Today in Technology History

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February 25
These two drawings are from Colt's 1836 patent.

Exactly 167 years ago, Samuel Colt was granted a U.S. patent for the gun he invented: the revolver.

Colt (1814-1862) apparently found his inspiration at sea. He was a young sailor, about sixteen years old, when he noticed the workings of the helmsman's wheel (or another rotating part) on his ship. The wheel's mechanism led him to imagine a gun with a revolving chamber that could hold several bullets. He quickly whittled a wooden model, and after his stint as a sailor ended he constructed working models of pistols and a rifle based on his "revolver" idea.

He spent time in Europe when he was about twenty years old, and obtained patents on his invention in Britain and France. He then returned to his native land and received his first U.S. patent on February 25, 1836.

In that patent, Colt described "the many advantages in the use of these guns," including especially "the great rapidity in the succession of discharges, which is effected merely by drawing back the hammer and pulling the trigger." Other advantages of the revolver-type firearm were "the facility in loading them," and "the weight and location of the cylinder, which give steadiness to the hand."

Despite those advantages, a decade elapsed before Colt made a profit from his invention. The revolver finally started to catch on in the late 1840s, and in the coming decades Colt revolvers became some of the most important weapons in the American West -- and around the world.

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