77 Facts About Samuel Colt

Samuel Colt was an American inventor, industrialist, and businessman who established Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company and made the mass production of revolvers commercially viable.

Samuel Colt's business expanded rapidly after 1847, when the Texas Rangers ordered 1,000 revolvers during the American war with Mexico.

When Samuel Colt died in 1862, he was one of the wealthiest men in the United States.

Samuel Colt was born in Hartford, Connecticut the son of Christopher Colt, a farmer who had moved his family to the city after he became a businessman, and Sarah.

Samuel Colt's mother died from tuberculosis when Samuel Colt was six years old, and his father married Olivia Sargeant two years later.

Samuel Colt had three sisters, one of whom died during her childhood.

At age 11, Samuel Colt was indentured to a farmer in Glastonbury, where he did chores and attended school.

Samuel Colt 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, Samuel Colt decided that he would create the "impossible gun".

In 1829, at the age of 15, Samuel Colt began working in his father's textile plant in Ware, Massachusetts, where he had access to tools, materials, and the factory workers' expertise.

When Samuel 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.

Samuel 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.

Samuel Colt started his lectures on street corners and soon worked his way up to lecture halls and museums.

Samuel Colt constructed fireworks for the finale of the show, which was a success.

Samuel Colt's 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.

Samuel Colt abandoned the idea of a multiple-barreled revolver and opted for a single fixed-barrel design with a rotating cylinder.

Samuel Colt sought the counsel of a friend of his father, Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, who loaned him $300 and advised him to perfect his prototype before applying for a patent.

Samuel Colt hired a gunsmith by the name of John Pearson to build his revolver.

Samuel 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 Samuel Colt if the company disbanded.

Samuel 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.

Samuel Colt's was the first practical revolver and the first practical repeating firearm, thanks to progress made in percussion technology.

Jackson approved of the gun and wrote Samuel Colt a note saying so.

Selden twice prohibited Samuel Colt from using company money for liquor and fancy dinners; Samuel Colt thought getting potential customers inebriated would generate more sales.

Samuel Colt 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.

Samuel Colt soon reworked his design to leave the firing hammer exposed, but problems continued.

Samuel Colt did not refrain long from manufacturing as he turned to selling underwater electrical detonators and waterproof cable of his own invention.

Samuel Colt tried alternative materials such as rubber cement, finally deciding on a thin type of tinfoil.

Samuel Colt concentrated on manufacturing his waterproof telegraph cable, believing the business would prosper in tandem with Morse's invention.

Samuel Colt began promoting the telegraph companies to create a greater market for his cable, for which he was to be paid $50 per mile.

Samuel 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.

Samuel Colt submitted his single prototype to the War Department as a "Holster revolver".

The large order allowed Samuel Colt to establish a new firearm business.

Samuel Colt hired Eli Whitney Blake, who was established in the arms business, to make his guns.

Samuel Colt used his prototype and Walker's improvements as the basis for a new design.

Samuel Colt then received an order for a thousand more; Colt shared the profits at $10 per pistol for both orders.

Samuel 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 Samuel Colt introduced smaller versions of his pistols for civilian use, known as "Baby Dragoons".

Samuel Colt followed this design with the Samuel Colt 1851 Navy Revolver, which was larger than the Baby Dragoon but not quite as large as the full-sized version.

Ever the opportunist, when the war with Mexico ended, Samuel Colt sent agents south of the border to procure sales from the Mexican government.

Samuel Colt sued the companies, and the court ordered that Warner and Massachusetts Arms cease revolver production.

However, Samuel Colt's lawyers doubted that this suit would be successful, and the case was resolved with a settlement of $15,000.

In 1854 Samuel Colt fought for his patent extension with the US Congress, which initiated a special committee to investigate charges that Samuel Colt had bribed government officials in securing this extension.

Samuel Colt knew he had to make his revolvers affordable, as the doom of many great inventions was a high retail price.

Samuel Colt fixed his prices at a level below his competition to maximize sales volume.

Samuel Colt purchased a large tract of land beside the Connecticut River, where he built: his first factory in 1848; a larger factory in 1855; the manor Armsmear in 1856; and employee tenement housing.

Samuel Colt established a ten-hour work day for employees, installed washing stations in the factory, mandated a one-hour lunch break, and built the Charter Oak Hall, where employees could enjoy games, newspapers, and discussion rooms.

Samuel Colt managed his plant with a military-like discipline: he would dismiss workers for tardiness, sub-par work, or even suggesting improvements to his designs.

Samuel Colt's revolvers were made by machine, but he insisted on final hand finishing and polishing of his revolvers to impart a handmade feel.

Samuel Colt hired artisan gun makers from Bavaria and developed a commercial use for Waterman Ormsby's grammagraph to produce "roll-die" engraving on steel, particularly on the cylinders.

Samuel Colt hired Bavarian engraver Gustave Young for fine hand engraving on his more "custom" pieces.

Samuel Colt subsequently built a factory to manufacture wicker furniture made from these trees.

On June 5,1856, Samuel Colt married Elizabeth Jarvis, the daughter of the Rev William Jarvis, who lived downriver from Hartford.

Samuel Colt 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 Samuel Colt disassembled ten guns and reassembled ten guns using different parts from different guns.

Unwilling to alter his open-top single-action design for the solid frame double-action revolver that the British asked for, Samuel Colt sold scarcely 23,000 revolvers to the British Army and Navy.

Samuel Colt used marketing techniques which were innovative at the time.

Samuel Colt 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.

Samuel Colt placed numerous advertisements in the same newspapers; The Knickerbocker published as many as eight in the same edition.

Samuel Colt hired authors to write stories about his guns for magazines and travel guides.

One of Samuel Colt's more significant acts of self-promotion was a $1,120 payment to the publishers of United States Magazine for a 29-page fully illustrated story showing the inner workings of his factory.

Samuel Colt went so far as to hire agents in other states and territories to find such samples, to buy hundreds of copies for himself and to give the editor a free revolver for writing them, particularly if such a story disparaged his competition.

Samuel Colt 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 Samuel Colt considered building an armory in the South and as late as 1861 had sold 2,000 revolvers to Confederate agent John Forsyth.

Samuel Colt envisioned this unit as being staffed by men over six feet tall and armed with his weapons.

Samuel Colt died of complications of gout in Hartford on January 10,1862.

Samuel Colt was interred on the property of his private residence Armsmear and reinterred at Cedar Hill Cemetery in 1894.

Colt historian William Edwards wrote that Samuel Colt had married Caroline Henshaw in Scotland during 1838, and that the son she bore later was Samuel Colt's and not his brother John's.

In probate court Caroline's son Sam produced a valid marriage license showing that Caroline and Samuel Colt were married in Scotland in 1838 and that this document made him a rightful heir to part of Colt's estate, if not to the Colt Manufacturing Company.

Samuel 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.

Samuel Colt was the first American manufacturer to use art as a marketing tool when he hired Catlin to prominently display Samuel Colt firearms in his paintings.

Samuel Colt 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.

Apart from gifts and bribes, Samuel Colt employed an effective marketing program which comprised sales promotion, publicity, product sampling, and public relations.

Samuel 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.

Samuel Colt felt that bad press was just as important as good press, provided that his name and his revolvers received mention.

Tucker added that Samuel Colt associated his revolvers with American patriotism, freedom, and individualism while asserting America's technological supremacy over Europe's.

Samuel 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.

In 2006, Samuel Colt was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.