How Samuel Colt Won the West With One Invention

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star, and the American people, coming to you from the city where the West begins, Fort Worth, Texas. There’s an Old West adage that goes something like this: “God created man, and Abe Lincoln freed them, but Sam Coult made them equal.” Colt revolver.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Has been called the Peacemaker, the Equalizer, and the gun that won the West. Phil Anschutz writes in Out Where the West Begins, “Samuel Colt’s life was the American story written in capital letters.” Here’s Greg Henglo with the story of Samuel Colt.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Samuel Colt is born July nineteenth, eighteen fourteen, in Hartford, Connecticut. His first five years of life are spent in privilege because of his father’s business success, but from the age of six to fourteen, Samuel Colt loses his mother and sister to tuberculosis, and then loses a brother and another

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sister to suicide. At eleven, he’s indentured to a farmer. Colt begins reading from the Compendium of Knowledge, a scientific encyclopedia containing biographies of famous inventors. He gains knowledge of practical chemistry and becomes obsessed over fireworks and underwater explosives. Then,

Speaker 2 (01:36):
after one of his fireworks experiments sets a school ablaze, he’s expelled. Here’s William Hosey, author of Colt The Making of an American Legend.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
Sam Colt came from a kind of difficult background. His mother died when he was seven. He didn’t take to his formal studies, but he liked taking things apart and putting them back together again. He also liked explosives. He was kind of a prankster, and it got him in a lot of trouble.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
After his expulsion, Colt’s father enlists his troublesome sixteen-year-old boy as a seaman on a ship that will be sailing halfway around the world to Calcutta, India. His father hopes that the journey will teach his son responsibility and that he will learn a trade as a scenum, but instead, the trip fills Samuel Colt with another idea.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Colt is fascinated by guns and believes there’s a way to make them better. It’s the early nineteenth century. Battles are fought with sabers and single-shot muskets. Here’s Ashley Lebinski, curator at the Cody Firearms Museum in Cody, Wyoming, explain the limited and cumbersome nature of guns at the time.

Speaker 4 (03:04):
You had to load it from the top of the gun, and you took a whole cartridge which was powder, the projectile, and paper, and you would end up putting it down the barrel with a rod. So loading single shotguns weren’t horribly efficient. It would take you about a minute or so to load three shots if you were really good.

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Colt has a revolutionary idea inspired by the giant steering wheel on a ship.

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He sees that the mechanisms that are used to steer and control these ships had ratchets, and when they rotated the wheel that it would cock, and these ratchets would hold it in place.

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Like the ship’s wheel with axles, spokes, a barrel, and handles. Colt notices that regardless of which way the ship’s wheel spins, each spoke always came in direct line with a clutch that could be set to hold it. Colt envisions a firearm with a cylinder that can turn after each shot and lock, and then be fired multiple times while on

Speaker 2 (04:12):
board the ship. Colt carves a wooden prototype of a revolving cylinder mechanism out of scrap wood. This is the beginning of the Revolver. When Colt returns to America, he’s a young man determined to turn his vision into a reality. At an early age, the young entrepreneur developed a hustler streak.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
From eighteen thirty-two to eighteen thirty-six, Colt travels throughout America as Doctor Colt, spelled Coult, as the playbills read, giving demonstrations of the newly discovered nitrous oxide or laughing gas, and, in Out Where the West Begins, Phil Anschutz adds some color:

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Clad in a fashionable coat, in top hat, and surrounded by smoking beakers, wax demons, mummies, and exploding fireworks. Colt persuaded spectators to sniff a bag coated with nitrous oxide. Sam guaranteed his audience a good half hour’s laugh at the resulting spectacle. Colt’s mix of salesmanship with showmanship is

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on par with the likes of P. T. Barnum. While touring the country, Colt goes looking for investors interested in his revolver.

Speaker 5 (05:38):
And your revolver.

Speaker 6 (05:41):
It always keeps you loaded.

