Samuel Colt as a very successful businessman and manufacturer in 1855 from a photo by Mathew Brady, A long struggle finally paid off. |
The headlines have made us all obsess about guns this week. The tired
old getting-nowhere stalemate over firearms,
the Second Amendment, and the
seemingly never-ending chain of senseless
horror in our country. This time the incredible bravery and moral
clarity of the teen age survivors of
the Parkland, Florida slaughter and
a national uprising youth may finally have moved the needle. But the entrenched purveyors of death, their mouth pieces and minions are digging in
and doubling down, stirring up their
obsessed base and smearing and threatening the Davids arrayed against their Goliath.
Perhaps
a look backward at the man, the invention, and the revolutionary
industrial process that made the muzzle
loading, single shot muskets and
pistols that the Founders understood when they offered
that amendment for a well regulated militia.
Colt's breakthrough 1835 patent for his revolver. Many more patents would follow. |
On February 25, 1835 Samuel Colt, a twenty-two year old Connecticut Yankee tinkerer was granted a patent for a revolving gun. The patent was actually Colt’s second.
At the age of just 18 he had applied for a patent on an earlier, cruder version. But this time, young Colt was ready to go into business producing the
Patterson Pistol at a plant in Patterson, New Jersey.
The son of a farmer turned textile
manufacturer, Colt was apprenticed
to a farmer at age 11 and began studying the inventions of Robert Fulton and
others. He decided then and there that
he, too, would become an inventor. Overhearing a conversation between soldiers wishing for arms that could fire multiple times, he determined to
make the creation of just such a
weapon his own personal mission.
At age 16 his father sent him to sea. On his first
voyage he observed that the ship’s wheel could spin freely but be stopped
by a clutch which could be applied
to a spoke. He understood the same
principle could be applied to
revolving barrels of a gun. He began
to carve a model out of wood on his
way home.
With an insufficient loan from his father, Colt had two pistols constructed by incompetent craftsmen. One blew
up on testing. The other failed to fire at all. After taking to the road demonstrating laughing gas (nitrous oxide) to raise money to have prototypes made by a skilled gunsmith, he applied for his
first patent in 1832.
In 1835 Colt traveled to England and Europe to try to to drum up customers from the armies of various countries. He observed an earlier revolving barreled weapon, a flintlock pistol and incorporated
elements of that design into his
gun, for which the British reluctantly
issued their own patent.
Back home Colt submitted his new
design to the Patent Office. Armed with the paper, he established the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company to begin production. While not
the first revolver, his was the first
to apply the improvement of the percussion cap to a multiple-shot weapon.
Another innovation was in the manufacturing process itself. Previously each gun was substantially built in all of its components by hand
by a craftsman. Colt determined to have uniform parts manufactured by machine
that could be assembled by semi-skilled
factory operatives instead of gunsmiths. This was the first use of interchangeable
parts, which in itself became
revolutionary. Using this method,
the cost per pistol plummeted.
Despite these advantages, Colt
had a hard time selling his new
gun. There was not enough of a market in sales
to individuals to sustain production. Although he got an endorsement from President
Andrew Jackson, Congress only passed a resolution asking the War Department to allow him to demonstrate the weapon. Without an appropriation, however, the Army
could not order any. The South Carolina Militia expressed
interest, but Federal law forbad state
militias that were not also in Federal
service from acquiring the guns. Lack of sales and a financial Panic almost doomed the fledgling company.
The Seminole War finally spurred the Army to make a sizable
order of both pistols and a revolving
barrel musket. The weapons were both popular in the field with soldiers, but the multiple moving parts tended to jam. Some soldiers could not get used to a “hidden
hammer” feature of the pistols
and kept disassembling the gun to
figure out how it worked. Then the Army reneged on full payments for the weapons. By 1843 Colt had to close his factory.
He turned to another project, underwater mines, and the water-proof cable necessary to set them
off. The cable was just what Samuel F. Morse needed to encourage stringing of lines for his new telegraph.
Not only would the cable allow
connections under rivers and streams, but it would be essential for the planned Atlantic
Cable,
Colt concentrated on his cable business until he was contacted by Captain Samuel Walker of the Texas Rangers. Walker had been impressed by the Seminole
War pistols. Now he wanted to order a thousand heavier and improved versions for use in the Mexican War and against the Comanche and other Texas tribes. Walker helped Colt create a workable prototype. Colt contracted
a machine shop operated by Eli
Whitney Blake to produce the guns. When Walker ordered 1000 more, Colt took his $10 per gun profits, incorporated the Colt’s Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company and established a
factory near his hometown of Hartford,
Connecticut.
Texas Ranger Captain Samuel Walker and the Colt .45 revolver he ordered. The guns were so succesful they launched Colt's second company. |
The use by the Rangers of the guns, the rapid expansion of western settlement, the California Gold Rush, and conflicts
with Native Americans all
contributed to brisk sales and the
need to constantly expand his
manufacturing facilities. Colt added
more guns to his line, including lighter,
smaller caliber weapons that could
be concealed in a pocket. The introduction of those guns led to a wave of new violent crime in the cities—and
for more demand for guns as “protection”
by law abiding citizens and fledgling police forces.
Smaller weapons like this 1845 Pocket Revolver--the Saturday Night Specials of their day, lead to a spike in urban crime and violence and encouraged the formation of armed police forces. |
Colt was soon a very rich man. He ran
his empire as a benevolent father.
He reduced the work day to 10
hours for his employees with a full
hour for lunch. He built washing stations in his plants for his
workers and a community recreation
facility with a reading room. He
became the richest man in Connecticut,
and one of the richest in the country.
The Civil War proved another boom for the company. Colt raised
his own regiment which was to be armed with his new Colt Revolving Rifle. But
for whatever reason, the Regiment was never
called into service and Colt was discharged
from the service by the end of 1861.
A humming factory--Colt's New Haven Armory. |
Within a few
months, Sam Colt died at the age of 58 in 1861.
He left an estate of a then staggering $15 million, all earned in little more than a decade. His company survives today as Colt’s Manufacturing Company, a privately held company
and small arms supplier to the Defense Department.
Ironically,
gun worshiping National Rifle Association (NRA) members
nearly destroyed the private domestic market for Colt guns when in 1994
then CEO Ron Stewart announced that he backed gun registration and requirements
for fire arms training. Not only was there an effective boycott of new purchases, but gun owners were encouraged to dump their Colt weapons
on the used market at prices well below what the company could
sell new arms. Although Stewart was removed, the damage was done, and Colt has never
regained favor among the gun crazed.
They may have
even caused political interference with
the company’s military contracts. For
a while it had only one important
defense contract, to produce M4
Carbines, but the company lost the contract in 2013. That forced the parent company, Colt Defense, LLC to file Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in
2015. A year later a Federal Judge approved a restructuring plan, but its future or ability to prevent being swallowed by larger publicly held corporations
is doubtful.
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