Colt's Manufacturing Company
Encyclopedia
Colt's Manufacturing Company (CMC, formerly Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company) is a United States
firearms manufacturer, whose first predecessor corporation was founded in 1836 by Sam Colt. Colt is best known for the engineering, production, and marketing of firearms over the later half of the 19th and the 20th century. Colt's earliest designs played a major role in the popularization of the revolver
and the shift away from earlier single-shot pistols. While Sam Colt did not invent the revolver concept, his designs resulted in the first very successful ones.
The most famous Colt products include the Walker Colt
, Single Action Army or Peacemaker, and the Colt Python
. John Browning
worked for Colt for a time, and came up with a design for a semiautomatic pistol, which debuted as the Colt M1900
pistol and eventually evolved into the Colt M1911 pistol. Though they did not develop it, for a long time Colt was primarily responsible for all M16 rifle
production, as well as of many derivative firearms. The most successful and famous of these are numerous M16 carbines, including the Colt Commando family, and the M4 carbine
.
In 2002, Colt Defense
was split off from Colt's Manufacturing Company. Colt Manufacturing Company now serves the civilian market, while Colt Defense serves the law enforcement, military, and private security markets worldwide.
received a British patent on his improved design for a revolver in 1835, and two U.S. patents in 1836, one on February 25 (later numbered U.S. Patent 9430X) and another on August 29 . That same year, he founded his first corporation for its manufacture, the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company of Paterson, New Jersey, Colt's Patent. This corporation suffered quality problems in production. Making firearms with interchangeable parts
was still rather new (it had reached commercial viability
only about a decade before), and it was not yet easy to replicate across different factories. Interchangeability was not complete in the Paterson works, and traditional gunsmithing techniques did not fill the gap entirely there. The Colt Paterson
revolver found patchy success and failure; some worked well, while others had problems. The United States Marine Corps
and United States Army
reported quality problems with these earliest Colt revolvers. Production had ended at the New Jersey corporation by 1842.
Between 1842 and 1848, Samuel Colt collaborated with the Whitney armory of Whitneyville, Connecticut, which was run by the family of Eli Whitney
(of cotton gin and interchangeability-evangelizing fame). Eli Whitney Jr (born 1820), the son of the cotton-gin-developer patriarch, was the head of the family armory and a successful arms maker and innovator of the era. Colt used a combination of renting the Whitney firm's facilities and subcontracting parts to the firm to continue his pursuit of revolver manufacture.
During the Mexican–American War
(1846–1848), Colt's revolvers found favorability with Texan volunteers (the progenitors of later Texas Rangers
cavalry groups), and they placed an order for 1,000 larger revolvers that became known as the Walker Colt
, ensuring Colt's continuance in manufacturing revolvers. In 1848, Colt was able to start again with a new corporation of his own. He founded the Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company in Hartford, Connecticut.
and ingratiated himself by presenting cased engraved Colt revolvers to such appropriate officials as Britain’s Master General of the Ordnance. At one exhibit Colt disassembled ten guns and reassembled ten guns using different parts from different guns. As the world’s leading proponent of mass production techniques, Colt went on to deliver a lecture on the subject to the Institute of Civil Engineers in London. The membership rewarded his efforts by awarding him theTelford Gold Medal
.
Colt's presence in the British market caused years of acrimony and lawsuits among British arms makers, who doubted the validity of Colt's British patent and the desirability of the American system of manufacturing
. It took many more years and a UK government commission before the point became universally accepted that such manufacture was possible and economical. Colt opened his London plant on the Thames River and began production on January 1, 1853. the English saw Colt’s advanced steampowered machinery as proof of America’s growing position as a leader in modern industrial production. On a tour of the factory, Charles Dickens was so impressed with the facilities that he recorded his favorable comments of Colt's revolvers in an 1852 edition of Household Words
. Most significant, the Colt factory’s machines mass-produced interchangeable parts that could be easily and cheaply put together on assembly lines using standardized patterns and gauges by unskilled labor as opposed to England's top gunmakers.