Speaker 5 (05:46):
This is going to revolutionize the world.

Speaker 4 (05:50):
He is the consummate salesman. When Sam Colt would come to you and ask for money, he’s so over the top and he’s such a unique personality, it’s going to completely win over whoever he’s asking.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
With the help of wealthy New Jersey relatives and friends, Colt raises two hundred and thirty thousand dollars, the equivalent of over six million today. It begins manufacturing his revolver.

Speaker 6 (06:18):
So, what do you think of mahana something?

Speaker 3 (06:21):
There were bugs at first. You don’t want any chance that if you pull the trigger on a revolver more than one bullet’s going to go off at the same time, or even blow up the cylinder.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
And you’ve been listening to our own Greg Henglo tell the story of Samuel Colt. He grew up early in affluence, but by the ages of six through fourteen, lost his mother, his sister, both of them to TB, lost two more relatives to suicide, and then he’s off on his own. And he didn’t take to formal studies, by the way,

Speaker 1 (06:58):
neither did the Wright brothers. Or there are many innovators and inventors that we tell the stories of in Our American Stories. But my goodness, he loved to take things apart and put him back together. And of course, what we learn also is that he was part engineer, part salesman, part showman, and of course, innovator. When we come back, more of this American story, this classic American story, Samuel

Speaker 1 (07:22):
Colt’s story here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here again, and I’d like to encourage you to subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every story we are here is uploaded there daily, and your support goes a long way to

Speaker 1 (07:44):
keeping the great stories you love from this show coming again. Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast at Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts, and

Speaker 1 (08:09):
we continue with Our American Stories and the story of Samuel Colt. Let’s pick up where we last left off. Here’s our own Greg Henglo.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
Colt improves his design, and in eighteen thirty-six, is awarded a patent to a twenty-eight-caliber, five-shot repeating firearm with a revolving cylinder. It’s called the Colt-Patterson, and it’s like nothing the firearms industry has ever seen. Colt is twenty-three years old, but Colt’s new Revolver

Speaker 2 (08:45):
is proving a tough sell. Lawmen and military are not willing to take a chance in such a new and untested design. In eighteen forty-two, after six years and a production run of five thousand pistols and rifles, Colt declares bankruptcy and liquidates his assets. But two thousand miles

Speaker 2 (09:06):
southwest in the new state of Texas, the Colt Revolver is about to be put to the test. Here’s Doctor Roger McGrath, author of Gunfighters, Highwaymen, and Vigilantes.

Speaker 5 (09:20):
Sam Colt’s first large sale of his revolver went not to the US Army, which rejected the gun outright, but to the Texas Navy. But plagued by lack of funding and political battles, the Texas Navy nearly ceased to exist by eighteen forty-four, and its Colt revolvers then went to

Speaker 5 (09:42):
the Texas Rangers. The Rangers’ first use of the Revolvers came in the Battle of Walkers Creek in June eighteen forty-four. Jack Hayes and fifteen of his Rangers were out scouting for Comanche raiders when the Comanche discovered them.

Speaker 5 (10:03):
The numbers or to the commands, she liking Chief Yellow Wolf led more than seventy Comanche warriors.

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What Yellow Wolf and the…

Speaker 5 (10:11):
Other Comanche didn’t count was the Colt Revolver, and every ranger was arm with two Colts.

Speaker 4 (10:20):
They were used to hearing the one shot go off and then they all scrambled a load, and then the next shot goes off. But imagine then hearing bang bang bang would have been incredibly powerful and something to be incredibly intimidated by.

Speaker 5 (10:41):
After several failed attempts at charging and overwhelming the outnumbered Rangers, the Comanche broke and fled, dropping shields, lances, and bo’s a commands. She Chief said he would never fight the Rangers again because they had a shot for every finger on their hands. On the

Speaker 2 (11:03):
Red right balls. Then, in eighteen forty-six, the Mexican-American War breaks out after the constant border battles between Captain Samuel Walker and his Texas Rangers in the country of Mexico. For Walker and his men, the time it takes to reload a gun is often the difference between

Speaker 2 (11:24):
life and death. For every shot the Mexicans fire with their standard rifles, Walker’s men can fire five. It’s the beginning of a new era in warfare.

Speaker 3 (11:36):
Sam Walker began experimenting with how to use this. It’s like, what do they got? What is this secret weapon? This is something we’ve never seen before.

Speaker 4 (11:48):
You don’t have to have a single shot, you don’t have to load the gun every time you fire. You’ve got something that you can load several rounds in.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
On November thirtieth, eighteen forty-six, Captain Samuel Walker writes Samuel Colt a letter that will change the course of history. That letter reports how the Colt pistol changed the way he and his Rangers fight. With a twenty five thousand dollars US government contract for one thousand pistols that Walker arranged,

Speaker 2 (12:20):
and with the design modifications that Walker suggested—a larger gun with six shots rather than five—Sam Colt re-entered the gun manufacturing business in eighteen forty-seven.

Speaker 3 (12:34):
The Revolver went through the process of user influence in influencing both design and also the practical use of the thing. They tinkered with this.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
Invention, Colt develops a forty-four-caliber, four-pound, nine-ounce Revolver, named the Walker after the man who made it happen. Increase the black powder by sixty grains.

Speaker 6 (13:05):
The barrel to nine inches.

Speaker 4 (13:09):
The Colt Walker is a much heavier gun, heavier caliber than Colt’s original invention, but these Texas Rangers could handle that type of firearm.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
Many consider the Walker the mightiest handgun of its day, with firepower that won’t be matched for ninety years until the release of the three-point-fifty-seven Magnum. Colt’s business soars, and the name Colt becomes synonymous with revolvers.

Speaker 4 (13:43):
Sam Colt created a brand around himself, and so what he was trying to establish there was that he was the guy. He was the brand. When you saw him, you thought success.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
But Colt’s most revolutionary idea isn’t in his new design, it’s in how he puts it together. More than half a century before Henry Ford used mass-production assembly lines in his automobile factories, Colt employed them to produce his revolvers in his enormous Hartford Armory, beginning in the eighteen fifties.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
Using interchangeable parts, Colt’s armory could turn out one hundred and fifty weapons per day by eighteen fifty-six. The mass production allowed Colt to make his weapons more affordable to gun buyers settling in the West. Colt’s mass production achievement is only matched by the Revolver’s quality. Samuel Colt

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is an absolute perfectionist. Americans are also taken with the way in which this pistol of industrialization was itself like a small factory.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
It was a.

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Bullet-firing machine, as opposed to a single-shot instrument. Once Colt perfected the system from mass producing complex metal instruments like firearms, that system was readily adapted to make typewriters, sewing machines, and eventually bicycles, motorcycles, automobiles, cameras, you name it.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
In eighteen forty-nine, as the California Gold Rush begins, Colt develops the legendary eighteen forty Pocket Revolver, the single most successful pistol produced in his lifetime, with three hundred and twenty-five thousand sold by the time of his death.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
Most historians agree that the most serious mistake Colt makes his firing employee, Rollin White, after he presented him with a patent on a new innovation: powder and.

Speaker 6 (15:47):
Ball in the front, primer in the back. Reloading would be much faster.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Up until this time. The shooter poured powder into each of the six cylinder mouths, then push a bullet over the powder, and then load a percussion cap on the rear of the cylinder, making the reloading process cumbersome, to say the least.

Speaker 4 (16:10):
Rollin White came up with this idea for a bored-through cylinder that would allow you to load the firearm from the rear. It’s not something Colt had.

Speaker 6 (16:19):
The far from one shuttle set off every chamber. It’s dangerous.

