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 The
six-shooter, or Colt revolver, was the weapon of choice in the Old West.
Samuel Colt invented the first revolver. He was issued a U.S. patent in
1836 for the Colt firearm equipped with a revolving cylinder containing
five or six bullets. Originally, the revolver used a percussion cap,
gun-powder, and balls. By the 1850s, bullets began to be used.
"Fanning," the slapping the hammer while holding the trigger
back, could be used as a way of providing rapid fire.
Samuel Colt was an American inventor who developed the first practical
single-barreled pistol with a revolving cylinder. The gun was known as a
revolver and it became the most popular pistol in the United States. It
revolutionized military tactics in the mid-19th century.
Born in Hartford, Connecticut, he aspired to be an inventor at an early
age. He was sent to boarding school after a demonstration of an explosive
mine covered spectators with mud and debris. He was asked to leave the
boarding school, Amherst Academy, when another experiment caused a fire
that damaged school property. At the age of 16, Colt became apprenticed as
a sailor.
On a trip to India in 1830, Colt observed that no matter how the ship's
wheel was turned, its spokes always lined up with a clutch mechanism that
locked the wheel into place. He conceived the idea that such a mechanism
could be applied to a firearm, and he carved a wooden model on the return
trip. Colt perfected his famous revolver in 1835 and obtained a patent on
it the following year. The revolver had a rotating cylinder that held the
bullets and was turned, locked, and unlocked by cocking the hammer, the
striking mechanism that fired the weapon when the trigger was pulled.
There was no great demand for a rapid-fire weapon during peacetime and
Colt's Patent Arms Manufacturing Company went bankrupt in 1842. Colt
temporarily worked on developing the first electrically discharged
underwater explosives and ran a telegraph business that used the first
underwater telegraph line. Soon after the outbreak of the Mexican War
(1846-1848) Colt received a government order for 1000 revolvers. He
contracted with a manufacturer in Whitneyville, Connecticut, and leased
land in Hartford in 1847 to begin construction of his own plant. Colt
Patent Arms, his plant, opened in 1855. It soon became the largest
privately owned armory in the world. Colt used advanced manufacturing
methods such as the use of interchangeable parts and a production line. He
was also considered progressive in the way he treated employees who worked
on the assembly line.
During the American Civil War (1861-1865) the Colt factory manufactured
weapons for the federal government and developed several models that came
to be popular revolvers in the American West.
Patent history:
In 1836 Samuel Colt was awarded a patent for his revolver,
which had a single barrel and a small, revolving cylinder with six
chambers. A similar revolver was developed at about the same time by the
American gunsmith Edwin Wesson, but Colt won patent rights to the new
pistol. The Colt revolver was loaded with a percussion cap, powder, and
balls. The cylinder of the Colt was automatically turned when the hammer
was drawn back for cocking, and the gun was then fired by pulling the
trigger.
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