In 1854 the British Admiralty ordered 4,000 Navy Model Colt revolvers. In 1855 the British Army placed an order for 5,000 of these revolvers for army issue. Despite a following order later in the year for an additional 9,000 revolvers, Colt failed to convince the British to adopt his revolver as the issue sidearm for the army. Colt began to realize that British sales were failing to meet his expectations. Unable to justify the London factory’s expenses, Colt closed the London factory in 1856. Over the next few months his workmen crated and shipped the machinery and unassembled firearms back to America.
(1854–1856), Colt's weapons were used by both sides. In 1855 Colt unveiled new state-of-the-art armories in the Hartford and London factories stocked with the latest machine tool
s (some of which were of Colt's devising), many built by Francis A. Pratt
and Amos Whitney
, who would found the original Pratt & Whitney
toolbuilding
firm a few years later. For example, the Lincoln miller debuted to industry at these armories.
Colt had set up libraries and educational programs within the plants for his employees. Colt's armories
in Hartford were seminal training grounds for several generations of toolmakers
and other machinist
s, who had great influence in other manufacturing efforts of the next half century. Prominent examples included F. Pratt and A. Whitney (as mentioned above); Henry Leland (who would end up at Cadillac and Lincoln); Edward Bullard Sr of the Bullard firm; and, through Pratt & Whitney, Worcester R. Warner and Ambrose Swasey
(of Warner & Swasey
).
In 1860 Colt produced a new revolver model for the United States Army
. This Colt Army Model 1860
appeared just in time for the American Civil War
.
was a boon to firearms manufacturers such as Colt's and the company thrived during the conflict. Sam Colt had carefully developed contacts within the ordnance department signing the very first government contract for 25,000 rifles. Colt's Factory was described as "an industrial palace topped by a blue dome" and powered by a 250-horsepower steam engine. During the American Civil War
Colt had 1,500 employees who produced 150,000 muskets and pistols a year. In 1861 and 1863 the company sold 107,000 of the Colt Army Model 1860
, alone, with production reaching 200,500 by the end of the war in 1865. In 1855 an employee of Colt's, Rollin White
, came up with the idea of having the revolver cylinder bored through to accept metallic cartridges. He took this idea to Colt who flatly rejected it and ended up firing White within a few years. Colt historian RL Wilson has described this as the major blunder of Sam Colt's professional life.
The Civil War made a huge fortune for the company, becoming America's first manufacturing tycoon, but Sam Colt did not live to see the end of it. He died of rheumatic fever on January 10, 1862 and his close friend and firearms engineer, Elisha K. Root
, took over as Colt's company president. On February 4, 1864 a fire destroyed most of the factory including arms, machinery, plans, and factory records. On September1, 1865 Root died leaving the company in the hands of Samuel Colt's brother-in-law, Richard Jarvis
. The company's Vice-president was William B. Franklin
, who recently left the Army at the end of the Civil War. With the Civil War over and no new military contracts Colt's Manufacturing had to lay off over 800 employees.
The company found itself in a precarious situation, the original revolver patents had expired and other companies could produce copies of his designs. Additionally, mettalic cartridge revolvers had been gaining in popularity, but Colt could not produce any because of the Rollin White
patent held by rival, Smith & Wesson
. Likewise, Colt had been so protective of its own patents that other companies were unable to make revolvers similar to their design. As the Rolin white patent was nearing expiration, Colt moved toward developing a metallic cartridge revolver.
In November 1865, Franklin attempted to purchase a license to the Rollin White patent from competitor Smith & Wesson
. White and Smith & Wesson would take no less than $1.1 million, but Franklin and Colt's directors decided it was too large an investment on a patent that would expire in 1868. In the meantime, Colt turned its attention to manufacturing goods other than firearms, such as watches, sewing machines, typewriters and bicycles.
Colt's first effort toward a metallic cartridge revolver was by conversion of existing percussion revolvers. The first of these conversions was patented on September 15, 1868 by Colt engineer, F. Alexander Thuer as patent number 82258. The Thuer conversion was made by milling off the rear of the receiver and replacing it with a breechplate containing six internal firing pins. The cartridges were loaded through the mouths of the chambers. Colt made 5000 of these but they were not well accepted. Colt found the mechanism so complex it included a spare percussion cylinder with each revolver.
