7 The 100 Most Influential Inventors of All Time 7the principle of the revolving chamber was not used
successfully to produce a practical weapon until Colt
patented his version.
When Colt was a young seaman, he carved a wooden
model of a revolver, and years later he perfected a working
version that was patented in England and France in 1835
and in the United States the following year. In the frame
of this weapon was a revolving cylinder drilled with several
chambers (usually five or six), into which powder and
ball (or combustible paper cartridges containing powder
and ball) were loaded from the front. In the rear of each
chamber a percussion cap was placed over a hollow nipple
that directed the jet of flame to the powder when the cap
was struck by the hammer. This type of revolver was
eventually called “cap-and-ball.” Where earlier revolvers
required the shooter to line up a chamber with the barrel
and cock the hammer in separate steps, Colt devised a
single-action mechanical linkage that rotated the cylinder
as the hammer was cocked with the thumb.
Colt’s single-barreled pistols and rifles were slow to gain
acceptance, and a company that formed to manufacture
them in Paterson, N.J., failed in 1842. The following year
he devised an electrically discharged naval mine, the first
device using a remotely controlled explosive, and he also
conducted a telegraph business that utilized the first
underwater cable.
Word from military units that Colt’s multi-shot weapons
had been effective against Indians in Florida and Texas
prompted a government order for 1,000 pistols during the
Mexican War, and Colt resumed firearms manufacture in
- In 1855 he opened the world’s largest private armoury,
the Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company, on the
banks of the Connecticut River in Hartford. Assisted by
Eli Whitney, Jr., he developed beyond any industrialist
before him the manufacture of interchangeable parts and