launch of the Mexican-American War in 1846, U.S. Army soldiers serving alongside the Texas Rangers grew impressed by them as well. Colt and Walker collaborated on the design of an improved .44-caliber gun, and General Zachary Taylor ordered 1,000 Colt revolvers in 1847.
9. Colt built an industrial utopia.
After the revival of his firearms business, Colt built a 200-acre company town along the banks of the Connecticut River in his birthplace of Hartford. Coltsville included the world’s largest private armament factory along with parks, orchards, a railroad depot and even a beer garden for German immigrant workers who lived in replica Swiss cottages. Colt introduced a 10-hour day for his workers and mandated one-hour lunch breaks.
10. He never held a Colt .45 in his hand.
The Colt Single Action Army handgun, better known as the Colt .45, was not released until a decade after Colt’s death in 1862. Dubbed the “Peacemaker” and “the gun that won the West,” the Colt .45 served as the standard service revolver of the U.S. military between 1873 and 1892."
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History of Colt Firearm - History of Guns
History of Colt Firearm - History of GunsSamuel Colt (/koʊlt/; July 19, 1814 – January 10, 1862) was an American inventor, industrialist, businessman, and hu...
History of Colt Firearm - History of Guns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNRDdzyYY_A
Images:
1. Portrait of Samuel Colt, c. 1855
2. Portrait of Samuel Colt
3. Reproduction examples of early Colt revolvers - Colt Paterson, Colt Walker, Colt 3rd Variation Revolving Holster Pistol (Dragoon).
4. Colt Single-Action Army Revolver, the iconic 'Peacemaker;. Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Biography of Samuel Colt, American Inventor and Industrialist
By Robert Longley
Updated April 24, 2020
Samuel Colt (July 19, 1814–January 10, 1862) was an American inventor, industrialist, and entrepreneur best remembered for perfecting a revolving cylinder mechanism that enabled a gun to be fired multiple times without reloading. Later versions of his legendary Colt revolver pistol, first patented in 1836, played a key role in settling the American West. By advancing the use of interchangeable parts and assembly lines, Colt became one of the wealthiest industrialists of the 19th century.
Fast Facts: Samuel Colt
• Known For: Perfected the Colt revolver pistol, one of the legendary firearms said to have “won the West”
• Born: July 19, 1814 in Hartford, Connecticut
• Parents: Christopher Colt and Sarah Caldwell Colt
• Died: January 10, 1862 in Hartford, Connecticut
• Education: Attended Amherst Academy in Amherst, Massachusetts
• Patents: US Patent: 9,430X: Revolving Gun
• Spouses: Elizabeth Hart Jarvis
• Children: Caldwell Hart Colt
Early Life
Samuel Colt was born on July 19, 1814, in Hartford, Connecticut, to businessman Christopher Colt and Sarah Caldwell Colt. One of young Colt’s earliest and most-prized possessions was a flintlock pistol that had belonged to his maternal grandfather, who had served as an officer in Gen. George Washington’s Continental Army during the American Revolution. At age 11, Colt was sent to Glastonbury, Connecticut, to live and work on the farm of a family friend. While attending grade school in Glastonbury, Colt became fascinated with the “Compendium of Knowledge,” an early encyclopedia. Articles he read on steamboat inventor Robert Fulton and gunpowder would inspire him throughout his life.
During 1829, the 15-year-old Colt worked in his father’s textiles processing plant in Ware, Massachusetts, where he honed his skills in the use of machine tools and manufacturing processes. In his spare time, he experimented with gunpowder charges, setting off small explosions on nearby Ware Lake. In 1830, Colt’s father sent him to the private Amherst Academy in Amherst, Massachusetts. Though reportedly a good student, he was often disciplined for conducting unapproved demonstrations of his explosive devices. After one such display at the school’s 1830 July 4th celebration caused a fire on campus, Amherst expelled him and his father sent him off to learn the seaman’s trade.
From Sailor to Firearms Legend
By the fall of 1830, the 16-year-old Colt was working as an apprentice seaman on the brig Corvo. From studying how the ship’s wheel and capstan worked, he conceived of how a similarly rotating cylinder could be used to load individual cartridges in front of a gun’s firing barrel. Based on his idea, he began carving wooden models of the gun of his dreams. As Colt would later recall, “regardless of which way the wheel was spun, each spoke always came in direct line with a clutch that could be set to hold it. The revolver was conceived!”
