Samuel Colt (; July 19, 1814 – January 10, 1862) was an American inventor, industrialist, and businessman who established Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company and made the mass production of revolvers commercially viable.
Colt's first two business ventures were producing firearms in Paterson, New Jersey, and making underwater mines. His business expanded rapidly after 1847, when the Texas Rangers ordered 1,000 revolvers during the American war with Mexico. During the American Civil War, his factory in Hartford supplied firearms both to the North and the South. Later, his firearms were used widely during the settling of the western frontier. When Colt died in 1862, he was one of the wealthiest men in the United States.
Colt's manufacturing methods were at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution. His use of interchangeable parts helped him become one of the first to make efficient use of the assembly line manufacturing process. Moreover, his innovative use of art, celebrity endorsements, and corporate gifts to promote his wares made him a pioneer in advertising, product placement, and mass marketing.
Early years (1814–1835)
Samuel Colt was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of Christopher Colt (1780–1850), a farmer who had moved his family to the city after he became a businessman, and Sarah (née Caldwell). His maternal grandfather, Major John Caldwell, had been an officer in the Continental Army; one of Colt's earliest possessions was John's flintlock pistol. Colt's mother died from tuberculosis when Colt was six years old, and his father married Olivia Sargeant two years later. Colt had three sisters, one of whom died during her childhood. His oldest sister, Margaret, died of tuberculosis at age 19, and the other, Sarah Ann, later died by suicide. One brother, James, became a lawyer; another, Christopher, was a textile merchant. A third brother, John C. Colt, a man of many occupations, was convicted of an 1841 murder and died by suicide on the day he was to be executed.
At age 11, Colt was indentured to a farmer in Glastonbury, where he did chores and attended school. Here he was introduced to the Compendium of Knowledge, a scientific encyclopedia that he preferred to read rather than his Bible studies. Its articles about Robert Fulton and gunpowder motivated Colt throughout his life. He discovered that other inventors in the Compendium had accomplished feats that were once deemed impossible, and he wanted to do the same. Later, after hearing soldiers talk about the success of the double-barreled rifle and the impossibility of a gun that could shoot five or six times without reloading, Colt decided that he would create the "impossible gun".
In 1829, at the age of 15, Colt began working in his father's textile plant in Ware, Massachusetts, where he had access to tools, materials, and the factory workers' expertise. Using what he learned from the Compendium, Samuel built a homemade galvanic cell, and advertised that at a Fourth of July event that year that he would explode a raft on Ware Pond using underwater explosives; although the raft was missed, the explosion was still impressive. Sent to boarding school, he amused his classmates with pyrotechnics. In 1830, a July 4 accident caused a fire that ended his schooling, and his father sent him away to learn the seaman's trade. On the Corvo, Colt made a wooden model of a pepperbox revolver out of scrap wood.
When Colt returned to the United States in 1832, he resumed working for his father, who financed the production of two guns, a rifle and a pistol. The first completed pistol exploded when it was fired, but the rifle performed well. His father would not finance any further development, so Samuel needed to find a way to pay for the development of his ideas. He had learned about nitrous oxide (laughing gas) from the chemist at his father's textile plant, so he took a portable laboratory on tour and earned a living performing laughing gas demonstrations across the United States and Canada, calling himself as "the Celebrated Dr. Colt of New-York, London and Calcutta". Colt thought of himself as a man of science and believed if he could enlighten people about a new idea like nitrous oxide, he could in turn make people more receptive to his new idea concerning a revolver. He started his lectures on street corners and soon worked his way up to lecture halls and museums. As ticket sales declined, Colt realized that "serious" museum lectures were not what the people wanted to pay for; it was dramatic stories of salvation and redemption the public craved. While visiting his brother John in Cincinnati, he partnered with sculptor Hiram Powers for his demonstrations with a theme based on The Divine Comedy. Powers made detailed wax sculptures and paintings based on demons, centaurs, and mummies from Dante's work. Colt constructed fireworks for the finale of the show, which was a success. According to Colt historian Robert Lawrence Wilson, the "lectures launched Colt's celebrated career as a pioneer Madison Avenue-style pitchman". His public speaking skills were so prized that he was thought to be a doctor and was pressed into service to cure an apparent cholera epidemic aboard a riverboat by giving stricken passengers a dose of nitrous oxide.
Colt's early revolver (1835–1843)
thumb|left|upright|Portrait of Col. Samuel Colt, engraving by [[George Catlin after a painting by Charles Loring Elliott (Wadsworth Atheneum), Hartford.]]
Colt's trip to the United Kingdom had been preceded by a similar visit by Elisha Collier, a Bostonian who had patented a revolving flintlock there that achieved great popularity. Despite the reluctance of English officials to issue a patent to Colt, no fault could be found with the gun and he was issued his first patent (number 6909). Upon his return to America, he applied for his U.S. patent for a "revolving gun"; he was granted the patent on February 25, 1836 (later numbered 9430X). This instrument and patent number 1304, dated August 29, 1836, protected the basic principles of his revolving-breech loading, folding trigger firearm named the Colt Paterson.
With a loan from his cousin Dudley Selden and letters of recommendation from Ellsworth, Colt formed a corporation of venture capitalists in 1836 to bring his idea to market. With the help of the political connections of these venture capitalists, the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company of Paterson, New Jersey, was chartered by the New Jersey legislature on March 5, 1836. Colt was given a royalty for each gun sold in exchange for his share of patent rights, and it was stipulated that rights would be returned to Colt if the company disbanded.
Colt never claimed to have invented the revolver; his design was a more practical adaption of Collier's earlier revolving flintlock, incorporating a locking bolt to keep the cylinder aligned with the barrel. This is shown in an 1836 letter that Colt wrote to his father in which he said: