From the foregoing, I get the impression that Ol' Sam was a shyster?
Hi Bob
Maybe not a shyster, but he was certainly known to stretch the truth. If I recall correctly some of his early advertisements touted Silver Steel. While references can be found to Silver Steel, there is actually no silver content in it. It gets the name mostly because it can be highly polished. But Silver Steel looked really good in print.
Like many great entrepreneurs, Colt did not shy away from making extravagant claims about his products.
The whole "the Celebrated Dr. Coult of New-York, London and Calcutta" (yes, I quoted this directly from Wikipedia) thing came about while Colt was between the financial failure of the Paterson model and the later financial success of the Walker and Dragoon models. Colt needed money. Laughing gas (nitrous oxide) had recently been discovered. So he had a traveling 'medicine show'. Colt quickly realized that having members of the audience come on stage, and do ridiculous things while under the influence of laughing gas was a crowd pleaser so he made it part of his demonstration. Just like hypnotists used to hypnotize subjects and make them do ridiculous things while under the spell of the hypnotist. By the way, I used to go to dentist who had laughing gas as an alternative to novocaine. I only used it once. Breathing deeply while I had the mask on increased the affect. I was really enjoying it, until dentist noticed I was enjoying it a little bit too much, and suggested we not use laughing gas again.
So I would not say Colt was a shyster, but he was a marketing genius.
Regarding the Collier revolver, I do consider it to be a true revolver, unlike a pepperbox, because the cylinder was separate from the barrel. The Collier came about at the end of the flintlock era, so there was not as much interest in them as there was in percussion firearms. They were very expensive to make, and not a whole lot were made, something like 350-400. Yes the cylinder had to be rotated by hand, and the front of the chambers were rebated, much like a Nagant, so that was what kept the chambers lined up with the barrel. To me the most interesting part of the Collier was the priming system, which would deposit a fresh charge of priming powder into the pan for each shot.
Colt's real genius lay in his adopting early Industrial Revolution techniques of mass production and interchangeable parts. Colt's employees did not have to be highly skilled gunsmiths, they only needed to be able to produce the same part over and over again on the machinery available at the time. (The same as early Winchester, Smith and Wesson, or other successful 19th Century firearms manufacturers) This meant Colt could keep costs down by paying his employees less than a highly skilled gunsmith. The mass produced parts could be assembled into a finished firearm with a minimum of hand fitting. Yes, some fitting was required, but far less than would be required if a gunsmith was building the firearm lock, stock, and barrel. Mass production of parts enabled Colt to bring his products to market at very reasonable prices. That is why he was so successful.
For everything you ever wanted to know about Collier flintlock revolvers, here is a Forgotten Weapons video by Ian McCollum. Notice he mentions Colt probably saw a Collier while in India. Notice he says Colt probably figured he could improve on it, which he did.
https://www.google.com/search?clien...#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:3ae9fe04,vid:i9Km5KaeO7I