Colt tasked its superintendent of engineering, Charles Richards
, to come up with a solution. The Richards conversion was performed on the Colt 1860 Army revolver. The caliber was .44 Colt
and the loading lever was replaced by an ejector rod. This conversion added a breechplate with a firing pin and a rear sight mounted on the breechplate. Cartridges were loaded into the cylinder one at a time via a loading gate. Colt manufactured 9000 of these revolvers between 1873 and 1878. In 1873, Colt performed the same conversion on the M1851 and M1861 revolvers for the US Navy in .38 rimfire. Another of Colt's engineers, William Mason
, improved this conversion by placing the rear sight on the hammer and, along with Richards, he was granted patents in 1871 to convert percussion revolvers into rear-loading metallic-cartridge revolvers. Those converted revolvers are identified as the "Richards-Mason conversion". There were approximately 2100 Richards-Mason M1860 Army conversions made from 1877 to 1878 in a serial-number range 5800 to 7900.
After working on these conversions, Mason began work on Colt's first metallic-cartridge revolver in 1871: the Colt open-top revolver. This was a completely new design and the parts would not interchange with the older percussion pistols. Mason moved the rear sight to the rear of the barrel as opposed to the hammer or the breechblock of the earlier efforts. The caliber was .44 rimfire and it was submitted to the US Army for testing in 1872. The Army rejected the pistol and asked for a more powerful caliber with a stronger frame. Mason redesigned the frame to incorporate a topstrap, similar to the Remington revolvers, and placed the rear sight on the rear of the frame; he consulted with Richards on some other improvements. The first prototype was chambered in .44 rimfire, but the first model was in the newest caliber known as the .45 Colt
. The revolver was chosen by the Army in 1872, with the first order, for 8000 revolvers, shipping in the summer of 1873. The Colt Single Action Army
or "Peacemaker" was one of the most prevalent firearms in the American West
during the end of the 19th century. Colt still produces this firearm, in six different calibers, two finishes and three barrel lengths.
In 1870 Colt had bought the National Arms Company
, a Brooklyn, New York company known for manufacturing derringer
s and for circumventing the Rollin White
patent by utilizing a unique cartridge. Colt continued to produce the .41 Rimfire derringer after the acquisition, as an effort to help break into the metallic-cartridge gun market. In addition to the derringers, Colt released a subsequent design called its “New Line” revolver models, based on William Mason's patents which debuted in 1873.
After the success of the Colt Single Action Army and Colt's conversion of existing percussion revolvers to Richards-Mason conversions, Mason went on to design Colt's first Double-action revolver, the Colt M1877. Following this, he once again teamed up with Richards to produce a larger-framed version, the Colt M1878 Frontier. It was Colt's first large-frame, double-action revolver. It combined the front end of the Single Action Army revolver with a double-action, 6-shot frame mechanism. It was available commercially in numerous calibers.
Colt finally left the "loading gate concept" for a swing-out cylinder on its revolvers with the Colt M1889
Navy revolver, which resembled the Colt M1878 and was based on another design by Mason. The model was produced for three years between 1889 and 1892, and eclipsed by the Colt M1892
chambered in .38 Long Colt
. The M1892 was replaced by the New Service
Double Action revolver in 1899. In caliber .45 Colt, the New Service was accepted by the U.S. Military as the Model 1909 .45 revolver. The New Service revolver was available in other calibers such as .38 Special and, later in the 20th century, .45 ACP (as the M1917 revolver
) and .357 Magnum.
Under a contract with the U.S. Army, Colt Arms built the Model 1895 ten-barrel variant of the Gatling Gun
, capable of firing 800-900 .30 Army rounds per minute, and used with great effect at the Battle of San Juan Hill
. The M1895 Colt-Browning machine gun
or "Potato Digger" was built by Colt. The Colt-Browning was one of the first gas-operated machine guns, originally invented by John Browning. It became the first automatic machine gun adopted by the United States and saw limited use by the U.S. Marine Corps at the invasion of Guantánamo Bay
and by the 1st Volunteer Infantry
in the Santiago campaign during the Spanish-American War
. In 1901, Elizabeth Jarvis Colt sold the company to a group of outside investors based in New York and Boston.