When he returned to Massachusetts in 1832, Colt showed his carved model guns to his father, who agreed to finance the production of two pistols and one rifle based on the design. While the prototype rifle worked well, one of the pistols exploded and the other failed to fire. Though Colt blamed the failures on shoddy workmanship and cheap materials, his father withdrew his financial support. To earn money to pay for more professionally-built guns, Colt began touring the country giving public demonstrations of the new medical marvel of the day, nitrous oxide—laughing gas. It was through these often-outlandishly dramatic displays that Colt developed his skills as a gifted Madison Avenue-style pitchman.
Colt’s Famed Revolvers
With the money he had saved from his “medicine man” days, Colt was able to have prototype guns built by professional gunsmiths. Instead of multiple individually-loaded rotating barrels used in early repeating firearms, Colt’s revolver used a single fixed barrel attached to a rotating cylinder holding six cartridges. The action of cocking the gun’s hammer rotated the cylinder to align the next cartridge to be fired with the gun’s barrel. Rather than claiming to have invented the revolver, Colt always acknowledged that his gun had been an improvement to a revolving flintlock pistol patented by Boston gunsmith Elisha Collier around 1814.
With the help of master gunsmith John Pearson, Colt continued to refine and improve his revolver. After receiving an English patent in 1835, the U.S. Patent Office granted Samuel Colt US patent 9430X for a “Revolving Gun” on February 25, 1836. Along with a group of influential investors including U.S. Patent Office superintendent Henry Ellsworth, Colt opened the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company in Paterson, New Jersey to produce his revolver.
In manufacturing his guns, Colt further advanced the use of interchangeable parts introduced around 1800 by cotton gin inventor Eli Whitney. As he had envisioned, Colt’s guns were built on an assembly line. In an 1836 letter to his father, Colt said of the process, “The first workman would receive two or three of the most important parts and would affix these and pass them on to the next who would add a part and pass the growing article on to another who would do the same, and so on until the complete arm is put together.”
Although Colt’s Patent Arms Company had produced over 1,000 guns by the end of 1837, few had been sold. After a series of economic downturns, exacerbated by Colt’s own lavish spending habits, the company closed its Paterson, New Jersey, plant in 1842. However, when the Mexican-American War broke out in 1846, the U.S. government ordered 1,000 pistols and Colt was back in business. In 1855, he opened Colt's Manufacturing Company in its current location of Hartford, Connecticut, with sales offices in New York and London, England. Within a year, the company was producing 150 guns a day.
During the American Civil War (1861—1865), Colt supplied firearms exclusively to the Union Army. At the height of the war, Colt's Manufacturing Company plant in Hartford was running at full capacity, employing over 1,000 people. By 1875, Samuel Colt—now one of America’s richest men—was living in his sprawling Hartford, Connecticut, mansion he named Armsmear.
Other Inventions
Between the failure of the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company in 1842 and the success of his Colt's Manufacturing Company, Samuel Colt’s inventive and entrepreneurial juices continued to flow. In 1842, he landed a government contract to perfect an underwater explosive mine for protecting U.S. harbors from a feared British invasion. To set off his mines remotely, Colt teamed with telegraph inventor Samuel F.B. Morse to invent a waterproof tar-coated cable for transmitting an electrical charge to the mine. Morse would go on to use Colt’s waterproof cable for running telegraph lines under lakes, rivers, and eventually the Atlantic Ocean.
On July 4, 1842, Morse demonstrated his underwater mine by spectacularly destroying a large moving barge. Though the U.S. Navy and President John Tyler were impressed, John Quincy Adams, then a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts, blocked Congress from funding the project. Believing them not to be “fair and honest warfare,” Adams called Colt’s mine an “unchristian contraption.”
With his mine project abandoned, Colt began working to perfect one of his earlier inventions, the tinfoil ammunition cartridge. In the 1840s, most rifle and pistol ammunition consisted of a gunpowder charge and a lead ball projectile wrapped in a paper envelope. While the paper cartridges were easier and faster to load into the gun, the powder would not ignite if the paper got wet. After trying other materials, Colt decided to use a very thin, yet waterproof, type of tinfoil. In 1843, after two years of testing, the U.S. Army agreed to buy 200,000 of Colt’s tinfoil musket cartridges. Colt’s tinfoil cartridge was the forerunner of the modern brass ammunition cartridge introduced around 1845.
Later Life and Death
Colt’s career as an inventor and business promoter prevented him from marrying until after he had attained his considerable fame and fortune. In June 1856, at age 42, he married Elizabeth Hart Jarvis in an opulent ceremony aboard a steamboat overlooking his Hartford, Connecticut, arms factory. Though they were together only six years before Colt’s death, the couple had five children, only one of which, Caldwell Hart Colt, survived beyond infancy.
