5. THE ROAD TO THE REVOLVER
A NEW PERCUSSION-CAP FIRING MECHANISM HELPED PAVE THE WAY FOR DESIGNER SAMUEL COLT AND HIS FAMOUS “GUN THAT WON THE WEST.”
Colt workers in the Hartford, Connecticut, factory circa 1900. Employee numbers swelled from 2,400 to 15,000 between World War I and World War II.
Weapons Evolution
PERCUSSION-CAP GUNS AND REPEAT-FIRE WEAPONS LAID THE GROUNDWORK FOR THE NEXT BIG THING: THE REVOLVER.
An illustration of Alexander John Forsyth's innovative gun-firing system.
By 1800, the flintlock had been in use for almost a century around the world. Under most circumstances, the device worked adequately, with flint hitting steel to produce sparks that ignited the priming powder. But when it was wet outside, dampened primer didn’t always light, and even in ideal weather the delay between the lighting of powder in the pan and the ignition of the main charge made it difficult to hit a moving target.
In the first years of the 19th cen- tury, gunmakers began seeing if it was possible to ignite the main charge in other ways. One promising advance came from Scotland: In 1808, Scottish Presbyterian minister Alexander John Forsyth invented a delicate hammer-fired device, patented as the Forsyth Patent Percussion Sporting Gun, to be used in long guns for hunting birds.
Forsyth’s weapon lead to the sturdier “percussion cap” guns that fired more rapidly and reliably in any weather. Their design relied on a small brass or copper cylinder with one closed end that held a tiny amount of explosive chemical and fit over a hollow metal “nipple” at the back of the gun barrel. Depressing the trigger released a hammer that struck the percussion cap, igniting the chemical primer and sending a flame to light the main powder charge. In 1814, Joshua Shaw, a British-born resident of Philadelphia, invented another version of the metallic percussion cap, one that relied on a mixture of fulminate of mercury, chlorate of potash, and ground glass.
Retrofitting Firearms
Early 19th-century gunsmiths fitted all types of firearms—pistols, muskets, carbines, and rifles—with percussion caps. Some owners of flintlock weapons had their guns overhauled to accommodate the new technology. The British military updated its Brown Bess muskets in this fashion in the 1830s and 1840s, while the U.S. Army introduced a percussion-cap carbine rifle. Despite its effectiveness in inclement weather, however, the new device’s small size made it to difficult to operate during the chaos of actual combat or while riding on horseback. Designers kept looking for improvements.
Alexander John Forsyth: Reverend and Gun Designer
Forsyth produced his first successful percussion lock in 1805.
When not presiding over his Presbyterian church, the Reverend Alexander John Forsyth of Belhelvie, Scotland (1769–1843), hunted wild fowl. To Forsyth’s frustration, his quarry often startled at the puff of smoke that emerged from the priming pan of his flintlock long gun before it discharged.
The percussion-ignition system Forsythe devised to not scare off birds earned him a place in firearm history. The design relied on a small container, or “scent bottle,” to hold explosive fulminate of mercury, a chemical that worked as a primer but did not release smoke. Forsyth continued to develop the idea, working on behalf of the British military, though he eventually was dismissed out of fear he would blow up the arsenal in London. Forsyth did not appear to hold a grudge. When he was approached by Napoleon Bonaparte to bring his innovation to France, the clergyman-inventor demurred.
Percussion Cap Guns
A HAMMER RELEASED AND CAUSED THE POWDER TO LIGHT.
MILITARY MUSKET
Country: Great Britain
Date: circa 1833
Barrel Length: 38 1/2in
Caliber: .750
This gun was converted from a flintlock to percussion ignition system.
BREECH-LOADING RIFLE
Country: Great Britain
Date: circa 1835
Barrel Length: 31 3/4in
Caliber: .410
Percussion-cap guns fired more reliably and rapidly in any weather.