, Colt surpassed all previous production achievements. Prior to America's entry into the war, orders from Canada and the United Kingdom
swelled the backlog of orders to three years. Colt hired 4,000 more workers, making a total of 10,000 employees—and its stock's price increased by 400%. By 1918, Colt had produced and sold 425,500 of the John Browning
-designed M1911. Because the factory could not keep up with demand for this pistol, the US Military decided to accept Colt New Service
revolvers in caliber .45 ACP, called the M1917 revolver
, as a substitute weapon. Competing manufacturer Smith & Wesson
made double-action revolvers in .45 ACP, which were accepted and issued by the U.S. military under the same name. Colt produced 151,700 revolvers during the war as well as 13,000 Maxim-Vickers machine guns and 10,000 Browning machine guns with an additional 100,000 under subcontract to other companies. Since Auto Ordnance had no tooling for production, Colt acquired the license for the Thompson 1921 SMG and made 15,000 units in the first production year.
The stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression
resulted in a slowing down of production for Colt. In anticipation of this, company presidents William Skinner
and Samuel Stone
implemented a diversification program similar to that done at the close of the American Civil War
. Colt acquired contracts for business machines, calculators, dishwashers, motorcycles, and automobiles; all marketed under a name other than Colt. Samuel Stone acquired a firm which manufactured plastics and renamed it "Colt rock" as well as a company that manufactured electrical products. Colt weathered the financial crises of the time by cutting the work week, reducing salaries, and keeping more employees on the payroll than they needed. These measures kept the company in business but ate up the cash surplus they had acquired during the World War I years.
In 1935, after employees voted to disband a labor union, 1,000 workers went on strike for 13 weeks. Strikers became violent, attacking workers and detonating a bomb in front of company president Samuel M. Stone's house. The company set up a barracks, dining room, and recreation room for workers within the Colt Armory
during the strike. On June 3, 1935 the National Recovery Administration
ruled that the company was within its rights not to deal with the union and the strike ended. In the year following the strike, the factory was hit by a hurricane and flood. Many company shipping records and historical documents were lost as a result.
At the beginning of World War II
, Colt ceased production of the Single Action Army revolver to devote more time to filling orders for the war. During the war Colt manufactured over 629000 M1911A1 pistols as well as a large number of M1917 water-cooled machineguns. The company had a workforce of 15,000 men and women in three factories and production ran on three shifts, 24 hours a day, and won the Army-Navy rating of "E" for excellence. However, the company was losing money every year due to mismanagement, an embittered workforce that had been stretched to its limits, and manufacturing methods which were becoming obsolete.
As the war ended and demand for military arms came to a halt, production literally ceased. Many long-time workers and engineers retired from the company and nothing was built from 1945 to 1947. Mismanagement of funds during the war had a serious impact as the 105-year-old firm faced possible bankruptcy. In September 1955 the board of directors voted to merge Colt with an upstart conglomerate called Penn-Texas, which had acquired Pratt & Whitney Machine Tool
the same year. In 1958 Penn-Texas merged with Fairbanks-Morse
to form the Fairbanks-Whitney Corporation and in 1964 the conglomerate reorganized as Colt Industries. In 1956 Colt resumed production of the Single Action Army revolver and in 1961 began making commemorative versions of their classic models.
The 1960s were boom years for Colt with the escalation of the Vietnam War
, Robert McNamara
shutting down the Springfield Armory
, and the U.S. Army's subsequent adoption of the M16
, for which Colt held the production rights and would sell over 5 million units worldwide. Colt would capitalize on this with a range of AR-15
derivative carbines. They developed AR-15-based Squad Automatic Weapons, and the Colt SCAMP
, an early PDW design. The Colt XM148 grenade launcher was created by Colt's design project engineer, gun designer Karl R. Lewis. The May 1967 "Colt's Ink" newsletter announced that he had won a national competition for his selection and treatment of materials in the design. The newsletter stated in part "In only 47 days, he wrote the specifications, designed the launcher, drew all the original prints, and had a working model built". At the end of the 1970s, there was a program run by the Air Force to replace the M1911A1. The Beretta 92S won, but this was contested by the Army. The Army ran their own trials, leading eventually to the Beretta 92F being selected as the M9.
