Colt Firearms; Where It Came From And Where Its Going

Samuel Colt was an American inventor and industrialist. He was the founder of Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company (now known as Colt's Manufacturing Company), and is widely credited with popularizing the revolver. CMC was founded, in order to produce revolvers, of which Colt held the patent, during the Mexican-American War.

Samuel Colt was born in Hartford, Connecticut, to Christopher Colt, a farmer who had moved his family to Hartford when he changed professions and became a businessman, and Sarah Caldwell, who died before Samuel was seven years old.

Christopher Colt remarried two years later to Olive Sargeant. The Colt family included eight siblings: five boys and three girls. Two of the sisters died in childhood and the other committed suicide later in life. Samuel's brothers were a huge part of his professional life.

Colt was apprenticed to a farm in Glastonbury, England, at age 11, where he did chores and attended school. At Glastonbury, he was introduced to the Compendium of Knowledge, a scientific encyclopedia that he preferred to read rather than doing his Bible studies. This encyclopedia contained articles on Robert Fulton and gunpowder.

Robert Fulton was an American engineer and inventor, who is widely credited with developing the first commercially successful steamboat.

While reading the Compendium, he discovered that Robert Fulton and several other inventors had accomplished things deemed impossible-until they were done. Later, after hearing soldiers talk about the success of the double barreled rifle and the impossibility of a gun that could shoot five or six times, Colt "decided he would be an inventor and create the 'impossible' gun".

In 1829, Colt began working in his father's textile plant in Ware, Massachusetts, where he had access to tools, materials, and the factory workers' expertise. Using the ideas and technical knowledge he had acquired earlier from the encyclopedia, Samuel built a homemade galvanic cell and used it to explode a gunpowder charge in the waters of Ware Lake.

In 1832, Colt's father sent him to sea to learn the seaman's trade. Colt would later say that the concept of the revolver was inspired by his observations of the ship's wheel during his first voyage. He discovered that 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, which became known as the revolver.

When Colt returned to the United States in 1832, he went back to work for his father, who financed the production of two pistols. The guns turned out to be of poor quality because Christopher Colt believed the idea to be folly and would hire only inexpensive mechanics.

One of the guns burst upon firing, and the other would not fire at all because the guns were of poor quality and Christopher Colt would hire only inexpensive mechanics. Later, after learning about nitrous oxide (laughing gas) from the factory chemist, Colt took a portable lab on the road and earned a living performing laughing gas demonstrations across the United States and Canada. It was during this time that he made arrangements to begin building guns using proper gunsmiths from Baltimore, Maryland. In 1832, at the age of 18, Colt applied for a patent on his revolver and came back from a voyage with the model.

Colt was one of the early influential companies in the race to successfully create a product with interchangeable parts. At London's Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851, a Colt exhibit disassembled ten guns and reassembled ten guns using different parts from different guns. It took many more years (which saw a commission by the UK government that cast doubt on Colt's abilities) before the point became universally accepted that such manufacture was possible or economical.

The first of the four "Colt .45" models was the aforementioned 1873 Single Action Army, of which Colt was the original producer, and which was one of the most prevalent firearms in the American West during the end of the 19th century. Colt still produces this firearm, in six different calibers, two finishes and three barrel lengths.

The second "Colt .45" was the Colt Model of 1878. It was Colt's first large frame double action revolver. It combined the front end of the Single Action Army revolver with a double action 6 shot frame mechanism. It was available commercially in numerous calibers including .45.

In 1902 the U.S. Army purchased several thousand of the 1878 revolvers in caliber .45 Colt with an over-sized trigger guard. These were issued by the US Army to the, then new, Philippine Constabulary Corps. Some of them are also believed to have accompanied US troops to Alaska in the early 1900s. For these reasons the 1902 purchase revolvers are sometimes called the Alaskan or Philippine model. Although long obsolete to the US Army, these revolvers were still in use in the Philippines when Japan invaded in 1941.

The third "Colt .45" was the New Service Double Action revolver. From introduction in 1898 to the beginning of World War II it was a major part of the Colt line. In caliber .45 Colt, it was accepted by the U.S. Military as the Model 1909 .45 revolver, and replaced the 1873 Single Action revolvers. It primarily differed from the Model 1878 by having a swing out cylinder for faster loading with a new method of ejecting cartridges, and an improved trigger design. The New Service revolver was also available in other calibers such as .38 Special, and later on in the 20th century, .357 Magnum.

One of the first truly modern-style handguns, the Colt revolvers became known as "The Great Equalizer", because they could be loaded and fired by anyone, whereas most previous guns had required sufficient strength and dexterity. In theory, anyone who had a modern-style revolver was equal to anyone else, regardless of their relative physical abilities. This term has since come to be used for firearms in general, as awkward weapons like muzzle-loaded muskets became a thing of the past.

Colt's innovative contributions to the weapons industry have been described by arms historian James E. Serven as "events which shaped the destiny of American Firearms." In 2006, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Though Colt firearms are still well known for the engineering, production, and marketing of dozens of different firearms, it now also has the reputation for accuracy, reliability and quality. It has made many civilian and military designs used in the United States, as well as many other countries throughout the world.