Samuel Colt

Samuel Colt
– Detail from the Connecticut State Library, State Archives, PG 460, Colt Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company

Samuel Colt (1814-1862)

Hartford native Samuel Colt was an inventor and industrialist who made his fortune in the gun business. Founder of the Colt Manufacturing Company, he revolutionized manufacturing by patenting firearms with interchangeable parts and creating an assembly line on which to make them. Colt firearms figured in many of the nation’s wars, and at the start of the Civil War both the Union and the Confederacy purchased firearms from the Hartford businessman. Sam Colt died in 1862 in his native city. The factory complex and grounds of the Colt Manufacturing Company are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and in 2006 Samuel Colt was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

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View of the Colt Factory from Dutch Point

The Colt Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company

Samuel Colt, the man who revolutionized firearms manufacturing in the United States, was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on July 19, 1814. …[more]

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“The Wadsworth Atheneum.” 2017. https://www.thewadsworth.org/.
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Colt, Samuel. 1850. “Broadside: Colt’s Patent Repeating Pistols, Army, Navy, and Pocket Sizes.” http://hdl.handle.net/11134/40002:20781.
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“The Fire At Colt’s Armory.” 1864. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1864/02/07/news/fire-colt-s-armory-particulars-conflagration-loss-nearly-2000000-900-men-thrown.html (March 9, 2012).
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Rohan, Jack. 1935. Yankee Arms Maker; the Incredible Career of Samuel Colt. New York; and London: Harper & Brothers.