Samuel Colt – 1814-1862

Colt was serving as a sailor when, to pass the time, he whittled a wooden model of handgun he later perfected as a revolver. His first practical design was patented in England and France in 1835 and in the United States in 1836. The new design was slow to catch on, and Colt’s first factory failed in 1842, but after the U.S. government ordered 1,000 of the weapons for use in the U.S.-Mexican War, Colt reestablished his business and became the manufacturer of the most famous handgun in America—the “gun that tamed the West.”