Samuel Colt

Samuel Colt (1814 to 1862) was an American inventor, industrialist and businessman who established Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company and made the mass production of revolvers commercially viable. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, he conceived the revolver on a voyage to Calcutta as a teenager and financed his early work by touring with nitrous oxide demonstrations. His first company, the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company of Paterson, New Jersey, chartered in 1836, failed by 1843, but an 1847 order of 1,000 revolvers from the Texas Rangers let him build a new factory at Hartford, which supplied arms to both sides in the Civil War. He pursued interchangeable parts and machine production, and was also a pioneer of advertising, celebrity endorsement and corporate gifts. When he died he was one of the wealthiest men in the United States.