Samuel Colt

Samuel Colt was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of Christopher Colt (1780–1850), a farmer who had moved his family to the city after he became a businessman, and Sarah (née Caldwell). His maternal grandfather, Major John Caldwell, had been an officer in the Continental Army; one of Colt's earliest possessions was John's flintlock pistol. Colt's mother died from tuberculosis when Colt was six years old, and his father married Olivia Sargeant two years later. Colt had three sisters, one of whom died during her childhood. His oldest sister, Margaret, died of tuberculosis at age 19, and the other, Sarah Ann, later died by suicide. One brother, James, became a lawyer; another, Christopher, was a textile merchant. A third brother, John C. Colt, a man of many occupations, was convicted of an 1841 murder and died by suicide on the day he was to be executed. At age 11, Colt was indentured to a farmer in Glastonbury, where he did chores and attended school. Here he was introduced to the Compendium of Knowledge, a scientific encyclopedia that he preferred to read rather than his Bible studies. Its articles about Robert Fulton and gunpowder motivated Colt throughout his life. He discovered that other inventors in the Compendium had accomplished feats that were once deemed impossible, and he wanted to do the same. 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 without reloading, Colt decided that he would create the "impossible gun". In 1829, at the age of 15, 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 what he learned from the Compendium, Samuel built a homemade galvanic cell, and advertised that at a Fourth of July event that year that he would explode a raft on Ware Pond using underwater explosives; although the raft was missed, the explosion was still impressive. Sent to boarding school, he amused his classmates with pyrotechnics. In 1830, a July 4 accident caused a fire that ended his schooling, and his father sent him away to learn the seaman's trade. On the Corvo, Colt made a wooden model of a pepperbox revolver out of scrap wood. When Colt returned to the United States in 1832, he resumed working for his father, who financed the production of two guns, a rifle and a pistol. The first completed pistol exploded when it was fired, but the rifle performed well. His father would not finance any further development, so Samuel needed to find a way to pay for the development of his ideas. He had learned about nitrous oxide (laughing gas) from the chemist at his father's textile plant, so he took a portable laboratory on tour and earned a living performing laughing gas demonstrations across the United States and Canada, calling himself as "the Celebrated Dr. Colt of New-York, London and Calcutta". Colt thought of himself as a man of science and believed if he could enlighten people about a new idea like nitrous oxide, he could in turn make people more receptive to his new idea concerning a revolver. He started his lectures on street corners and soon worked his way up to lecture halls and museums. As ticket sales declined, Colt realized that "serious" museum lectures were not what the people wanted to pay for; it was dramatic stories of salvation and redemption the public craved. While visiting his brother John in Cincinnati, he partnered with sculptor Hiram Powers for his demonstrations with a theme based on The Divine Comedy. Powers made detailed wax sculptures and paintings based on demons, centaurs, and mummies from Dante's work. Colt constructed fireworks for the finale of the show, which was a success. According to Colt historian Robert Lawrence Wilson, the "lectures launched Colt's celebrated career as a pioneer Madison Avenue-style pitchman". His public speaking skills were so prized that he was thought to be a doctor and was pressed into service to cure an apparent cholera epidemic aboard a riverboat by giving stricken passengers a dose of nitrous oxide. == Colt's early revolver (1835–1843) ==

after a painting by Charles Loring Elliott (Wadsworth Atheneum), Hartford. Colt's trip to the United Kingdom had been preceded by a similar visit by Elisha Collier, a Bostonian who had patented a revolving flintlock there that achieved great popularity. Despite the reluctance of English officials to issue a patent to Colt, no fault could be found with the gun and he was issued his first patent (number 6909). Upon his return to America, he applied for his U.S. patent for a "revolving gun"; he was granted the patent on February 25, 1836 (later numbered 9430X). This instrument and patent number 1304, dated August 29, 1836, protected the basic principles of his revolving-breech loading, folding trigger firearm named the Colt Paterson. With a loan from his cousin Dudley Selden and letters of recommendation from Ellsworth, Colt formed a corporation of venture capitalists in 1836 to bring his idea to market. With the help of the political connections of these venture capitalists, the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company of Paterson, New Jersey, was chartered by the New Jersey legislature on March 5, 1836. Colt