7 Samuel Colt 7

the production line, and he also applied progressive ideas
concerning employee welfare. Colt dominated the manu-
facture of revolvers until the expiration of his U.S. patent
in 1857; his invention made him a wealthy man. His firm
produced the pistols most widely used during the American
Civil War. Its six-shot, single-action .45-calibre Single
Action Army Model 1873, a breech-loading revolver using
metallic cartridges, became the most famous sidearm of
the West.

Richard J. Gatling

(b. Sept. 12, 1818, Maney’s Neck, N.C., U.S.—d. Feb. 26, 1903, New
York, N.Y.)

A

merican inventor Richard Jordan Gatling is best known
for his invention of the Gatling gun, a crank-operated,
multibarrel machine gun, which he patented in 1862.
Gatling’s career as an inventor began when he assisted
his father in the construction and perfecting of machines
for sowing cotton seeds and for thinning cotton plants. In
1839 he perfected a practical screw propeller for steam-
boats, only to find that a patent had been granted to John
Ericsson for a similar invention a few months earlier. He
established himself in St. Louis, Mo., in 1844, and, taking
the cotton-sowing machine as a basis, he adapted it for
sowing rice, wheat, and other grains. The introduction of
these machines did much to revolutionize the agricultural
system in the country.
Becoming interested in the study of medicine during
an attack of smallpox, Gatling completed a course at the
Ohio Medical College in 1850. In the same year, he invented
a hemp-breaking machine, and in 1857 a steam plow. At the
outbreak of the American Civil War he devoted himself at
once to the perfecting of firearms. In 1861 he conceived
the idea of the rapid-fire machine gun that is associated