How Samuel Colt Failed Before Creating His Iconic Revolver

Failure often precedes success

(By John Chester Buttre (1821–1893)[1] — Heritage Auctions, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54738944)

Samuel Colt is one of the most important men in American history. When he died in 1862, he was one of America’s foremost business tycoons and industrialists. His innovative revolver was beloved by soldiers, outlaws, and cowboys alike. Colt’s revolver took part in countless Civil War battles and was wielded by soldiers on both sides of the conflict. Then, it would become the face of the Wild West. Its importance to the history of the American West would vault the Colt revolver into American mythology and popular culture. People at the time whispered that Abraham Lincoln strived to set all men free but that Samuel Colt made them all equal. Today, Colt’s guns, especially his earliest models and military issued makes, are highly sought after by firearm collectors.

Many of these facts are well known. What isn’t well known is the fact that Samuel Colt failed not once but multiple times before he finally struck gold and became a smashing success. Colt’s earliest business ventures were marred with poor decisions, rampant spending, and spotty prototypes. But Colt applied the lessons he learned from failing to the venture that would ultimately succeed.

Colt always had a fascination with firearms. At the age of 11, Colt busied himself by reading the encyclopedia Compendium of Knowledge, where he poured over the articles covering gunpowder. He would ask the adults in his life about the limitations of firearms at the time, and everyone spoke about the inability to fire multiple shots in succession and the lack of reliable double barreled guns. From an extremely young age, Colt made it his life’s goal to create the “impossible gun” that would solve the problems of firearms for good.

Then, at the age of 15, Colt took a long sea voyage on a British brig Corvo (after being expelled from his boarding school for the heavy use of pyrotechnics), where he drew inspiration from the capstans on the deck. It was on the Corvo where Colt whittled his first model of an updated version of the pepperbox revolver.