Our exam are finally over, and we are working full throttle to improve our online presence… (particularly through SaifulSham.com of course) Heh, don’t mention the exam, ;) soe papers are answerable and some are not that student-friendly, as always… =) Now let us continue with the story about a revolver…

Samuel Colt was even more interested in guns than most boys of early-19th-century America. But the firearms industry in America wasn’t very interested in a newfangled weapon called a revolver.

The son of a textile manufacturer, Mr. Colt became a merchant seaman at the age of 15. On a trip to India, he saw something he had never encountered before: a gun that could fire more than one bullet without reloading. On the ship back to the U.S., Mr. Colt began whittling an improved model of such a gun using a chisel and jackknife. In 1831, the 18-year-old Mr. Colt engaged a gunsmith to build real samples of his revolver. But without money or a job, he had to give up on the project and go back to work for his father.

Eventually, Mr. Colt raised enough money to hire machinists to fabricate his pistols, and in 1836 he patented his revolving cartridge firearm and set up a factory to produce them. But there were few buyers. The Army Ordnance Department and most American gun makers were satisfied with their single-shot muskets and pistols. They thought Colt’s revolver was unreliable and overly complicated. The U.S. government bought a few of Mr. Colt’s guns, but not enough to keep his company, the Patent Arms Manufacturing Co., in business. In 1842, it closed.

But a few military officers, among them Gen. Sam Houston, who were fighting in the American West, found that the Colt revolver was very useful in battles against superior numbers. Gradually, the army began ordering some of Colt’s firearms, and within another decade Mr. Colt was a millionaire. He wrote about his frustrations as an inventor in a (poorly spelled) letter to Gen. Houston:

“I am truly pleased to lern…that your influance unasked for by a poor devil of an inventor has from your own sense of right been employed to du away the prejudice heretofore existing among men who have the power to promote or crush at pleasure all improvements in Fire arms for military purposes.”

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