Mr. Colt

In every good western, whether it’s a book or a film, the bad guy more often than not get’s what’s coming to him in the end. That’s what makes westerns so attractive to me and hundreds of thousands of others. There’s something satisfying about a bully getting humiliated, a thief getting tossed in jail and a murderer being gunned down. I can’t help but think that’s part of what motivated inventor Samuel Colt to patent the revolving-camber pistol. Colt had a rough childhood. His mother died young from tuberculosis, he lost a sister to the same disease, and two of his other siblings committed suicide. At the age of eleven Colt was forced to work for a farmer who treated him cruelly. As soon as he was old enough he ran away. He went to work as a sailor and spent long hours staring at the ship’s wheel. He used this principle to invent a gun that could shoot multiple bullets without reloading. He excelled at both invention and marketing and today would be considered a compulsive workaholic. He struggled with a way to produce his guns cheaply but was forced to find a method of mass production after he received and order from the U.S. government in 1847 for 1,000 revolvers. By the time he died of exhaustion at age forty-seven, Samuel Colt had produced more than 400,000 Colt .45 revolvers. At his funeral in 1862 it was said of the Colt .45 he invented: “God created man, but Sam Colt [the Colt .45] made them all equal.” In 1873 the Colt SAA sold for $17.50. The complete kit with a holster and some ammunition could be covered by a $20 gold piece. The $20 Double Eagle of 1873 contained 0.9675 ounces of pure gold. Today an ounce of gold is about $1,090 and a new Colt SAA can be special ordered from Colt’s custom shop for about $1,500. It is fair to say that the invention of the Colt revolver changed the course of American history. It aided the westward expansion of America and the simplicity and effectiveness of the Colt revolver design is evidenced in the fact that they are still made and used today, both in the armed forces and in the private sector. Many have called the Colt repeating pistol the finest gun ever made. It was referred to as “law and order in six-finger doses.”