UNDERHAMMER RIFLE
Country: United States
Date: 1835–1838
Barrel Length: 29 1/2in
Caliber: .44
The underhammer offered an unobstructed view of the target.
COLT MODEL 1 PATERSON RIFLE
Country: United States
Date: 1837–1838
Barrel Length: 32in
Caliber: .36
The U.S. Army bought 50 of the first 200 Colt Model 1 Paterson rifles.
TARGET RIFLE
Country: United States
Date: mid 19th century
Barrel Length: 44 1/4in
Caliber: .52
This rifle was highly prized by Native Americans and fur traders.
HARPER’S FERRY CARBINE
Country: United States
Date: 1857
Barrel Length: 33in
Caliber: .58
The Virginia armory that made this rifled musket was captured by the Confederacy in 1861.
BREECH-LOADING DOUBLE-BARRELLED SHOTGUN
Country: France
Date: 1833
Barrel Length: 25 3/5in
Caliber: .66
This gun was primarily for hunting.
PERCUSSION CAMEL GUN
Country: Afghanistan
Date: circa 1850
This type of gun was widely used in the Middle East and North Africa.
AMERICAN BUGGY RIFLE
Country: United States
Date: circa 1835
Barrel Length: 28in
Caliber: .42
The Vermont-made barrel was designed to fit under a carriage seat.
During the 19th century, gunmakers began to gravitate to the latest firing-mechanism technology, the hammer-fired percussion cap. In some cases, owners of matchlocks, wheellocks, and flintlocks had their guns retrofitted to incorporate the new device.
Repeating Firearms
SMALL POCKET PISTOLS COULD FIRE A NUMBER OF TIMES BEFORE RELOADING.
DERRINGER POCKET PISTOL
Country: United States
Date: mid 19th century
Barrel Length: 2 1/2in
Caliber: .41
FOUR-SHOT PEPPERBOX
Country: Great Britain
Date: circa 1845
Caliber: .38
ALLEN & THURBER PEPPERBOX
Country: United States
Date: circa 1845
Caliber: .31
The easily concealable pocket pistol was favored by women.
SIX-SHOT PEPPERBOX
Country: Great Britain
Date: circa 1845
Barrel Length: 3 4/5in
Caliber: .48
At the same time that percussion-cap guns began appearing in the market, inventors moved to design weapons that could fire a number of shots before reloading. In 1837, a Massachusetts gunsmith named Ethan Allen (no relation to the Revolutionary War figure) patented a handgun that featured multiple rotating barrels, dubbed the “pepperbox” because it looked like a household pepper grinder. London gunsmiths Allen & Thurber produced a double-action pepperbox with four to six barrels that was a favorite feature among British gun owners.
Then there was Henry Deringer. Deringer (his famous Derringer pistol came to be spelled with two r’s) gained renown for large-caliber, short-barreled pistols that still used the flintlock action popular at the time, though he eventually integrated percussion-cap devices into his weapons. He also made muzzle-loading single-shot guns, as well as double-barreled versions with an over-under design. Easily concealable, the .41 caliber Derringer pistol could do lethal damage at close range. The gun’s most notorious owner, John Wilkes Booth, used one to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., on April 15, 1865.
Exploiting Deringer’s Designs
Henry Deringer (1786–1868) earned fame and fortune for his eponymous handgun but failed to fully protect his design with proper patents. As a result, imitators knocked off his ingenious guns, sometimes adding Deringer’s name for the appearance of authenticity. Thanks to lucrative contracts with the military, including an agreement to make weapons sold by the government to Native American tribes, Deringer nevertheless became wealthy over the course of his long life.
Samuel Colt: A Life Defined by Firearms
A POPULAR SAYING IN THE OLD WEST HONORED THE GUNMAKER: “GOD MAY HAVE CREATED ALL MEN EQUAL, BUT SAM COLT MADE THEM SO.”
