Revolver (Edited from Wikipedia)

SUMMARY

A revolver is a repeating handgun that has a revolving cylinder containing multiple chambers and at least one barrel for firing. Revolvers might be regarded as a subset of pistols, or as an equal-ranking subset of handguns, distinct from pistols. Though the term "revolver" usually only refers to handguns, other firearms may also have a revolving chamber. These include some models of grenade launchers, shotguns, and rifles. Most revolvers contain five or six rounds in the cylinder.

Though the original name was revolving gun, the short-hand "revolver" is universally used. (Cannon using this mechanism are known as revolver cannon.) Nearly all early revolvers and many modern ones have six chambers in the cylinder, giving rise to the slang term six-shooter; however, revolvers with a number of different chambers have been made, with most modern revolvers having 5 or 6 chambers.

The revolver allows the user to fire multiple rounds without reloading. Each time the user cocks the hammer, the cylinder revolves to align the next chamber and round with the hammer and barrel, which gives this type of firearm its name. In a single-action revolver, the user pulls the hammer back with his free hand or thumb; the trigger pull only releases the hammer.

In a double-action revolver, pulling the trigger moves the hammer back, then releases it, which requires a longer and heavier trigger pull than single-action. Loading and unloading a double-action revolver requires the operator to swing out the cylinder and insert the proper ammunition, all while keeping the gun pointed in a safe direction.

The first guns with multichambered cylinders that revolved to feed one barrel were made in the late 16th century in Europe. They were expensive and rare curiosities. Not until the 19th century would revolvers become common weapons of industrial production.

One of the first was a flintlock revolver patented by Elisha Collier in 1814. The first percussion revolver was made by Lenormand of Paris in 1820 and the first percussion cap revolver was invented by the Italian Francesco Antonio Broccu in 1833. He received a prize of 300 francs for his invention; although he did not patent it, his revolver was shown to King Charles Albert of Sardinia. However, in 1835 a similar

1 handgun was patented by Samuel Colt, who would go on to make the first mass- produced revolver.

The first cartridge revolvers were produced around 1854 by Eugene Lefaucheux.

Revolvers soon became standard for nearly all uses. In the early 20th century, semi- automatic pistols were developed, which can hold more rounds, and are faster to reload. "Automatic" pistols also have a flat profile, more suitable for concealed carry. Semi- auto pistols were not considered reliable enough for serious police work or self-defense until the later half of the century, however, and revolvers were the dominant handgun for police and civilians until modern pistols such as the Beretta 92 and Glock 17 were developed in the 70s and 80s. Automatic pistols have almost completely replaced revolvers in military and law enforcement use (in military use, from 1910-1960; in law enforcement, in the 1980s and 1990s).

Revolvers still remain popular as back-up and off-duty handguns among American law enforcement officers and security guards. Also, revolvers are still common in the American private sector as defensive and sporting/hunting firearms. Famous police and military revolvers include the Webley, the Colt Single Action Army, the Colt Police Special, the Smith & Wesson Model 36, the Smith & Wesson Model 10, the Smith & Wesson 1917, the Smith & Wesson Model 3, and the Nagant M1895.

SAMUEL COLT

Samuel Colt (July 19, 1814 – January 10, 1862) was an American inventor, industrialist, businessman, and hunter. He founded Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company (today Colt's Manufacturing Company) and made the mass production of the revolver commercially viable.

Samuel Colt was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of Sarah and Christopher Colt (1777–1850), a farmer who had moved his family to the city after he became a businessman. His maternal grandfather, Major John Caldwell, had been an officer in the Continental Army; one of Colt's earliest possessions was John's flintlock pistol.

At age 11, Colt was indentured to a farmer in Glastonbury, where he did chores and attended school. Here he was introduced to the Compendium of Knowledge, a scientific encyclopedia that he preferred to read rather than his Bible studies. Its articles on Robert Fulton and gunpowder motivated Colt throughout his life. He discovered that other inventors in the Compendium had accomplished things that were once deemed impossible, and he wanted to do the same. Later, after hearing soldiers talk about the

2 success of the double-barreled rifle and the impossibility of a gun that could shoot five or six times without reloading, Colt decided that he would create the "impossible gun".

In 1829, at the age of 15, Colt began working in his father's textile plant in Ware, Massachusetts, where he had access to tools, materials, and the factory workers' expertise. Following the encyclopedia, Samuel built a homemade galvanic cell and advertised as a Fourth of July event in that year that he would blow up a raft on Ware Pond using underwater explosives; although the raft was missed, the explosion was still impressive.

Sent to boarding school, he amused his classmates with pyrotechnics. In 1830, a July 4 accident caused a fire that ended his schooling, and his father sent him off to learn the seaman's trade. On a voyage to Calcutta, he noticed that regardless of which way the ship's wheel was spun, each spoke always came in direct line with a clutch that could be set to hold it. He later said that this gave him the idea for the revolver.

