Samuel Colt

American inventor and manufacturer

• Born: July 19, 1814
• Birthplace: Hartford, Connecticut
• Died: January 10, 1862
• Place of death: Hartford, Connecticut

Colt developed the revolving pistol and the revolving rifle and pioneered the large-scale production of guns with interchangeable parts. His mass-produced firearms played a significant role in nineteenth century U.S. history and also helped to transform the modern weapons of war.

Early Life

Samuel Colt was one of eight children of Christopher and Sarah Caldwell Colt. Christopher was in the manufacturing business in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Samuel’s grandfather, Major Caldwell, was in the shipping and banking business and was one of the wealthiest men in Hartford. Major Caldwell, who had fought in the Revolutionary War, expressed strong opinions on military matters and weaponry and strongly influenced young Colt.

During his early school years, Colt performed poorly in subjects such as reading, writing, and arithmetic until his mother, to whom Colt was very close, impressed upon him that such disciplines were a means to better understand the workings of guns and the process of explosions. Colt’s mother died when he was seven, but two years later his father married Olivia Sargent, who continued to support Colt’s inquisitive nature.

Throughout those formative early years, Colt’s increasing fascination with firearms and explosives led him to develop an interest in the natural sciences: physics, chemistry, and electricity. A series of experiments with firearms and gunpowder culminated in Colt’s development of a way to ignite an underwater charge of gunpowder with an electrical spark. On July 4, 1829, at the age of fifteen, Colt successfully ignited an underwater mine with an electrical charge in a Ware, Massachusetts, pond in front of a crowd of people that included Elisha Root, a fellow inventor who would come to play a central role in Colt’s future success in the manufacture of guns.

In August, 1830, at the age of sixteen, Colt signed on the brig Carlo as a seaman and headed for India. He occupied his off-duty hours whittling models of ships and firearms—most significantly, models of double-barreled handguns. Colt was intent on developing a more practical revolving handgun. However, he found that a revolving handgun with multiple barrels was impractical, so he concentrated on designing a more practical repeating handgun with a single barrel and a revolving spindle. The solution was a result of his observations of the workings of the ship’s wheel. As the wheel was turned to navigate the ship, a clutch aligned the spokes and locked the wheel in position to maintain the ship’s course; the clutch was then released to change course. In February, 1836, Colt secured the patent to a repeating handgun with a revolving and locking cylinder whose bullet chambers came in line with the single barrel by pulling the hammer back to the cocked position.

Life’s Work

Colt sought financial backing from his father to develop some working steel models of his handgun, but initial test firings of the models proved unsuccessful, and his father stopped financial support. Convinced that his repeating revolver was destined for success, Colt funded the enterprise by traveling around the United States and Canada using the stage name “Doctor Coult” and giving public demonstrations of nitrous oxide (laughing gas). The years Colt spent on the road raising capital also allowed him time to refine his design models and to have steel models produced and tested.

The manufacture of Colt firearms began in 1836 following Colt’s travels abroad to secure patents in England, France, and Prussia; his first U.S. patent was granted on February 25. The Patent Arms Manufacturing Company of Paterson, New Jersey, produced five- and six-shot revolvers, revolving rifles, carbines, shotguns, and a few muskets—all referred to by the public as Colts—using the armory method of mass production, which was characterized by the use of a factory system, the specialization of labor, the use of precision tools and gauges, and the production of weapons with interchangeable parts that could be taken from one gun and used in another gun of the same model. Thus, damaged gun parts from one model could be replaced using spare parts from similar models. Prior to the introduction of the armory method of production, guns were laboriously crafted one at a time. Colt believed that the mass production of guns could best be accomplished by machinery.

Although the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company experienced financial failure in 1841, a number of significant events in the development and adoption of Colt firearms transpired during the six years of its existence. Colt guns manufactured in Paterson proved to be successful in tests and demonstrations for the government in Washington, D.C., but bureaucratic government officials were unable or unwilling to accept the advanced revolving design and dynamics of the weapons. In addition, the national financial climate was unsettled. Therefore, Colt was unable to land a government contract.

Undaunted, Colt believed that contracts for his weapons would come through increasing demonstrations, advertising, and placing his guns in the hands of active fighting men. During these financially lean years without the resources of an armory, Colt turned his attention away from guns and devoted his energies toward the successful development of waterproof ammunition and the successful development of underwater mines designed for harbor defenses. In addition, his association with Samuel F. B. Morse led to the development of the telegraph.