Speaker 1 (16:27):
And you’ve been listening to our own Greg Henglo tell the story of Samuel Colt, whoever came problems early in the development of this revolver, including a bankruptcy proceeding, proving that there’s rarely a smooth road to success for American entrepreneurs. But soon Colt got his big break, and not from the US Army, not a contract from the Army, but

Speaker 6 (16:56):
By the way, the revolver solved this problem.

Speaker 1 (16:58):
At the time it took to reload this single shotgun. Well,

Speaker 6 (17:02):
It was a life-and-death matter.

Speaker 1 (17:05):
The secret weapon, this revolver that could fire again and again. You didn’t need to reload the gun every time you took a shot.

Speaker 6 (17:15):
It was a.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
Bullet-firing machine, we learned. And it…

Speaker 6 (17:19):
Would change the way we fight.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
There was no mightier handgun until Smith & Wesson came out with a three-point-fifty-seven Magnum. By eighteen fifty-six, Colt was mass-producing these guns, and his mass production talents, well, they would spill out into other products, from sewing machines to just about everything else, and by

Speaker 1 (17:42):
the way, doing it while making quality weapons. When we come back, we’ll find out what happens next in the life of Samuel Colt. Here on Our American Stories. And

Speaker 1 (18:08):
we continue with Our American Stories and the story of Samuel Colt.

Speaker 6 (18:13):
Let’s pick up where we last left off.

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With almost a complete monopoly on the revolver, Colt isn’t ready to take a chance on something new. Here’s Mitt Romney.

Speaker 7 (18:28):
My dad used to say: “There’s nothing as vulnerable as entrenched success. Sometimes of an enterprise feels it has no real competition, it becomes complacent, and ultimately it can get wiped out by a small upstart that comes out with a better…”

Speaker 2 (18:44):
Product fired by Colt. Rollin White takes his groundbreaking idea to two men who intend to be Colt’s biggest rivals, Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson. They jump at White’s patent and gladly pay him a royalty. With this move, one

Speaker 2 (19:05):
of the most iconic names in gun making is born: Smith & Wesson. Samuel Colt built his business on the back of the Mexican-American War. Now is just a drop in the bucket compared to the impact of the Gold Rush in western migration. Then, in the summer of eighteen fifty-six, Colt marries twenty-nine-year-old Elizabeth Hart,

Speaker 2 (19:29):
the daughter of a devoutly Christian and affluent Newport family. But as the eighteen fifties draw to a close, the Southern States begin arming themselves. Colt has been supplying arms to the US military for years, but the military is about to be split in two. It’s time for Samuel

Speaker 2 (19:50):
Colt to decide where his loyalties lie.

Speaker 6 (19:54):
How can I be of service?

Speaker 4 (19:56):
I’m here representing some gentlemen that are dedicated to a cause. When you’re on the outbreak of war, there’s a really difficult problem that arises from firearms manufacturies. And that is the balance between loyalty being a good businessman. In this case, this is a war breaking out in the United States

Speaker 2 (20:17):
between the North and the South. This isn’t America and the other guy, this is their home.

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In eighteen sixty, just one year before the Civil War begins, Colt sells the modern equivalent of more than three million dollars worth of guns to the South. A risky move for a northern businessman, Colt gets labeled a Southern sympathizer and was a traitor.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
Sam Colt got into a lot of problem on the eve of the Civil War because he also was believed to be arming the South, but in fact Colt supplied arms to both sides before the war.

Speaker 6 (20:57):
After the war began, that stopped.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
At the outbreak of the Civil War. Colt doubles the size of his armory, and his factory is operating around the clock. But for Sam Colt, the success he craved and achieved would ironically contribute to his death. On January tenth, eighteen sixty-two, Samuel Colt dies of gout complications at

Speaker 2 (21:32):
the age of forty-seven. By this time, Samuel Colt has made and sold one million guns. His thirty-five-year-old widow, Elizabeth, is left in control of the company, in a personal fortune of fifteen million dollars—the equivalent of over three hundred million today. Elizabeth keeps the

Speaker 2 (21:56):
business running even as the war wages on. After losing four children and a husband…