preview

Samuel Colt: The Most Important In American History

Better Essays

Timothy Philips
1301
Lewellen
8/12/15
Samuel Colt Samuel Colt was a very important person, not just in American history, but world history also. Colt did much more than just make guns, he invented many things and pioneered many of the practices and techniques modern businesses all over the world still use, but he is still remembered today for his most famous invention, the revolver.
Samuel Colt was born on July 19, 1814 in Hartford, Connecticut to a businessman named Christopher Colt and a woman named Sarah Caldwell, whose father was a major in the Revolutionary War . When Colt was six his mother died of tuberculosis, and by age eleven he was indentured. Colt was indentured to a farmer who lived in Glastonbury and began attending school. …show more content…

Coult of New-York, London, and Calcutta”. Colt made money by entertaining people with his portable chemistry lab and let the audience try the now wonder drug, nitrous oxide, better known as “laughing gas”. This chapter of Colt’s life was very important for him, because it was during this time Colt developed excellent public speaking and business skills. Finally after three years of traveling through both the United States and Canada acting like a “man of science”, Colt felt that he had enough money to begin building a legit revolver. By this time it was 1835 and Samuel Colt left to Baltimore, Maryland in search of talented gunsmiths to help him with his new invention. Here he also changed the design of his gun from six rotating barrels to a single, locked barrel with a rotating cylinder. After getting a working prototype of his revolver built, Colt applied for a patent in the United States, but was informed if he received one in America first he would not be able to get patents in different countries. After hearing this Colt decided to cross the Atlantic and get patents for his revolver in Great Britain and France. After receiving his patents from Great Britain and France, Colt returned to the United States and …show more content…

After this holdup, Colt began manufacturing cartridges made out of tin foil rather than common paper which was used at the time. The tin foil cartridges proved to be more reliable than the paper cartridges because the foil prevented the powder inside from getting wet while water soaked right through the paper. Soon Colt had a large contract with the United States government, providing hundreds of thousands of his new tin-foil cartridges. With the money he receive from his cartridges, Colt reinvested his money into the telegraph industry he made the waterproof cable for, and attempted to bring back the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company, but this failed. On January 4, 1847 Colt met with Texas Ranger Captain Samuel Walker. Walker had previously used Colt’s revolvers in the Seminole War in Florida, however he wanted Colt to make a few changes to it. Walker wanted the handgun to be in a larger caliber, hold six rounds instead of five, and be quicker to reload. Colt teamed up with Eli Whitney Blake, who was already recognized in the arms industry, and the two got to work and developed the Colt Walker, named after Captain Walker of the Texas Rangers . Soon after, Colt was back in

Get Access