Samuel Colt had amassed a fortune, but he barely had time to enjoy his wealth. He died at age 47 from chronic rheumatoid arthritis at his Armsmear mansion on January 10, 1862. He is buried along with his wife Elizabeth at the Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford, Connecticut. Colt’s net worth at the time of his death was estimated at $15 million—or about $382 million today.
Following her husband's death, Elizabeth Colt inherited a controlling interest in Colt's Manufacturing Company. In 1865, her brother Richard Jarvis took over as president of the company and together they oversaw it into the early 20th century.
Elizabeth Colt sold the company to a group of investors in 1901. During Samuel Colt’s lifetime, Colt's Manufacturing Company had produced more than 400,000 firearms and remains in business today, having manufactured more than 30 million pistols and rifles since its founding in 1855.
Legacy
Under his 1836 patent, Colt maintained a monopoly over the production of revolvers in the United States until 1857. As one of the first American-made products to be widely exported abroad, Colt’s firearms contributed to the industrial revolution that transformed the once-isolated United States into a leading economic and military power.
As the first practical pistol capable of firing multiple shots without being reloaded, Colt’s revolver became a key tool in the settlement of the American West. Between 1840 and 1900, more than two million settlers moved West, with most of them depending on firearms for their survival. In the hands of larger than life heroes and villains alike, the Colt .45 revolver became an inexorable part of American history.
Today, when historians and gun aficionados speak of the “guns that won the West,” they are referring to the Winchester Model 1873 lever-action rifle and the famed Colt Single Action Army model revolver—the “Peacemaker.”
Sources and Further Reference
• Hosley, William. “Colt: The Making of an American Legend.” University of Massachusetts Press. 1996, ISBN 978-1-55849-042-0.
• Hoback, Rebecca. “Powder Hour: Samuel Colt.” Buffalo Bill Center of the West, July 28, 2016, centerofthewest.org/2016/07/28/powder-hour-samuel-colt/.
• Adler, Dennis. “Colt Single Action: From Patersons to Peacemakers.” Chartwell Books, 2008, ISBN 978-0-7858-2305-6.
• Moss, Matthew. “How the Colt Single Action Army Revolver Won the West.” Popular Mechanics, Nov. 3, 2016, popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a23685/colt-single-action/.
FYI LTC John Shaw SPC Diana D. LTC Hillary Luton
1SG Steven ImermanSSG Pete FishGySgt Gary CordeiroPO1 H Gene LawrenceSPC Chris Bayner-CwikSgt Jim BelanusSGM Bill FrazerMSG Tom EarleySSgt Marian MitchellSGT Michael HearnPO2 Frederick DunnSP5 Dennis LobergerCPO John BjorgeSGT Randell RoseSSG Jimmy CernichSGT Denny EspinosaMSG Fred Bucci
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNRDdzyYY_A
Images:
1. Portrait of Samuel Colt, c. 1855
2. Portrait of Samuel Colt
3. Reproduction examples of early Colt revolvers - Colt Paterson, Colt Walker, Colt 3rd Variation Revolving Holster Pistol (Dragoon).
4. Colt Single-Action Army Revolver, the iconic 'Peacemaker;. Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Biography of Samuel Colt, American Inventor and Industrialist
By Robert Longley
Updated April 24, 2020
Samuel Colt (July 19, 1814–January 10, 1862) was an American inventor, industrialist, and entrepreneur best remembered for perfecting a revolving cylinder mechanism that enabled a gun to be fired multiple times without reloading. Later versions of his legendary Colt revolver pistol, first patented in 1836, played a key role in settling the American West. By advancing the use of interchangeable parts and assembly lines, Colt became one of the wealthiest industrialists of the 19th century.
Fast Facts: Samuel Colt
• Known For: Perfected the Colt revolver pistol, one of the legendary firearms said to have “won the West”
• Born: July 19, 1814 in Hartford, Connecticut
• Parents: Christopher Colt and Sarah Caldwell Colt
• Died: January 10, 1862 in Hartford, Connecticut
• Education: Attended Amherst Academy in Amherst, Massachusetts
• Patents: US Patent: 9,430X: Revolving Gun
• Spouses: Elizabeth Hart Jarvis
• Children: Caldwell Hart Colt
Early Life
Samuel Colt was born on July 19, 1814, in Hartford, Connecticut, to businessman Christopher Colt and Sarah Caldwell Colt. One of young Colt’s earliest and most-prized possessions was a flintlock pistol that had belonged to his maternal grandfather, who had served as an officer in Gen. George Washington’s Continental Army during the American Revolution. At age 11, Colt was sent to Glastonbury, Connecticut, to live and work on the farm of a family friend. While attending grade school in Glastonbury, Colt became fascinated with the “Compendium of Knowledge,” an early encyclopedia. Articles he read on steamboat inventor Robert Fulton and gunpowder would inspire him throughout his life.