WALKER PERCUSSION REVOLVER
Country: United States
Date: 1847
Barrel Length: 9in
Caliber: .44
The cylinder was stamped with a fight scene between Texas Rangers and Native Americans.
Colt SAA
Country: United States
Date: circa 1898
Barrel Length: 5 1/2in
Caliber: .45
This revolver was carried up San Juan Hill by Rough Rider Louis Bishop.
Samuel Colt was expelled from an elite Massachusetts academy by age 15, but he had an agile mind. Fascinated with all things mechanical, he became an innovative gunmaker.
Growing up in Hartford, Connecticut, Samuel Colt (1814–1862) inherited an old flintlock pistol carried by his maternal grandfather, an officer in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. The pistol became his prized possession and helped shape his view on life.
Colt’s father, a farmer-turned-businessman, put Sam to work in a family-owned textile plant, but the young man grew restless, and in 1830, at the age of 15, he shipped out as a seaman’s apprentice. It was during this period that Colt got the idea for a repeating firearm whose cylinder revolved, wheel-like, around the barrel.
Some accounts say the concept came to him as a result of studying the operation of the ship captain’s wheel; others say that he got the idea from the capstan used to raise an anchor. Firearm historian Chuck Wills has written that Colt may have observed a flintlock revolver used by British troops in India and decided to update it—a more prosaic discovery tale, but one that has the ring of plausibility.
A Defining Voyage
Colt himself pointed to a voyage aboard a brig called the Corvo, en route to Calcutta, as the beginning. At the time, existing multibarrel pepperbox designs required the shooter to rotate the barrels manually and estimate the proper cylinder-to-barrel alignment by eye. While at sea on the Corvo, Colt carved a model from scrap wood of a multibarrel revolver that would allow the shooter to rotate the cylinder by simultaneously cocking the hammer. The design also included a moving cylinder with multiple “charge holes” (five or six depending on the model) that aligned with the gun’s barrel, thanks to recesses in the cylinder mating to a bolt in the gun’s frame. When Colt returned to the United States in 1832, he set out to turn his wooden prototype into an actual firearm suitable for civilians and soldiers alike.
Though Colt was determined to make a great gun and create the first true firearm factory, his progress was slow. His father, who financed some early production, withdrew his support after the first pistol Colt designed blew up when fired. To raise money, Colt took to the road as a “medicine man,” performing demonstrations of the effects of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas. He called himself “the Celebrated Dr. Coult of New York, London, and Calcutta” and branched out from quasi-scientific quackery to ersatz mysticism, honing his confidence and marketing patter. With money saved from his road show, Colt hired professional gunsmiths from Baltimore to continue work on his ideas about firearms, primary among them a revolver with a single fixed barrel and a rotating cylinder.
The idea was not completely new. Boston inventor Elisha Collier already had introduced a flintlock revolver with a single fixed barrel. But Colt added a percussion-firing hammer mechanism and linked it to the cylinder’s movement, eliminating the need to rotate the cylinder manually. To ensure his contribution was recognized both in Britain and in the United States, Colt applied for a patent for the design first in 1835 in London and only subsequently in his homeland. The following year the U.S. Patent Office granted him a pair of patents for a “revolving gun” and related mechanisms for a breech-loading weapon he called the Colt Paterson, a reference to his relocated workshop in Paterson, New Jersey, an early American manufacturing center.
Colt's first sale—a .36-caliber repeating rifle—was made in 1836 in this Paterson, New Jersey, factory.
A Setback and Detour
Colt wined and dined government officials he hoped would buy his new gun, but the U.S. Army and state militias showed little interest. With tepid sales and his backers refusing to sink more into the business, the Colt enterprise collapsed financially in 1843. The Paterson plant was sold off, and for the moment Colt found himself out of the gun business.