was given a royalty for each gun sold in exchange for his share of patent rights, and it was stipulated that rights would be returned to Colt if the company disbanded. Colt never claimed to have invented the revolver; his design was a more practical adaption of Collier's earlier revolving flintlock, incorporating a locking bolt to keep the cylinder aligned with the barrel. This is shown in an 1836 letter that Colt wrote to his father in which he said: Colt's U.S. revolver patent gave him a monopoly on revolver manufacture until 1857. His was the first practical revolver and the first practical repeating firearm, thanks to progress made in percussion technology. No longer a mere novelty weapon, the revolver became an industrial and cultural legacy, as well as a contribution to the development of war technology, ironically signified in the name of one of his company's later innovations, the "Peacemaker". == Early problems and failures ==

Although by the end of 1837 the Arms Company had made more than 1,000 weapons, there had been no sales. After the Panic of 1837, the company's underwriters were reluctant to fund the new machinery that Colt needed to make interchangeable parts, so he went on the road to raise money. Demonstrating his gun to people in general stores did not generate the sales volume he needed, so with another loan from his cousin Selden, he went to Washington, D.C., and demonstrated it to President Andrew Jackson. Jackson approved of the gun and wrote Colt a note saying so. With this letter, Colt pushed a bill through Congress endorsing a demonstration for the military, but failed to obtain an appropriation for military purchase of the weapon. A promising order from the state of South Carolina for 50 to 75 pistols was canceled when the company did not produce them quickly enough. This prevented state militias from allocating funds for the purchase of experimental weapons or foreign weapons. Colt undermined his own company with his reckless spending. Selden often chastised him for using corporate funds to buy an expensive wardrobe or give lavish gifts to potential clients. Selden twice prohibited Colt from using company money for liquor and fancy dinners; Colt thought getting potential customers inebriated would generate more sales. The company was given a brief reprieve by the war against the Seminoles in Florida, which provided the first sale of Colt's revolvers and his new revolving rifles. The soldiers in Florida praised the new weapon, but the unusual hammerless design, sixty years ahead of its time, made it difficult to train men who were used to exposed-hammer guns. Many curious soldiers took the locks apart, resulting in broken parts, stripped screw heads and inoperable guns. Colt soon reworked his design to leave the firing hammer exposed, but problems continued. In late 1843, after the loss of payment for the Florida pistols, the Paterson plant closed and a public auction was held in New York City to sell the company's most liquid assets. == Mines and tinfoil ==

Colt did not refrain long from manufacturing as he turned to selling underwater electrical detonators and waterproof cable of his own invention. Soon after the failure of the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company, he teamed with Samuel Morse to lobby the US government for funds. Colt's waterproof cable, made from tar-coated copper, proved valuable when Morse ran telegraph lines under lakes, rivers, and bays and made attempts to lay a telegraph line under the Atlantic Ocean. Morse used the battery from one of Colt's mines to transmit a telegraph message from Manhattan to Governors Island when his own battery was too weak to send the signal. As tensions with the British grew toward the end of 1841, Colt demonstrated his underwater mines to the US government, prompting Congress to appropriate funds for his project. In 1842, he used one of the devices to destroy a moving vessel, to the satisfaction of the United States Navy and President John Tyler. However, opposition from John Quincy Adams, who was serving as a U.S. representative from Massachusetts's 8th congressional district, scuttled the project as "not fair and honest warfare", calling the Colt mine an "unchristian contraption". After this setback, Colt turned his attention to perfecting tinfoil cartridges he had originally designed for use in his revolvers. The standard at the time was to have powder and ball contained in a paper or skin envelope ("cartridge") for ease of loading. However, if the paper got wet, the powder would be ruined. Colt tried alternative materials such as rubber cement, finally deciding on a thin type of tinfoil. In 1841 he made samples of these cartridges for the army. During tests of the foil cartridges, 25 rounds were shot from a musket without cleaning. When the breech plug was removed from the barrel, no fouling from the tin foil was evident. The reception was lukewarm, but the army purchased a few thousand rounds for further testing. In 1843 the army gave Colt an order for 200,000 of the tinfoil cartridges packed 10 to a box for use in muskets. Colt tried to use this revenue to resurrect the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company, but could not secure funds from other investors or even his own family. This left Colt time to improve his earlier revolver design and have a prototype for his "new and improved revolver" built by a gunsmith in New York. This new revolver had a stationary trigger and a larger caliber. Colt submitted his single prototype to the War Department as a "Holster revolver". == Colt's Patent Manufacturing Company (1847–1860) ==