During 1829, the 15-year-old Colt worked in his father’s textiles processing plant in Ware, Massachusetts, where he honed his skills in the use of machine tools and manufacturing processes. In his spare time, he experimented with gunpowder charges, setting off small explosions on nearby Ware Lake. In 1830, Colt’s father sent him to the private Amherst Academy in Amherst, Massachusetts. Though reportedly a good student, he was often disciplined for conducting unapproved demonstrations of his explosive devices. After one such display at the school’s 1830 July 4th celebration caused a fire on campus, Amherst expelled him and his father sent him off to learn the seaman’s trade.
From Sailor to Firearms Legend
By the fall of 1830, the 16-year-old Colt was working as an apprentice seaman on the brig Corvo. From studying how the ship’s wheel and capstan worked, he conceived of how a similarly rotating cylinder could be used to load individual cartridges in front of a gun’s firing barrel. Based on his idea, he began carving wooden models of the gun of his dreams. As Colt would later recall, “regardless of which way the wheel was spun, each spoke always came in direct line with a clutch that could be set to hold it. The revolver was conceived!”
When he returned to Massachusetts in 1832, Colt showed his carved model guns to his father, who agreed to finance the production of two pistols and one rifle based on the design. While the prototype rifle worked well, one of the pistols exploded and the other failed to fire. Though Colt blamed the failures on shoddy workmanship and cheap materials, his father withdrew his financial support. To earn money to pay for more professionally-built guns, Colt began touring the country giving public demonstrations of the new medical marvel of the day, nitrous oxide—laughing gas. It was through these often-outlandishly dramatic displays that Colt developed his skills as a gifted Madison Avenue-style pitchman.
Colt’s Famed Revolvers
With the money he had saved from his “medicine man” days, Colt was able to have prototype guns built by professional gunsmiths. Instead of multiple individually-loaded rotating barrels used in early repeating firearms, Colt’s revolver used a single fixed barrel attached to a rotating cylinder holding six cartridges. The action of cocking the gun’s hammer rotated the cylinder to align the next cartridge to be fired with the gun’s barrel. Rather than claiming to have invented the revolver, Colt always acknowledged that his gun had been an improvement to a revolving flintlock pistol patented by Boston gunsmith Elisha Collier around 1814.
With the help of master gunsmith John Pearson, Colt continued to refine and improve his revolver. After receiving an English patent in 1835, the U.S. Patent Office granted Samuel Colt US patent 9430X for a “Revolving Gun” on February 25, 1836. Along with a group of influential investors including U.S. Patent Office superintendent Henry Ellsworth, Colt opened the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company in Paterson, New Jersey to produce his revolver.
In manufacturing his guns, Colt further advanced the use of interchangeable parts introduced around 1800 by cotton gin inventor Eli Whitney. As he had envisioned, Colt’s guns were built on an assembly line. In an 1836 letter to his father, Colt said of the process, “The first workman would receive two or three of the most important parts and would affix these and pass them on to the next who would add a part and pass the growing article on to another who would do the same, and so on until the complete arm is put together.”
Although Colt’s Patent Arms Company had produced over 1,000 guns by the end of 1837, few had been sold. After a series of economic downturns, exacerbated by Colt’s own lavish spending habits, the company closed its Paterson, New Jersey, plant in 1842. However, when the Mexican-American War broke out in 1846, the U.S. government ordered 1,000 pistols and Colt was back in business. In 1855, he opened Colt's Manufacturing Company in its current location of Hartford, Connecticut, with sales offices in New York and London, England. Within a year, the company was producing 150 guns a day.
During the American Civil War (1861—1865), Colt supplied firearms exclusively to the Union Army. At the height of the war, Colt's Manufacturing Company plant in Hartford was running at full capacity, employing over 1,000 people. By 1875, Samuel Colt—now one of America’s richest men—was living in his sprawling Hartford, Connecticut, mansion he named Armsmear.