The 1980s were fairly good years for Colt, but the coming end of the Cold War would change all that. Colt had long left innovation in civilian firearms to their competitors, feeling that the handgun business could survive on their traditional revolver and M1911 designs. Instead, Colt focused on the military market, where they held the primary contracts for production of rifles for the US military. This strategy dramatically failed for Colt through a series of events in the 1980s. In 1984, the U.S. military standardized on the Beretta 92F. This was not much of a loss for Colt's current business, as M1911A1 production had stopped in 1945. Meanwhile, the military rifle business was growing because the U.S. military had a major demand for more upgraded M16s, the M16A2 model had just been adopted and the Military needed hundreds of thousands of them.
In 1985, Colt's workers, members of the United Auto Workers
went on strike for higher wages. This strike would ultimately last for five years, and was one of the longest running labor strikes in American history. With replacement workers running production, the quality of Colt's firearms began to decline. Dissatisfied with Colt's production, in 1988 the U.S. military awarded the contract for future M16
production to Fabrique Nationale.
Some criticized Colt's range of handgun products in the late 1980s as out of touch with the demands of the market, and their once-vaunted reputation for quality had suffered during the UAW strike. Colt's stable of double-action revolvers and single-action pistols was seen as old-fashioned by a marketplace that was captivated by the new generation of "wondernines" - high-capacity, 9x19mm Parabellum caliber handguns, as typified by the Glock 17. Realizing that the future of the company was at stake, labor and management agreed to end the strike in an arrangement that resulted in Colt being sold to a group of private investors, the State of Connecticut, and the UAW itself.
The new Colt first attempted to address some of the demands of the market with the production in 1989 of the Double Eagle
, a double-action pistol heavily based on the M1911 design, which was seen as an attempt to "modernize" the classic Browning design. Colt followed this up in 1992 with the Colt All American 2000
, which was unlike any other handgun Colt had produced before—being a polymer-framed, rotary-bolt, 9x19mm handgun with a magazine capacity of 15 rounds. It was designed by Reed Knight, with parts manufactured by outside vendors and assembled by Colt; its execution was disastrous. Early models were plagued with inaccuracy and unreliability, and suffered from the poor publicity of a product recall. The product launch failed and production of the All American 2000 ended in 1994. This series of events led to the company's Chapter 11 bankruptcy
in 1992.
, which resulted in a large down turn for the entire defense industry. Colt was hit by this downturn, though it would be made worse later in the 1990s by a boycott by the shooting public in America. In 1994, the assets of Colt were purchased by Zilkha & Co, a financial group owned by Donald Zilkha. It was speculated that Zilkha's financial backing of the company enabled Colt to begin winning back military contracts. In fact during the time period it won only one contract, the M4 carbine
. However, the U.S. Military had been purchasing Colt Carbines for the past 30 years (See Colt Commando). During a 1998 Washington Post interview, CEO Ron Stewart stated that he would favor a federal permit system with training and testing for gun ownership. This led to a massive grass-roots boycott
of Colt's products by gun stores and US gun owners.
Zilkha replaced Stewart with Steven Sliwa and focused the remainder of Colt's handgun design efforts into "smart gun
s," a concept favored politically, but that had little interest or support among handgun owners or Police Departments. This research never produced any meaningful results due to the limited technology at the time. Colt announced the termination of its production of double action revolvers in October 1999 The boycott of Colt gradually faded out after William M. Keys, a retired U.S. Marine Lt. General, took the helm of the company in 2002. Keys salvaged Colt's reputation and brought Colt from the brink of bankruptcy to an international leader in Defense production. In 2010 Gerald R. Dinkel replaced Keys as CEO, while Keys remained on the Board of Directors for Colt Defense.
Colt has to compete with other companies that make M1911-style pistols such as Kimber
and AR-15 rifles such as Bushmaster. Bushmaster has subsequently overtaken Colt in the number of AR-15s sold on the civilian market. Colt suffered a legal defeat in court when it sued Bushmaster for trademark infringement
claiming that "M4" was a trademark
that it owned. The judge ruled that since the term M4 is a generic designation that Colt does not specifically own, Colt had to pay monetary reimbursement to Bushmaster to recoup Bushmaster's legal fees. The M4 designation itself comes from the U.S. military designation system, whose terms are in the public domain
.
