A brilliant inventor and forward thinker, Samuel Colt staked his financial future on the potential for the sales of his firearms. Although he experienced failure on more than one occasion, his company rose to prominence and the name Colt is synonymous with firearms today.

Introduction

Samuel Colt was familiar with failure, but he never grew accustomed to it. Colt was an inventor, a salesman, a showman, a man of vision. He conceived the idea of the revolver, a handgun that could be fired multiple times without reloading, and through tireless perseverance made it a reality.

The year 2015 marks the 180th anniversary of Colt’s first patent for a firearm with a revolving cylinder and the 160th anniversary of the enterprise originally named Colt’s Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company. During that time, Colt and the succession of firms that continue to bear his name have produced iconic revolvers and rifles that have done nothing less than shape the course of history. Among these are the first Colt Paterson revolver in 1836, the Colt Single Action Army of 1873, popularly known as the Peacemaker and the “Gun that won the West,” the Model 1911 pistol, and the M16 assault rifle, emblematic of the American military experience in Vietnam.

Through prosperous times and periods of economic adversity, Colt has endured—and it all began with the inquisitive mind of a young man driven to succeed. Samuel Colt was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on July 19, 1814, the son of Christopher Colt, a farmer who later owned a small textile manufacturing facility, and Sarah Caldwell Colt, who died of tuberculosis when he was only six years old. Three other siblings died young, and the Colt children were cared for by Samuel’s aunt, Lucretia Colt Price, and later his stepmother, Olivia Sargeant, with whom Christopher Colt fathered three more children.

From his earliest childhood, Sam Colt possessed a natural curiosity. He was said to have taken small machinery apart to peer at the internal workings, while the legend that surrounds his extraordinary life asserts that a book,The Compendium of Knowledge, fired his imagination as he read stories of scientists and inventors whose discoveries and contributions to advancing technology changed the world.

This early advertisement for the Colt Patent Repeating Pistol is lavishly illustrated with period scenes of the revolver in action and a description of the ease with which it could be maintained.

Sam attended school regularly, and at the age of 11 he went to work for a farmer in Glastonbury, Connecticut. He also worked in his father’s textile factory. By the time he was 16, his father had enrolled him at Amherst Academy in Massachusetts, where he learned navigation and tinkered with fireworks and explosives. Apparently, an ill-conceived demonstration of the latter resulted in his expulsion in the summer of 1830.

Although some of the tales of Colt’s early years may be apocryphal or embellished, they remain entertaining. His maternal grandfather, Major John Caldwell, had served in the Continental Army, and the officer