File:Ubertiperc.jpg|upright|thumb|Modern reproductions of the Colt Paterson [top] and Colt Walker (middle) Captain Samuel Walker of the Texas Rangers had acquired some of the first Colt revolvers produced during the Seminole War and saw firsthand their effective use when his 15-man unit defeated a larger force of 70 Comanches in Texas. Walker wanted to order Colt revolvers for use by the Rangers in the Mexican–American War and traveled to New York City in search of Colt. On January 4, 1847, he met Colt in a gunsmith's shop and ordered 1,000 revolvers. Walker asked for a few changes: the new revolvers would have to hold six shots instead of five, have enough power to kill either a human or a horse with a single shot, and be quicker to reload. The large order allowed Colt to establish a new firearm business. He hired Eli Whitney III, who was established in the arms business at the Whitney Armory, to make his guns. Colt used his prototype and Walker's improvements as the basis for a new design. From this new design, known as the Colt Walker, Whitney produced the first thousand-piece order. The company then received an order for a thousand more; Colt shared the profits at $10 per pistol for both orders. The first revolving-breech pistols made at the factory were named "Whitneyville-Hartford-Dragoons" and became so popular that the word "Colt" was often used as a generic term for "revolver". Besides being used in the Mexican–American War, Colt's revolvers were employed as a sidearm by both civilians and soldiers. Colt's revolvers were a key tool of the westward expansion: a revolver which could fire six times without reloading helped soldiers and settlers fend off larger forces not armed in the same way. In 1848 Colt introduced smaller versions of his pistols for civilian use, known as "Baby Dragoons". In 1850 General Sam Houston and General Thomas Jefferson Rusk lobbied Secretary of War William Marcy and President James K. Polk to adopt Colt's revolvers for the U.S. military. Rusk testified: "Colt's Repeating Arms are the most efficient weapons in the world and the only weapon which has enabled the frontiersman to defeat the mounted Indian in his own peculiar mode of warfare." Lt. Bedley McDonald, a subordinate of Walker at the time Walker was killed in Mexico, stated that 30 Rangers used Colt's revolvers to keep over 300 Mexicans in check. Colt followed this design with the Colt 1851 Navy Revolver, which was larger than the Baby Dragoon but not quite as large as the full-sized version. It became the standard sidearm for U.S. military officers and also proved popular among civilian buyers. After the testimony by Houston and Rusk, the next issue became how quickly Colt could supply the military. Ever the opportunist, when the war with Mexico ended, Colt sent agents south of the border to procure sales from the Mexican government. Patent extension During this period, Colt received an extension on his patent, since he had not collected fees for it in its early years. In 1849, gun makers James Warner and Massachusetts Arms infringed on the patent. Colt sued the companies, and the court ordered that Warner and Massachusetts Arms cease revolver production. In 1852, Colt threatened to sue another company, Allen & Thurber, over the cylinder design of their double-action pepperbox revolver. However, Colt's lawyers doubted that this suit would be successful, and the case was resolved with a settlement of $15,000. Production of Allen pepperboxes continued until the expiration of Colt's patent in 1857. In 1854 Colt fought for his patent extension with the U.S. Congress, which initiated a special committee to investigate charges that Colt had bribed government officials in securing this extension. By August he was exonerated, and the story became national news when Scientific American magazine reported that the fault was not with Colt, but with Washington politicians. A major reason for Colt's success was vigorous protection of his patent rights. Even though he held the only lawful patent for his type of revolver, scores of imitators copied his work and Colt found himself constantly in litigation. In each case, Colt's lawyer, Edward N. Dickerson, deftly exploited the patent system and successfully shut down the competitor. However, Colt's zealous protection of his patents greatly impeded firearms development as a whole in the United States. His preoccupation with patent infringement suits slowed his own company's transition to the cartridge system and prevented other firms from pursuing revolver designs. At the same time, Colt's policies forced some competing inventors to greater innovation by denying them key features of his mechanism; as a result, they created their own. Colt knew he had to make his revolvers affordable, as the doom of many great inventions was a high retail price. Colt fixed his prices at a level below his competition to maximize sales volume. From his experience in haggling with government officials, he knew what numbers he would have to generate to make enough profit to invest money in improving his machinery, thereby limiting imitators' ability to produce a comparable weapon at a lower price. Although successful at this, for the most part, his preoccupation with marketing strategies and patent protection caused him to miss a great opportunity in firearms development when he dismissed an idea from one of his gunsmiths, Rollin White. White had the idea of a "bored-through" revolver cylinder to allow cartridges (made of paper at the time) to be loaded from the rear of the cylinder. Only one gun fitting White's design was ever made, and it was not considered practical for the ammunition of the time. A year after White left Colt, Colt's competitor, Smith & Wesson, attempted to patent a revolver using metallic cartridges only to find that it infringed on White's patent for the bored-through cylinder. They then licensed that component of White's patent and kept Colt from being able to build cartridge firearms for almost 20 years. Colt's armories Hartford Colt purchased a large tract of land beside the Connecticut River, where he built: his first factory in 1848; a larger factory (the Colt Armory) in 1855; the manor Armsmear in 1856; and employee tenement housing. Colt historian Herbert G. Houze wrote, "Had it not been for Root's inventive genius, Colt's dream of mass production would never have been realized." Thus, Colt's factory was one of the first to make use of the concept known as the assembly line. The idea was not new but was never successful in industry at the time because of the lack of interchangeable parts. Root's machinery changed that for Colt, since the machines completed as much as 80% of the work and less than 20% of the parts required hand fitting and filing. The wedding was lavish and featured the ceremony on a steamship overlooking the factory as well as fireworks and rifle salutes. The couple had four children: two daughters and a son who died in infancy and a son born in 1858, Caldwell Hart Colt. London Soon after establishing his Hartford factory, Colt decided to establish another factory in or near Europe, and chose London. He organized a large display of his firearms at the Great Exhibition of 1851 at Hyde Park, London and ingratiated himself by presenting cased engraved Colt revolvers to such appropriate officials as Britain's Master General of the Ordnance. At one exhibit Colt disassembled ten guns and reassembled ten guns using different parts from different guns. As the world's leading proponent of mass production techniques, Colt delivered a lecture concerning the subject to the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) in London. The membership rewarded his efforts by awarding him the Silver Telford Medal. With help from ICE secretary Charles Manby Colt established his London operation near Vauxhall Bridge on the River Thames and began production on January 1, 1853. During a tour of the factory, Charles Dickens was so impressed with the facilities that he later published his comments on Colt's revolvers in an 1852 issue of Household Words magazine: Among the pistols, we saw Colt's revolver; and we compared it with the best English revolver. The advantage of Colt's over the English is, that the user can take a sight; and the disadvantage is, that the weapon requires both hands to fire. The factory's machines mass-produced parts that were completely interchangeable and could be put together on assembly lines using standardized patterns and gauges by unskilled labor, as opposed to England's top gun makers, who made each part by hand. Colt's London factory remained in operation for only four years. Unwilling to alter his open-top single-action design for the solid frame double-action revolver that the British asked for, Colt sold scarcely 23,000 revolvers to the British Army and Navy. In 1856 he closed the London plant and had the machinery, tooling, and unfinished guns shipped to Hartford. Marketing When foreign heads of state would not grant him an audience, as he was only a private citizen, he persuaded the governor of the state of Connecticut to make him a lieutenant colonel and aide-de-camp of the state militia. With this rank, he toured Europe again to promote his revolvers. He used marketing techniques which were innovative at the time. He frequently gave custom engraved versions of his revolvers to heads of state, military officers, and celebrities such as Giuseppe Garibaldi, King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy, and Hungarian rebel Lajos Kossuth. He placed numerous advertisements in the same newspapers; The Knickerbocker published as many as eight in the same edition. He also hired authors to write stories about his guns for magazines and travel guides. == Later years and death ==

