Firearm Factory of the Month: Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Co.

This story involves four factories, three Samuels and many inventions.

To tell the story of Colt Firearms we need to start with the man who made the revolver famous.

Samuel Colt was born in Hartford Connecticut in 1814, his maternal grandfather was John Caldwell, a Major in the Continental Army. Colt had four brothers and three sisters.

He lost his mother at the age of six to Tuberculosis, later he lost a sister to the same disease. One of his sisters committed suicide and one of his brothers did the same, on the day he was to be executed for murder.

Sam's two favorite possessions as a child was his grandfather's pistol (used in the Revolution) and a scientific encyclopedia called "The Compendium of Knowledge". Sam saw himself someday inventing something that would end up in such a book.

His desire for this led him to experiment with homemade gunpowder recipes and on several 4th of July celebrations he would blow stuff up in front of crowds. One such event led him to be expelled from school and set him on his path to discovery.

In 1832 at the age of 18 his father sent him to work on a ship, to learn to be a sailor.

During his travels he heard stories from former soldiers about the wonderous double barrel rifle, and how great it would be if someone could invent a firearm that could fire five or six times without reloading. This sounded like a great challenge to Colt. Later while watching the ship's capstan/windlass winch ratcheting mechanism work, he had the idea for a revolving cylinder which would use the same type of mechanism to advance the cylinder.

Colt made a wooden version of his idea and showed it to his father upon his return. His Father owned a textile mill and agreed to finance some prototypes. One thing to note, a revolver, known as the "Pepperbox", had been invented some years earlier, however these guns had to have the barrels rotated manually by the shooter to align the next barrel with the hammer. Colt's invention was not the revolver itself, but the mechanism that automated it. 

Colt made a couple of attempts to build his gun but failed in producing something that actually worked. In the process he did learn how NOT to build a revolver......which is a success in its own.

Colt then toured as a showman, "the celebrated Dr. Coult of New York, London and Calcutta" He would perform experiments with nitrous oxide, helium and other scientific items (probably learned in his book). The ticket sales garnered Colt enough money to get his gun company off the ground.

Colt secured additional funds via investors and hired a gunsmith by the name of John Pearson. The concept was changed from an automated rotating Pepperbox to a revolver with a solitary, solid barrel and a rotating cylinder.

By 1835 his prototype was ready, and Colt began applying for patents. He started in Europe as an invention with a prior U.S. patent could disqualify the item from getting a patent there.

Colt's 1835 prototype

With patents in hand or pending, Colt sought investors everywhere he could. He ended up selling too much stock, he wouldn't be the majority shareholder in his new company. One March 5th, 1836, the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company of Patterson New Jersey was incorporated.

They built a factory in an area already occupied by many other mills, along the banks of the Passaic River, just downstream of the Great Falls. The river provided waterpower for the machinery as electricity had yet to be harnessed by man.

The Patent Arms Manufacturing factory, it is the one with the bell tower on the right in the photo below.

Colt would employ a couple of new ideas at the factory, one was the use of interchangeable parts, invented by an American Gunsmith years earlier, the second was an assembly line, where one person would have one or two parts to install, then pass the gun onto the next person. Colt probably did not invent this idea, but he was one of the first to make practical use of it.

1837 was a bad year, there was a downturn in the economy and many investors wanted out. The factory had produced over 1000 pistols, but had yet to sell very many by 1838. Some guns did get sold to the US Army and some state militias, but not enough to save the company. One of the guns did get into the hands of a Texas Ranger, but that part of the story comes a little later.

The Colt Patterson Revolver

With Colt's company going under, he turned his efforts to one of his other inventions, underwater explosives. During his experiments of his youth, he had created waterproof detonators.

Colt teamed up with Samuel Morse (of telegraph fame) to build waterproof cable for telegraphs as well as explosives. He also built mines for defending harbors. His mines were deemed "an unchristian contraption" and "not fair in honest warfare" by John Quincy Adams and thus no contracts came. I guess JQA hadn't heard the phrase, "All is fair in love and war"?

During this time Colt worked on another idea, a self-contained cartridge. We don't know if Colt was the first to come up with the idea, but like all ideas, someone needed to work toward perfecting them.

Colt also worked with a gunsmith in New York to perfect his revolver, removing the folding trigger and adding a trigger guard.

The Patterson factory was sold sometime around 1842 and used for various manufacturing concerns for many years before being abandoned in 1983. 

That Texas Ranger who had earlier received a Patterson revolver went in search of Colt to order 1000 pistols for the Mexican-American War. His name was Samuel Walker. Walker had some demands though, among other things he wanted were a larger caliber, he wanted his gun to be a .44. Why that is, we may never know.

On January 4th, 1847, in New York City, the two Sams made a deal.

