Colt, Samuel

SUBJECT AREA: Weapons and armour

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b. 19 July 1814 Hartford, Connecticut, USA

d. 10 January 1862 Hartford, Connecticut, USA

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American inventor of the revolver.

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The son of a textile manufacturer, as a youth Colt displayed an interest in chemistry, largely through bleaching and dyeing processes used in his father's business, and lectured to lay audiences on it. In 1832 he took ship as a deckhand on a voyage to India; the concept of the revolver is supposed to have come to him from watching the ship's wheel.

Upon his return to the USA he described the idea to the US Patent Office, but did not register it until four years later, having taken out patents in Britain and France during a visit to Europe in 1835. He formed a company to manufacture his invention, but it failed in 1842. Even so, note had been taken of his weapon, and in 1846, upon the outbreak of the war with Mexico, the US Government placed an order for his revolver that was executed by the Eli Whitney arms factory in his native Hartford. Thereafter Colt set up another company, this time successfully. He also took an interest in other fields, experimenting with a submarine battery and electrically detonated mines, and opened a submarine telegraph between New York and Coney Island in 1843.

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