He turned to other inventions. He designed a tar-coated copper telegraph wire that Samuel Morse used to run communication lines beneath rivers and lakes. Colt also tried to sell the U.S. Navy an underwater mine for destroying enemy ships. The mine proved capable of blowing up a moving vessel, but in the early 1840s skeptical lawmakers in Washington scrapped his idea as an “un-Christian” method of warfare. (In later years, the destructive power of sea and land mines overshadowed any such religious scruples.)
As Colt cast around for products he could sell profitably, he settled on ammunition packaging. It was a time when ball and powder were packed together into a paper “cartridge” that ran into the age-old problem of rain. Colt replaced paper with a thin tinfoil that protected powder against moisture and didn’t leave behind as much residue after firing. The U.S. Army tested and eventually began to acquire Colt’s cartridges for use in infantry muskets. Colt’s tinfoil solution was a midway step between paper cartridges and the metallic cartridges that would dominate the ammunition market by the late 19th century.
A Door Opens
But Colt was still intent on getting back into the gun business and saw a chance with Captain Samuel Walker of the Texas Rangers. Walker, it turned out, had acquired a small number of Colt’s original revolvers and distributed them to members of the mounted Rangers for use during the Seminole Indian Wars in Florida in the late 1830s and early 1840s. Armed with Colt’s invention, a 15-man unit under Walker’s command had defeated a force of 70 Comanche warriors during a separate clash in Texas—or at least that was the story that Captain Walker told.
Eager to acquire more of Colt’s revolvers for use in the Mexican-American War, Walker traveled to New York in January 1847 to meet with the firearm entrepreneur. Together they agreed on a tweaked design to accommodate six rounds instead of five, allow for easier reloading, and pack enough punch to kill a man (or a horse) at close range with one shot. With Walker’s order for 1,000 guns, Colt’s firearm business finally had a product, the single-action Colt Walker Model 1847, and the commercial foundation it needed.
Although Captain Walker was killed in combat shortly after receiving two of his namesake pistols, profits from the Colt Walker Model 1847, combined with a loan from a banker cousin, allowed Colt to open Colt’s Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company in Hartford. Soon the name Colt would become synonymous with revolver.
Colthad realized his goal of applying modern manufacturing techniques to producing guns. The new factory churned out standardized, machine-tooled, interchangeable parts that could be assembled swiftly by employees who weren’t trained gunsmiths. The approach kept costs down and reduced the likelihood of product defects. It also gave Colt a platform: He enjoyed demonstrating the benefits of assembly-line manufacturing by taking apart a group of his revolvers, scrambling the pieces, and showing how they could be put back together into reliable firearms.
As America expanded westward, Colt was poised to take advantage. He promoted his firearms as ideal for soldiers fighting Mexicans or Native Americans, and for civilian settlers defending themselves. In 1850, generals Sam Houston and Thomas Jefferson Rusk lobbied President James Polk at Colt’s behest to adopt the Hartford-made revolvers as standard-issue sidearms for the U.S. Army.
“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,” Rusk testified in language that Colt likely helped draft.
Women were initially assigned the dangerous task of loading gunpowder into cartridges.
Stirring Consumer Interest
Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders posed atop San Juan Hill in 1898.
Workers stand outside Colt’s Hartford armory in 1876.
Colt’s opportunism was legend. To impress potential buyers, Colt had himself named a lieutenant colonel in the Connecticut state militia and encouraged people to refer to him as “Colonel Colt.” At the conclusion of the Mexican-American War, he sent salesmen to Mexico and marketed his guns to his own country’s former foe. During the Civil War, he sold arms to both sides.
When traditionalists invoked history, he stressed the “new and improved,” a phrase historians credit him with coining. To stir consumer interest, he continually introduced slightly altered models with patriotic-sounding names. In what may have been the earliest use of product placement, Colt commissioned the western artist George Catlin to make a series of paintings of heroic scenes showing Colt firearms used against fierce Indians, deadly outlaws, and ferocious wild animals. Colt also paid a magazine to run a 29-page illustrated article depicting life and operations within his Hartford plant.