Colt secured funding to build the pistols and hired Eli Whitney Blake (nephew of Eli Whitney, inventor of the Cotton Gin). Blake had a gun factory in rural area north of New Haven Connecticut. 

Changes were made per Walker's request and 1000 pistols were delivered. An additional 100 pistols were produced for civilian sales.

These guns became known as the "Colt Walker" and were the most powerful handgun in the world until the .357 Magnum was introduced in 1935. They are also known as the grandfather of the .44 Magnum that would come along 100 years later.

After delivery, another 1000 pistols were ordered. Colt then used the money, along with a loan, to buy Blake's machinery as well as some marshland along the Connecticut river in Hartford. He then began building a factory. Again, the water would provide power for the machinery. The year was 1848.

Colt worked on getting an extension on his patent and was successful, he then sued several gun makers for violations, which helped keep his new business afloat.

He was also kept busy with orders from Europe, tensions caused an "arms race". As technology advanced the powers in Europe sought to get the latest arms. In 1851 he built a factory in London to satisfy this European demand.

The Hartford factory expanded in 1855 to a massive complex. The factory had the latest machinery, some invented by Colt himself. Interchangeable parts, assembly line and cross training led to faster production times and lower production costs.

In addition, Colt began paying for his employees' education and encouraged them to invent new items for modern society. 

Two of his former employees, named Pratt & Whitney started a machine tool company that still exists, now days they build jet engines.

Colt was distracted by his new wife, building her a mansion and starting a family, that he got lax on his improvements. One such improvement was a bored through cylinder that allowed for use of self-contained cartridges, which were being perfected at the time. One of Colt's employees named Rollin White, left the company in December of 1855 and filed for patents ahead of Colt, stabbing his employer in the back, he even went further and made a deal with rival gun maker Smith & Wesson, giving them exclusive rights to the patent.

When the Civil War broke out Colt was selling guns to both sides of the conflict, at the time it was not illegal to do so, although that changed later in the war. Colt was seen by some as a traitor to the cause. Colt stopped selling guns to the Confederacy. In addition, Colt was commissioned as a colonel by the State of Connecticut on May 16th, 1861. Colt was now a real colonel and could use the title freely.

Samuel Colt passed away on January 10th, 1862, from complications of gout. He did not live to see the end of the war. His wealth was estimated to be about $15 million ($440 Million in today's dollars). Keep in mind this was 11 years before Colt's company introduced one of the most iconic firearms ever, the Single Action Army.

On February 4th, 1864, Colt's factory was burned to the ground by a fire. It is believed it was the work of Confederate terrorists, but the actual cause was never proven.

Colt's family decided to rebuild and the new building was completed in 1867.

This new factory saw the development of the Single Action Army, the Lightning (revolver and rifle), the New Service, the 1911, the Python, the Detective Special and many more.

The factory was closed in 1994, production of Colt products was moved to another location and continues to this day.

Spaces in the old factory were leased to different enterprises, including United States Fire Arms which made a copy of the Colt Single Action Army, said to be even better quality than the originals.

USFA went out of business after a bizarre decision to quit producing their good selling revolvers in favor of a plastic .22LR "Zip Gun".

What Remains

The Company known as Colt, has had many different names and gone through numerous bankruptcies and reorganizations is still in business, although for how long no one knows.

In the last decade the company has reintroduced the Cobra, Python, Anaconda and other classic revolvers. In 2021 CZ purchased the company and intends to continue production.

The Colt Hartford factory, rebuilt in 1867 was designated a National Historic Site in 2015, which will protect the site into perpetuity.

The factory has become a construction site again as renovations to change the property into work lofts, apartments and commercial space are being performed.

Note the USFA banner on the front of the building...

 

The ruins of the Patterson New Jersey Factory are still around.

Resources:



https://americanhandgunner.com/our-experts/the-sixgunner/the-first-big-bore-sixguns/


https://www.courant.com/business/hc-xpm-2012-08-19-hc-colt-timeline-20120817-story.html

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Colt_Armory


http://www.hartfordinfo.org/issues/wsd/history/final_coltsville_report.pdf

https://historydaysamuelcolt-lo-aw.weebly.com/the-life-of-samuel-colt.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt_Armory


https://www.ammoland.com/2018/10/colt-factory-photo-tour-1942-ammoland-news-image-vault/



http://www.discovercolt.com/


https://www.registercitizen.com/news/article/Mystery-of-150-year-old-Colt-Amory-fire-explored-11979454.php

https://scholarscollaborative.org/Hartford/infrastructure/the-colt-building/


https://connecticuthistory.org/the-colt-patent-fire-arms-manufacturing-company/


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt%27s_Manufacturing_Company