Other Inventions
Between the failure of the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company in 1842 and the success of his Colt's Manufacturing Company, Samuel Colt’s inventive and entrepreneurial juices continued to flow. In 1842, he landed a government contract to perfect an underwater explosive mine for protecting U.S. harbors from a feared British invasion. To set off his mines remotely, Colt teamed with telegraph inventor Samuel F.B. Morse to invent a waterproof tar-coated cable for transmitting an electrical charge to the mine. Morse would go on to use Colt’s waterproof cable for running telegraph lines under lakes, rivers, and eventually the Atlantic Ocean.
On July 4, 1842, Morse demonstrated his underwater mine by spectacularly destroying a large moving barge. Though the U.S. Navy and President John Tyler were impressed, John Quincy Adams, then a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts, blocked Congress from funding the project. Believing them not to be “fair and honest warfare,” Adams called Colt’s mine an “unchristian contraption.”
With his mine project abandoned, Colt began working to perfect one of his earlier inventions, the tinfoil ammunition cartridge. In the 1840s, most rifle and pistol ammunition consisted of a gunpowder charge and a lead ball projectile wrapped in a paper envelope. While the paper cartridges were easier and faster to load into the gun, the powder would not ignite if the paper got wet. After trying other materials, Colt decided to use a very thin, yet waterproof, type of tinfoil. In 1843, after two years of testing, the U.S. Army agreed to buy 200,000 of Colt’s tinfoil musket cartridges. Colt’s tinfoil cartridge was the forerunner of the modern brass ammunition cartridge introduced around 1845.
Later Life and Death
Colt’s career as an inventor and business promoter prevented him from marrying until after he had attained his considerable fame and fortune. In June 1856, at age 42, he married Elizabeth Hart Jarvis in an opulent ceremony aboard a steamboat overlooking his Hartford, Connecticut, arms factory. Though they were together only six years before Colt’s death, the couple had five children, only one of which, Caldwell Hart Colt, survived beyond infancy.
Samuel Colt had amassed a fortune, but he barely had time to enjoy his wealth. He died at age 47 from chronic rheumatoid arthritis at his Armsmear mansion on January 10, 1862. He is buried along with his wife Elizabeth at the Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford, Connecticut. Colt’s net worth at the time of his death was estimated at $15 million—or about $382 million today.
Following her husband's death, Elizabeth Colt inherited a controlling interest in Colt's Manufacturing Company. In 1865, her brother Richard Jarvis took over as president of the company and together they oversaw it into the early 20th century.
Elizabeth Colt sold the company to a group of investors in 1901. During Samuel Colt’s lifetime, Colt's Manufacturing Company had produced more than 400,000 firearms and remains in business today, having manufactured more than 30 million pistols and rifles since its founding in 1855.
Legacy
Under his 1836 patent, Colt maintained a monopoly over the production of revolvers in the United States until 1857. As one of the first American-made products to be widely exported abroad, Colt’s firearms contributed to the industrial revolution that transformed the once-isolated United States into a leading economic and military power.
As the first practical pistol capable of firing multiple shots without being reloaded, Colt’s revolver became a key tool in the settlement of the American West. Between 1840 and 1900, more than two million settlers moved West, with most of them depending on firearms for their survival. In the hands of larger than life heroes and villains alike, the Colt .45 revolver became an inexorable part of American history.
Today, when historians and gun aficionados speak of the “guns that won the West,” they are referring to the Winchester Model 1873 lever-action rifle and the famed Colt Single Action Army model revolver—the “Peacemaker.”
Sources and Further Reference
• Hosley, William. “Colt: The Making of an American Legend.” University of Massachusetts Press. 1996, ISBN 978-1-55849-042-0.
• Hoback, Rebecca. “Powder Hour: Samuel Colt.” Buffalo Bill Center of the West, July 28, 2016, centerofthewest.org/2016/07/28/powder-hour-samuel-colt/.
• Adler, Dennis. “Colt Single Action: From Patersons to Peacemakers.” Chartwell Books, 2008, ISBN 978-0-7858-2305-6.
• Moss, Matthew. “How the Colt Single Action Army Revolver Won the West.” Popular Mechanics, Nov. 3, 2016, popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a23685/colt-single-action/.
FYI LTC John Shaw SPC Diana D. LTC Hillary Luton
1SG Steven ImermanSSG Pete FishGySgt Gary CordeiroPO1 H Gene LawrenceSPC Chris Bayner-CwikSgt Jim BelanusSGM Bill FrazerMSG Tom EarleySSgt Marian MitchellSGT Michael HearnPO2 Frederick DunnSP5 Dennis LobergerCPO John BjorgeSGT Randell RoseSSG Jimmy CernichSGT Denny EspinosaMSG Fred Bucci
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