Colt died of gout in 1862, but his manufacturing plant thrived during the Civil War. In 1873, Colt’s Manufacturing introduced the .44 Colt Single Action Army (SAA)Model, a hugely popular handgun that spawned several widely sold civilian models. Still made in replica today the Single Action Army became known as “the Peacemaker” and as “the gun that won the West.”
In 1877, Colt’s Manufacturing sought to capitalize on its association with the West by coming out with a version called the Colt Frontier Six Shooter.American soldiers carried the SAA during the domestic Indian Wars and the 1898 Spanish-American War, during which Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders took San Juan Hill armed with a .45-caliber variant called the Artillery Model.
Though the successor to Colt’s Manufacturing has experienced financial challenges in recent years, Sam Colt’s influence surpassed the 400,000 weapons his factory produced during his lifetime. Numerous rivals imitated his designs. His marketing genius transformed the firearm in America from a utilitarian military tool into a representation of national identity and technological supremacy. As much as any other person, he linked guns to the American ideals of individualism and self-reliance.
THE COLT WALKER
Sam Colt’s operation made relatively few of the original Colt Walkers, and in time the famous revolvers became museum pieces. Today, they are sought-after rarities among firearm collectors. In the 21st century, Colt Walkers have changed hands in private sales for nearly $1 million apiece.
EYE ON THE PRIZE
Samuel Colt’s career was defined by vision, some bad decisions, and savvy, ahead-of-his-time marketing.
1833 After his first attempt at producing a commercial revolver failed, Colt reinvented himself as a traveling medicine man and mystic.
1834 Colt used money saved from his road show to hire gunsmiths to execute his ideas, founding Patent Arms Manufacturing in Paterson, New Jersey.
1843 Without sufficient buyers, Colt was forced to close his plant in New Jersey.
1835–36 The entrepreneur obtained patents for his designs in the United States and Britain.
1847 Captain Sam Walker of the Texas Rangers committed to buy 1,000 Colt weapons. With the order and a timely loan, Colt opened Colt’s Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company in Hartford, Connecticut.
1853 Colt opened a factory near the Thames River in London but refused to tweak his models to reflect British taste. The factory closed three years later.
1857 As cities began allowing police to carry guns, Colt jumped in with the New Model Police Revolver.
1861 The Civil War broke out and Colt was condemned by pro-Union newspapers for selling revolvers to a Confederate agent. To counter the bad press, Colt had himself commissioned as a colonel by Connecticut and supplied Union forces for the balance of the war.
1862 Before he could lead a regiment, Colt died of gout.
1864 The Colt factory in Hartford was engulfed in a fire. Though Colt did not feel the need to insure his building, after he died in 1862, his widow Elizabeth did. Followng the fire, Elizabeth used the procceds from the policy to rebuild the facility on the same site.
Early Colt Models
BARRELS NO LONGER HAD TO BE PRIMED SEPARATELY.
1851 LONDON NAVY REVOLVER
Country: Great Britain
Date: mid 1850s
Barrel Length: 7 1/2in
Caliber: .36
An ad of the era touted the gun’s popularity with the British military.
WHITNEYVILLE HARTFORD DRAGOON
Country: United States
Date: circa 1848
Barrel Length: 9in
Caliber: .44
Approximately 7,000 of these dragoons were manufactured.
NO. 2 PATERSON BELT MODEL
Country: United States
Date: circa 1837–1840
A folding trigger remained invisible until the hammer was cocked. The model came in barrel lengths ranging from 2 1/2in to 5 1/2in and two calibers, .31 and .34.
To speed up production at the Colt factory, superintendent Elisha Root created a rifling machine that cut grooves into four barrels at once.
The development of the percussion cap enabled Samuel Colt to design his first revolver, a multishot weapon that automatically rotated the cylinder with the simple action of the hammer. The advantage of the new design was the chambers no longer had to be primed separately, but instead came into firing position ready to use. The design’s major drawback was that there was no mechanism to lock the barrel group at the moment of discharge.
