copied from the blog ''Plowshare Forge''
The "Inventor" of the Revolver
To be fair, Samuel Colt never claimed to be what the title of this post implies. Rather the collective mythology of our national consciousness claimed that title for him. The first photo is of his baby, the one that spawned the revolution.
It's the 1836 Colt Paterson, made by the Patent repeating Arms Co. of Paterson New Jersey. The photo is actually of a pistol thought to be a period clone of the real made-by-Colt item, worth $60 to $90K even so. Actually nothing was ever "made" by Colt. He was more of an idea guy. In any case, it's a good-looking, elegant piece of work. I'm using this pic for my wallpaper at the moment. But, it's not the beginning of the revolver story.
The popular, apocryphal, tale summarized at the excellent Patents Pending Blogsite, is that the young Sam had an epiphany at sea. Apparently the lad was a bit of a handful so his dad sent him off for a year "before the mast" at the age of 16. He spent his year sailing from Boston to Calcutta, quit the sea and never looked back. The story is that he was "inspired" by the ship's wheel, a pepper grinder...whatever.
The interesting thing is that, while in London he was reputed to have purchased an example of the second weapon featured, a flintlock revolver made by Elisha H. Collier, late of Boston. The term "flintlock revolver" has to rank some where in the same category as "steam-powered pocket watch" but there it sits. This was obviously an upscale item. What with the inlay work and engraving, one would think this thing beyond the means of a teenage mariner. The fact remains that it, patented in England in 1818 when young Sam was four, is a revolver. The only salient difference seems to be that there was no mechanism for rotating the cylinder. One had to do it by hand. Also the frizzen (the thingie struck by the flint to make the sparks) seems to have some sort on reservoir for priming powder on board to save that tedious bit of the flintlock loading ritual.
The Colonel (he was granted that title by a governor of Connecticut who, after his election, did it to reward Colt for driving him home drunk while on the campaign trail - see, an idea guy), as mentioned, never claimed to have "invented" the revolver. However, he did come up with the idea that the rotation the cylinder would happen in conjunction with the cocking action. Also he, with his colleague, Elisha Root - the real unsung genius of the story, set up some some of the earliest machinery-driven production processes. And he, or rather his company - he was dead by then, came up with the gun my baby is ripped off from, the 1873 single-action-army, AKA "The Peacemaker".
Now, there is an excellent book about the First Special Service Force wherein the Model 1911, the "Colt 45" is described as being named "after its designer". No, no, no, John Moses Browning, Mormon gun genius par excellance did that one as well as many others. Remember that name folks.