On the ship, Colt made a wooden model of a pepperbox revolver out of scrap wood. It differed from other pepperbox revolvers at the time in that it would allow the shooter to rotate the cylinder by the action of cocking the hammer with an attached pawl turning the cylinder which is then locked firmly in alignment with one of the barrels by a bolt, a great improvement over the pepperbox designs which required rotating the barrels by hand and hoping for proper indexing and alignment.

When Colt returned to the United States in 1832, he went back to work for his father, who financed the production of two guns, a rifle and a pistol. The first completed pistol exploded when it was fired, but the rifle performed well. His father would not finance any further development, so Samuel improved his public speaking skills to earn a living.

He worked out an arrangement with a gunsmith to build his guns, and by 1835 he was ready to patent his revolver.

Colt formed a company to produce the revolvers, but struggled to find a market. He sold some to soldiers in Florida fighting Seminole Indians there. But in 1843, the company was out of business.

Later Success

Captain Samuel Walker of the Texas Rangers had acquired some of the first Colt revolvers produced during the Seminole War and saw first-hand their effective use as his 15-man unit defeated a larger force of 70 Comanche in Texas. Walker wanted to order Colt revolvers for use by the Rangers in the Mexican-American War, and traveled

3 to New York City in search of Colt. He met Colt in a gunsmith's shop on January 4, 1847, and placed an order for 1,000 revolvers. Walker asked for a few changes; the new revolvers would have to hold 6 shots instead of 5, have enough power to kill either a man or a horse with a single shot and be quicker to reload.

The large order allowed Colt to establish a new firearm business. Colt hired Eli Whitney Blake, who was established in the arms business, to make his guns. Colt used his prototype and Walker's improvements as the basis for a new design. From this new design, Blake produced the first thousand-piece order known as the Colt Walker. The company then received an order for a thousand more; Colt took a share of the profits at $10 per pistol for both orders.

With the money he made from the sales of the Walkers and a loan from his cousin, banker Elisha Colt, Colt bought the machinery and tooling from Blake to build his own factory: Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company factory at Hartford. The first revolving-breech pistols made at the factory were called "Whitneyville-Hartford- Dragoons" and became so popular that the word "Colt" was often used as a generic term for the revolver.

Marketing Techniques

Besides being used in the war with Mexico, Colt's revolvers were employed as a sidearm by both civilians and soldiers. Colt's revolvers were a key tool in the westward expansion. A revolver which could fire six times without reloading helped soldiers and settlers fend off larger forces which were not armed in the same way.

In 1848, Colt introduced smaller versions of his pistols known as Baby Dragoons that were made for civilian use. In 1850 General Sam Houston and General Thomas Jefferson Rusk lobbied Secretary of War William Marcy and President James K. Polk to adopt Colt's revolvers for the U.S. military. Rusk testified: "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."

Lt. Bedley McDonald, who served under Walker when Walker was killed in Mexico, stated that 30 Rangers used Colt's revolvers to keep 500 Mexicans in check. The gun became the standard sidearm for U.S. military officers and proved popular among civilian buyers. After the testimony by Houston and Rusk, the next issue became how quickly Colt could supply the military. Ever the opportunist, when the War with Mexico was over, Colt sent agents south of the border to procure sales from the Mexican government.

4 When foreign heads of state would not grant him an audience, as he was only a private citizen, Colt persuaded the governor of the state of Connecticut make him a lieutenant colonel and aide-de-camp in the state militia. With this rank, he toured Europe again to promote his revolvers.

He used marketing techniques which were innovative at the time. He frequently gave custom engraved versions of his revolvers to heads of state, military officers, and personalities such as Giuseppe Garibaldi, King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy, and Hungarian freedom fighter Lajos Kossuth.

Colt commissioned western artist George Catlin to produce a series of paintings depicting exotic scenes in which a Colt weapon was prominently used against Indians, wild animals, or bandits in the earliest form of "product placement". He placed numerous advertisements in the same newspapers. Lastly, he hired authors to write stories about his guns for magazines and travel guides. One of Colt's biggest acts of self-promotion was the payment to the publishers of United States Magazine $1,120 ($61,439 by 1999 standards) to run a 29-page fully illustrated story showing the inner workings of his factory.

After his revolvers had gained acceptance, Colt looked for unsolicited news stories containing mention of his guns that he could excerpt and reprint. He 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.

Many of the revolvers Colt gave away as "gifts" had inscriptions such as "Compliments of Col. Colt" or "From the Inventor" engraved on the back straps. Later versions contained his entire signature which was used in many of his advertisements as a centerpiece, using his celebrity to guarantee the performance of his weapons. Colt eventually secured a trademark for his signature.

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