Colt has entered in several US contracts with mixed results. For example, Colt had an entry in the Advanced Combat Rifle
(ACR) program of the 1980s, but along with other contestants failed to replace the M16A2. Colt and many other makers entered the US trials for a new pistol in the 1980s, though the Beretta entry would win and become the M9 Pistol
. The Colt OHWS
handgun was beaten by H&K for what became the MK23 SOCOM, it was lighter than the H&K entry but lost in performance. Colt did not get to compete for the XM8
since it was not an open competition. Colt is a likely entrant in any competition for a new US service rifle
. Current M16 rifles have been made primarily by FN USA since 1988. However, Colt remains the sole source for M4 carbines for the US military. Under their license agreement with Colt, the US military could not legally award second-source production contracts for the M4 until July 1, 2009.
Colt manufactured several military long arms under contract including the M1918 BAR and Thompson SMG.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
firearms manufacturer, whose first predecessor corporation was founded in 1836 by Sam Colt. Colt is best known for the engineering, production, and marketing of firearms over the later half of the 19th and the 20th century. Colt's earliest designs played a major role in the popularization of the revolver
Revolver
A revolver is a repeating firearm that has a cylinder containing multiple chambers and at least one barrel for firing. The first revolver ever made was built by Elisha Collier in 1818. The percussion cap revolver was invented by Samuel Colt in 1836. This weapon became known as the Colt Paterson...
and the shift away from earlier single-shot pistols. While Sam Colt did not invent the revolver concept, his designs resulted in the first very successful ones.
The most famous Colt products include the Walker Colt
Walker Colt
The Colt Walker is a single action revolver with a revolving cylinder holding six charges of black powder behind six bullets. It was designed in 1846 as a collaboration between Captain Samuel Hamilton Walker and American firearms inventor Samuel Colt....
, Single Action Army or Peacemaker, and the Colt Python
Colt Python
The Colt Python is a .357 Magnum caliber revolver formerly manufactured by Colt's Manufacturing Company of Hartford, Connecticut. It is sometimes referred to as a "Combat Magnum". It was first introduced in 1955, the same year as Smith & Wesson's M29 .44 Magnum. The now discontinued Colt Python...
. John Browning
John Browning
John Moses Browning , born in Ogden, Utah, was an American firearms designer who developed many varieties of military and civilian firearms, cartridges, and gun mechanisms, many of which are still in use around the world...
worked for Colt for a time, and came up with a design for a semiautomatic pistol, which debuted as the Colt M1900
Colt M1900
The Colt Model 1900 was a self-loading semi-automatic .38 caliber handgun introduced by Colt at the turn of the 20th century. It also marked the introduction of .38 ACP, the round for which it is chambered ....
pistol and eventually evolved into the Colt M1911 pistol. Though they did not develop it, for a long time Colt was primarily responsible for all M16 rifle
M16 rifle
The M16 is the United States military designation for the AR-15 rifle adapted for both semi-automatic and full-automatic fire. Colt purchased the rights to the AR-15 from ArmaLite, and currently uses that designation only for semi-automatic versions of the rifle. The M16 fires the 5.56×45mm NATO...
production, as well as of many derivative firearms. The most successful and famous of these are numerous M16 carbines, including the Colt Commando family, and the M4 carbine
M4 carbine
The M4 carbine is a family of firearms tracing its lineage back to earlier carbine versions of the M16, all based on the original AR-15 designed by Eugene Stoner and made by ArmaLite. It is a shorter and lighter variant of the M16A2 assault rifle, with 80% parts commonality.It is a gas-operated,...
.
In 2002, Colt Defense
Colt Defense
Colt Defense LLC, together with its subsidiaries, is a designer, developer and manufacturer of small arms weapons systems for individual soldiers and law enforcement personnel. It is headquartered in West Hartford, Connecticut...
was split off from Colt's Manufacturing Company. Colt Manufacturing Company now serves the civilian market, while Colt Defense serves the law enforcement, military, and private security markets worldwide.
