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Today marks the one hundred and ninety second birthday of Samuel Colt, father of the Colt revolver and founder of the Colt Firearms Company.
A native of Connecticut, Samuel Colt is often credited with inventing the "gun that won the West" and changing the course of American history. According to legend, Colt conceived of his revolver while working aboard a ship bound for India. The 16-year old seaman allegedly 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. Colt received a patent for his invention in 1836 and began production a year later in Paterson, New Jersey. Although the Patent Arms Company declared bankruptcy in 1842, Colt would eventually become a wealthy man who was compared to the divine. According to a popular nineteenth century saying, "God made all men, Samuel Colt made them equal."
The first Colt revolver was superior to existing sidearms in several important ways. First, Colt's weapon allowed a shooter to fire five or six bullets in rapid succession without reloading. Flintlock pistols, the only other guns designed for handheld use, let shooters fire only one or two shots, depending on the number of barrels. Single-shot rifles also required immediate reloading. Second, Colt's weapons were built from interchangeable parts based on standardized designs. When a component failed, a gun owner could order a pre-fabricated replacement that would fit the weapon. By contrast, flintlock pistols and rifles required the service of gunsmith to handcraft and install replacement parts. Finally, the powerful Colt revolver was well-suited for mounted combat in the dry, treeless regions of the American West. According to renowned historian Walter Prescott Webb, "the plainsman was a horseman, and the six-shooter was the horseman's natural weapon."
Although Colt's manufacturing operations were based in Paterson, New Jersey, 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 in several pitched battles. Fittingly, a former Texas Ranger reversed Samuel Colt's fate after the failure of the Patent Arms Company. In 1846, Samuel H. Walker negotiated 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. According to John S. Rip Ford, another former Texas Ranger, the Walker Colt was as powerful as the U.S. Army's Mississippi rifle.
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 Patent Fire Arms Company eventually moved to its own facility, the Armory, in Hartford, 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. In 1849, Colt hired Elisha K. Root, an inventor whose development of the Lincoln Miller milling machine would revolutionize manufacturing operations during the late nineteenth century. The Colt Firearms Company also served as a laboratory for William Mason, a machinist who patented over 100 inventions for products ranging from steam pumps to power looms.
Samuel Colt died on January 10, 1862 at the age of 47. According to some estimates, his estate was worth $15 million (USD), an amount equal to $300 million today. During his lifetime, Colt's factories produced more than 400,000 guns. Each weapon, a testament to standardization, contained parts that were molded, fitted, stamped, serialized and – most importantly – interchangeable. Although Colt may not have "made all men equal", he is reported to have said, "There is nothing that can't be produced by machine".
Resources:
http://inventors.about.com/od/cstartinventions/a/colt_revolver.htm
http://www.colt.com/mil/history.asp
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/CC/lnc1.html
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WWcoltR.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Colt
http://www.ryerson.ca/~dgrimsha/courses/cps841/Interchangeable.html
http://www.cedarhillcemetery.org/Colt.htm
http://www2.austincc.edu/lpatrick/his1302/webb.html
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Samuel Colt
