As History.com notes, on this
day in 1847 Samuel Colt first sold his revolvers to the U.S. government.
Samuel Colt rescues the
future of his faltering gun company by winning a contract to provide the U.S.
government with 1,000 of his .44 caliber revolvers.
Before Colt began
mass-producing his popular revolvers in 1847, handguns had not played a
significant role in the history of either the American West or the nation as a
whole. Expensive and inaccurate, short-barreled handguns were impractical for
the majority of Americans, though a handful of elite still insisted on using
dueling pistols to solve disputes in highly formalized combat. When choosing a
practical weapon for self-defense and close-quarter fighting, most Americans
preferred knives, and western pioneers especially favored the deadly and
versatile Bowie knife.
That began to change when
Samuel Colt patented his percussion-repeating revolver in 1836. The heart of
Colt’s invention was a mechanism that combined a single rifled barrel with a
revolving chamber that held five or six shots. When the weapon was cocked for
firing, the chamber revolved automatically to bring the next shot into line
with the barrel.
… Yet most cowboys, gamblers,
and gunslingers could never have afforded such a revolver if not for the de
facto subsidy the federal government provided to Colt by purchasing his
revolvers in such great quantities. After the first batch of revolvers proved popular
with soldiers, the federal government became one of Colt’s biggest customers,
providing him with the much-needed capital to improve his production
facilities.
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piece via the below link:
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