Colt’s belief in himself and his revolving guns eventually paid off. He experienced his first success at placing his weapons in war conditions during the Second Seminole War, which raged in Florida from 1835 through 1842. Although the Seminole Indians had a tactical edge in fighting in the Florida Everglades and possessed rifles as good as the U.S. soldiers’, Colt’s repeating pistols and rifles were soon recognized as the weapons of choice by the Second Dragoons and played a key role in the conflict. The success of Colt’s guns did not go unnoticed by military practitioners outside Florida. The ever-increasing influx of white settlers into Native American territory in Texas and the emerging conflict between the Republic of Texas and Mexico played significant roles in the evolution of Colt firearms and their adoption by men at war.

In 1844, U.S. dragoon forces and Texas Rangers armed with Colt firearms, some obtained from the Texas Navy, began confronting Native Americans as white settlers pushed west. In 1846, when the Mexican War began, Captain Samuel H. Walker of the U.S. Army met with Colt, and the two collaborated on the design of a new, more powerful revolver to replace the Paterson six-shooter. The newly designed “Walker” met with immediate success, and the U.S. Ordinance placed an order for one thousand of the new six-shooters. Colt suddenly found himself back in the gun business but without an armory. To meet the increasing demand for his weapons, Colt contracted with Eli Whitney, Jr. (son of the inventor of the cotton gin), to produce Colt guns at his Whitneyville, Connecticut, arms and cotton gin manufacturing facility.

In 1848, when Colts were no longer contracted for production at the Whitneyville armory, Colt built a small armory in Hartford, Connecticut, with the multitalented mechanic and inventor Elisha Root serving as its superintendent. The refinement of the armory production process and the continuing development of a wide range of sophisticated revolving guns produced at the Hartford armory led to the adoption of Colts for official use by Wells Fargo Express messengers and by the U.S. Navy during Matthew Perry’s visit to Japan in 1852.

In response to an increasing demand for his pistols and rifles, Colt established an armory in London, England. Upon returning to the United States, he built the Armsmear factory located at South Meadows in Hartford, Connecticut, which was to become the largest private armory in the world upon its completion in 1855. The years of production of Colt guns at Whitneyville, the first Hartford armory, London, and Armsmear led to the continued development and refinement of pocket pistols, belt pistols, holster pistols, repeating rifles, sporting rifles, and shotguns for hunters, as well as special Colt models for military personnel and law-enforcement officers throughout the United States.

Colt was nearly forty-two when he married Elizabeth Hart Jarvis in 1856. Immediately following their wedding, they traveled to Europe and were entertained by European heads of state. They returned to the United States in 1857. As rumblings of an imminent civil war echoed throughout the country, Colt was burdened by the idea that the guns he had manufactured and sold to Texas would become instruments of war that fellow Americans from the North and South would use against each other. Colt showed sympathy toward the South prior to the Civil War; however, once the war between the states broke out, he devoted all of his arms manufacturing resources to production for Union forces. The Colt revolver was the revolver of choice by the North’s Union Army, and it became the practice of many Northern cavalrymen to carry two Colts in their belts and two Colts on their saddles. Nearly 40,000 revolvers, 100,000 muskets, and 7,000 rifles were supplied to the Union troops by the Colt armories.

Significance

Samuel Colt died on January 10, 1862, at the age of forty-seven. At his death, it was said of him that “Abe Lincoln may have freed all men, but Sam Colt made them equal.” Colt will be remembered for his invention of the Colt revolver, which revolutionized methods of warfare and provided the critical link in the development of arms from the muzzle-loading musket to the magazine rifles and machine guns of the twentieth century. In addition, Colt developed and refined the armory method of weapons production, and the famed Colt revolver became one of the first products of American manufacture available around the world.

Bibliography

Boorman, Dean K. The History of Colt Firearms. New York: The Lyons Press, 2001. Like many books about Colt’s products, this one may appeal more to the gun collector and enthusiast than to historians and students interested in biographical information. However, Boorman describes how Colt improved upon earlier designs for revolvers and set up factories that revolutionized gun manufacturing. Includes numerous photos of firearms and gun-making artifacts and copies of designers’ drawings.

Edwards, William B. The Story of Colt’s Revolver. Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole, 1953. Edwards’s book provides a detailed biography of Colt. Includes illustrations.

Hosley, Walter. Colt: The Making of an American Legend. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996. Hosley’s voluminous, large-format biography places Colt in social and historical context. Contains numerous illustrations.

Hounshell, David A. From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. An overview of the rise of mass production in the United States.

Mitchell, James L. Colt: A Collection of Letters and Photographs About the Man, the Arms, the Company. Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole, 1959. As the title implies, Mitchell uses personal correspondence and photographs to trace the development of Colt’s inventions and company.

Reif, Rita. “The Man Behind the Guns That Won the West.” The New York Times, December 1, 1996, p. H45. Provides biographical information about Colt and his role in the Industrial Revolution. Includes comments by Colt biographer Walter Hosley (see above).