Samuel Colt was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1814 and prized his grandfather’s Revolutionary War flintlock. An encyclopedia called the Compendium of Knowledge introduced him to Robert Fulton and the chemistry of gunpowder. After he started a fire with pyrotechnics at boarding school, his father sent him to sea on the Corvo, bound for Calcutta, where watching the ship’s capstan and its ratchet and pawl gave him the idea for a rotating, locking cylinder, which he carved in wood. To fund prototypes he toured as the Celebrated Dr. Coult, dosing volunteers with nitrous oxide and staging Dante-themed shows with sculptor Hiram Powers. He won a U.S. patent in 1836 and opened the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company in Paterson, New Jersey.
Paterson failed by late 1843, hit by the Panic of 1837, a Militia Act of 1808 that blocked state purchases, and Colt’s lavish spending. He then made tar-coated waterproof cable for Samuel Morse and built underwater mines, which John Quincy Adams condemned as unfair warfare. In 1847 Texas Ranger Captain Samuel Walker ordered 1,000 heavy six-shooters, built with Eli Whitney III, and the profits funded the Hartford armory. With Elijah K. Root’s jigs and fixtures, the work was 80 percent machine-made. Colt rejected Rollin White’s bored-through cylinder, which Smith & Wesson licensed. He sold to North and South before the Civil War and died of gout in January 1862 at 47, leaving about $15 million.
- He housed workers in Coltsville, a village modeled on a European town to attract skilled immigrants.
- He paid artist George Catlin to paint Western scenes with Colt revolvers in the heroes’ hands.
- He gave engraved revolvers to the Ottoman Sultan and the Tsar while telling each that the other was buying in bulk.
- He paid a magazine over $1,000 for a 29-page illustrated article on his factory presented as news.
- His will provided for Samuel Caldwell Colt, called a nephew, whom historians believe was his son by Caroline Henshaw.
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