On
this day in engineering history, Connecticut's Samuel Colt secured a contract to provide the U.S. government with 1000 of his
.44 caliber revolvers. The Nutmeg
State native is often credited
with inventing the "gun that won the West" and changing the course of
American history.
Origins at Sea
According
to legend, Samuel Colt conceived of his revolver while working aboard a ship
bound for India.
The 16-year old sailor observed the operation of the ship's capstan, a rotating
cylinder for winding the anchor, and created a wooden model of a spinning,
single-barrel sidearm. Later, after receiving a patent for his invention in 1836, Colt launched
the Patent Arms Company of Paterson,
New Jersey.
Don't Mess with Texas
Colt's
manufacturing operations may have based in the East, but the Texas frontier served as the proving ground
for his original design. In 1839, the Republic of Texas
ordered 180 Paterson Colts for its Navy, but issued most of them to the Texas
Rangers, a quasi-military organization that protected frontier settlements.
Under the leadership of Col. John Coffee Hays, mounted Rangers used five-shot
Paterson Colts to outgun superior numbers of Comanche warriors.
The Walker Colt
After Colt's company went bankrupt in 1842, a former Texas Ranger reversed the inventor's fate. In 1846, Samuel H. Walker began negotiating the
purchase of 1,000 revolvers for the United States Mounted Rifleman. The
six-shot, .44 caliber redesign that Walker specified weighed almost five
pounds, but provided even more firepower than the lighter, .36 caliber Paterson
Colt.
The Armoury
Armed with a government contract, Samuel Colt began production of the new weapons at the New Haven, Connecticut factory of Eli Whitney,
inventor of the cotton gin. Although Colt's company
eventually moved to its own facility (the Armory) in Hartford, Samuel Colt
remained an adherent of Whitney's American system of manufacturing, a
production method in which semi-skilled workers used machine tools and
jigs to mass-produce standard-sized, interchangeable parts.
Image Courtesy of Cimarron Firearms Co.
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Re: January 4, 1847 – The Colt .44