Later Colt Models
TRENDSETTING GUNS WITH LONG-LASTING INFLUENCE.
COLT 3rd MODEL DRAGOON
Country: United States
Date: circa 1851–1861
Barrel Length: 7 1/2in
Caliber: .44
NAVY DOUBLE ACTION MODEL
Country: United States
Date: 1889
Barrel Length: 6in
Caliber: .38
The Navy bought 5,000 Colt 1889 revolvers. All but 363 were returned to the company for conversion to upgrade to the 1895 cylinder and locking system.
SINGLE ACTION ARMY MODEL
Country: United States
Date: 1873
Barrel Length: varying
Colt’s most popular hand gun ever, the Single Action Army Model remains in production today.
1861 NAVY MODEL
Country: United States
Date: 1861
Barrel Length: 7 1/2in
Caliber: .36
Of the 38,000 1861 Navy Colts produced, this is one of the few that remain.
Though Elisha Collier introduced the flintlock revolver with a single priming pan, Colt’s design advanced the revolver by linking the cylinder to the firing mechanism. As Colt’s weapons evolved, they were considered safe, reliable, and powerful. Colt’s factory in Hartford was the first firearm plant to take advantage of mass production and interchangeable parts—earmarks of the Industrial Revolution. Colt guns continued to be influential during and well after the Civil War.
The Peacemaker
“THE GUN THAT WON THE WEST” DEBUTED IN 1873, MORE THAN A DECADE AFTER SAMUEL COLT’S DEATH.
The 1873 Colt Single Action Army Model is the most copied gun in the world. Though the lines of the new models remain remarkably true to those made 143 years ago, “the Peacemaker” has been offered in more than 30 different calibers, several barrel lengths, and a variety of stock designs. In 1916 General George S. Patton Jr. ordered a sterling-silver plated SAA with inlaid ivory grips engraved with his initials. A few months later he used it in a shoot-out with Pancho Villa’s bodyguards.
Colt: A Cinema Idol
The Academy Award–winning movie High Noon (1952) starred Gary Cooper as Will Kane, a small-town marshal who wants to turn in his badge and live peacefully with his new bride, Amy, a Quaker pacifist played by Grace Kelly. No such luck, of course, as Kane must confront a killer returning to seek revenge.
In addition to Cooper and Kelly, the other main star of the movie was the Peacemaker, Samuel Colt’s six-shot Single Action Army revolver, perhaps the most famous firearm of the Hollywood Western. Kane and Deputy Harvey Pell (Lloyd Bridges) carried the 5 1/2–inch-barrel Single Action Artillery Model, also known as the .45-caliber Long Colt. The slightly smaller 4 3/4–inch-barrel version of the revolver turned up in the hands of Kane’s antagonist, the villainous Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald).
Known as the Civilian or Quick-Draw model, the more compact variation also saw action courtesy of Amy Kane. When her brave husband’s life is in danger, the Quaker frontierswoman sets aside her religious beliefs and fires off a few rounds of her own with a Peacemaker.
The Rivals: Smith & Wesson
COLT’S COMPETITORS BECAME FAMOUS FOR “THE MOST POWERFUL HANDGUN IN THE WORLD.”
SMITH & WESSON MODEL 3
Country: United States
Date: circa 1888
Barrel Length: 5in
Caliber: .44
Smith & Wesson commissioned Tiffany & Co. to dress up this deluxe model for display at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.
SMITH & WESSON MODEL 29
Country: United States
Date: 1960
Barrel Length: 6 1/2in
Caliber: .44
At the time this six-shooter was introduced, some owners found the handgun almost too powerful. It “costarred” in the Dirty Harry films, which boosted sales.
Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson grew up in the nascent New England gun industry. Smith (1808–1893) worked at the federal armory in his native Massachusetts. Wesson (1825–1896), born in the same state, apprenticed with his older brother, Edwin, a leading gunsmith in the region. Smith and Wesson began working together in the 1850s in Connecticut, where they produced a repeating rifle that fired metallic cartridges containing the primer, powder, and bullet.
Like Samuel Colt, Smith and Wesson failed in their initial business venture but didn’t give up. They sold their operation to Oliver Winchester, a shirtmaker who moved into the gun trade, then in 1856 reestablished their company. In fact, one of their early breaks came courtesy of a mistake made by Colt.
The better-known Colt fired an employee, Rollin White, who’d devised and proposed manufacturing an improved cylinder. White defected to Smith & Wesson, who developed a new metallic cartridge suited to White’s “bore-through” cylinder design. Smith & Wesson continued with other innovations. In 1857, the company introduced a .22 model that could be loaded more quickly than comparable handguns made by Colt. They followed that with a larger .32 version adopted by some units on the Union side of the Civil War.
Although they operated in Colt’s long shadow, Smith & Wesson continued to introduce highly regarded handguns, such as the Model 3 Revolver (1870) and the .38 Model 1910 Military and Police. In 1935, the company introduced the powerful .357 Model 27 Registered Magnum, which became a standard for Federal Bureau of Investigation agents. During World War II, General George Patton at various times carried an ivory-handled Smith & Wesson .357 and a similarly decorated Colt Peacemaker. Patton referred to the Model 27 as his “killing gun.”
Star of the Silver Screen
In later years, Hollywood elevated one Smith & Wesson handgun above all others: the .44 six-shot Magnum Model 29, introduced in 1955 and available in a variety of barrel lengths. In 1971, Clint Eastwood, playing Inspector “Dirty Harry” Callahan, pointed the enormous revolver at a criminal suspect as he uttered the ultimate tough-guy soliloquy: “I know what you’re thinking: ‘Did he fire six shots or only five?’ But to tell the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?” Sales of “the most powerful handgun in the world” soared.
Robert Adams’ Double Action Revolver
While Colt’s Manufacturing dominated handgun innovation and production in the mid and late 1800s, others offered competing models and made important advances. At London’s Great Exhibition of 1851, the world’s fair of its day, the British gunsmith Robert Adams (1809–1870) introduced the “double action” revolver which allowed the user to cock and fire with a single pull of the trigger, instead of cocking the hammer separately before firing, as Colt’s design required. Some users struggled with Adams’ heavier trigger, so he improved and reintroduced a new version, known as the Beaumont-Adams, for the Crimean War of 1854–1855. Some double-action Adams handguns saw action in the U.S. Civil War of the 1860s, but the double-action guns were handmade and far more expensive than Colt’s single-action products, which were simpler, less prone to malfunction, and seen as more appropriate for the rough-and-tumble conditions of the American battlefield and frontier.
A Wave of Copycats
SAMUEL COLT’S DESIGNS WERE SO POPULAR, THEY SPAWNED NUMEROUS IMITATORS.
REMINGTON 1875 ARMY MODEL
Country: United States
Date: circa 1879
Caliber: .44
Introduced to compete with the Colt SAA, Remington’s 1875 SAA revolver had sluggish sales.
SIX-SHOT MILITARY REVOLVER
Country: Germany
Date: circa 1880
Length: 13 1/6in
Caliber: .417
This revolver was the first standard, cartridge-firing handgun adopted by the German military.
PATERSON TEXAS-TYPE REVOLVER
Country: Belgium
Date: circa 1840
Barrel Length: 6 1/10in
Caliber: .34
Few gunmakers copied Colt’s earliest designs because they were so complex, but as his revolvers caught on, counterfeiters and copycats began capitalizing on his innovation. Uninformed buyers could easily mistake the fakes and some Belgian makers even stamped their wares with Colt’s name. To protect his interests, Colt had his lawyer issue a notice to major arms dealers in the United States.