In the period leading up to the American Civil War, Colt supplied both the North and the South with firearms. He had been known to sell weapons to warring parties on both sides of other conflicts in Europe and did the same with respect to the war in America. In 1859 Colt considered building an armory in the South and as late as 1861 had sold 2,000 revolvers to Confederate agent John Forsyth. Although trade with the South had not been restricted at that time, newspapers such as the New York Daily Tribune, The New York Times and the Hartford Daily Courant labeled him a Southern sympathizer and traitor to the Union. In response to these charges, Colt was commissioned as a colonel by the state of Connecticut on May 16, 1861, in the 1st Regiment Colts Revolving Rifles of Connecticut armed with the Colt revolving rifle. Colt envisioned this unit as being staffed by men over six feet tall and armed with his weapons. However, the unit was never deployed and Colt was discharged a month later, on June 20. At the time of his death, Colt's estate, which he willed to his wife and three-year-old son Caldwell Hart Colt, was estimated to be valued at about $15,000,000 (). His professional responsibilities were turned over to his brother-in-law, Richard Jarvis. The only other person mentioned in Colt's will was Samuel Caldwell Colt, the son of his brother, John C. Colt. In a 1953 biography about Samuel Colt based largely on family letters, Edwards wrote that John Colt's marriage to Caroline in 1841 was a way to legitimize her unborn son, as the real father, Samuel Colt, felt she was not fit to be the wife of an industrialist and divorce was a social stigma at the time. Colt was a Freemason. == Legacy ==

It is estimated that in its first 25 years of manufacturing, Colt's company produced more than 400,000 revolvers. Before his death, each barrel was stamped: "Address Col. Samuel Colt, New York, US America", or a variation using a London address. Colt did this as New York and London were major cosmopolitan cities and he retained an office in New York at 155 Broadway where he based his salesmen. Colt was the first American manufacturer to use art as a marketing tool when he hired Catlin to prominently display Colt firearms in his paintings. He was awarded numerous government contracts after making gifts of his highly embellished and engraved revolvers, with exotic grips such as ivory or pearl, to government officials. On a visit to what was then Constantinople, he gave a custom-engraved and gold inlaid revolver to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire Abdülmecid I, informing him that the Russians were buying his pistols, thus securing a Turkish order for 5,000 pistols; he neglected to tell the Sultan he had used the same tactic with the Russians to elicit an order. He used the press to his own advantage by giving revolvers to editors, prompting them to report "all the accidents that occur to the Sharps & other humbug arms", and listing incidents where Colt weapons had been "well used against bears, Indians, Mexicans, etc". Colt's firearms did not always fare well in standardized military tests; he preferred written testimonials from individual soldiers who used his weapons and these were what he most relied on to secure government contracts. Colt felt that bad press was just as important as good press, provided that his name and his revolvers received mention. When he opened the London armory, he posted a 14-foot sign on the roof across from Parliament reading: "Colonel Colt's Pistol Factory" as a publicity stunt, which created a stir in the British press. Eventually the British government forced him to take the sign down. Barbara M. Tucker, professor of history and director of the Center for Connecticut Studies at Eastern Connecticut State University, wrote that Colt's marketing techniques transformed the firearm from a utilitarian object into a symbol of American identity. Tucker added that Colt associated his revolvers with American patriotism, freedom, and individualism while asserting America's technological supremacy over Europe. In 1867 Colt's widow Elizabeth had an Episcopal church designed by Edward Tuckerman Potter built as a memorial to him and the three children they lost. The church's architecture contains guns and gun-smithing tools sculpted in marble to commemorate Colt's life as an arms maker. In 1896, a parish house was built on the site as a memorial to their son, Caldwell, who died in 1894. In 1975, the Church of the Good Shepherd and Parish House was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Colt established libraries and educational programs within his armories for his employees, which provided training for several generations of toolmakers and other machinists, who had great influence on other manufacturing efforts over the next half century. Prominent examples included Francis A. Pratt, Amos Whitney, Henry Leland, Edward Bullard, Worcester R. Warner, Charles Brinckerhoff Richards, William Mason and Ambrose Swasey. In 2006, Samuel Colt was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. == Footnotes ==