Pre Civil War
Samuel ColtSamuel Colt
Samuel Colt was an American inventor and industrialist. He was the founder of Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company , and is widely credited with popularizing the revolver. Colt's innovative contributions to the weapons industry have been described by arms historian James E...
received a British patent on his improved design for a revolver in 1835, and two U.S. patents in 1836, one on February 25 (later numbered U.S. Patent 9430X) and another on August 29 . That same year, he founded his first corporation for its manufacture, the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company of Paterson, New Jersey, Colt's Patent. This corporation suffered quality problems in production. Making firearms with interchangeable parts
Interchangeable parts
Interchangeable parts are parts that are, for practical purposes, identical. They are made to specifications that ensure that they are so nearly identical that they will fit into any device of the same type. One such part can freely replace another, without any custom fitting...
was still rather new (it had reached commercial viability
Commercialization
Commercialization is the process or cycle of introducing a new product or production method into the market. The actual launch of a new product is the final stage of new product development, and the one where the most money will have to be spent for advertising, sales promotion, and other marketing...
only about a decade before), and it was not yet easy to replicate across different factories. Interchangeability was not complete in the Paterson works, and traditional gunsmithing techniques did not fill the gap entirely there. The Colt Paterson
Colt Paterson
A Colt Paterson is a revolver. It was the first commercial repeating firearm employing a revolving cylinder with multiple chambers aligned with a single, stationary barrel. Its design was patented by Samuel Colt on February 25, 1836, in the United States, France, and England, and it derived its...
revolver found patchy success and failure; some worked well, while others had problems. The United States Marine Corps
United States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
and United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
reported quality problems with these earliest Colt revolvers. Production had ended at the New Jersey corporation by 1842.
Between 1842 and 1848, Samuel Colt collaborated with the Whitney armory of Whitneyville, Connecticut, which was run by the family of Eli Whitney
Eli Whitney
Eli Whitney was an American inventor best known for inventing the cotton gin. This was one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution and shaped the economy of the Antebellum South...
(of cotton gin and interchangeability-evangelizing fame). Eli Whitney Jr (born 1820), the son of the cotton-gin-developer patriarch, was the head of the family armory and a successful arms maker and innovator of the era. Colt used a combination of renting the Whitney firm's facilities and subcontracting parts to the firm to continue his pursuit of revolver manufacture.
During the Mexican–American War
Mexican–American War
The Mexican–American War, also known as the First American Intervention, the Mexican War, or the U.S.–Mexican War, was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848 in the wake of the 1845 U.S...
(1846–1848), Colt's revolvers found favorability with Texan volunteers (the progenitors of later Texas Rangers
Texas Ranger Division
The Texas Ranger Division, commonly called the Texas Rangers, is a law enforcement agency with statewide jurisdiction in Texas, and is based in Austin, Texas...
cavalry groups), and they placed an order for 1,000 larger revolvers that became known as the Walker Colt
Walker Colt
The Colt Walker is a single action revolver with a revolving cylinder holding six charges of black powder behind six bullets. It was designed in 1846 as a collaboration between Captain Samuel Hamilton Walker and American firearms inventor Samuel Colt....
, ensuring Colt's continuance in manufacturing revolvers. In 1848, Colt was able to start again with a new corporation of his own. He founded the Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company in Hartford, Connecticut.
London factory
The 1850s were a decade of phenomenal success for the new Colt corporation. Colt was one of the early influential companies in the race to widely commercialize the total use of interchangeable parts throughout a product. Soon after establishing his Hartford factory, Colt set out to establish a factory in Europe and chose London, England. He organized a large display of his firearms at the Great Exhibition of 1851 at Hyde Park, LondonHyde Park, London
Hyde Park is one of the largest parks in central London, United Kingdom, and one of the Royal Parks of London, famous for its Speakers' Corner.The park is divided in two by the Serpentine...
and ingratiated himself by presenting cased engraved Colt revolvers to such appropriate officials as Britain’s Master General of the Ordnance. At one exhibit Colt disassembled ten guns and reassembled ten guns using different parts from different guns. As the world’s leading proponent of mass production techniques, Colt went on to deliver a lecture on the subject to the Institute of Civil Engineers in London. The membership rewarded his efforts by awarding him theTelford Gold Medal
Telford Medal
The Telford Medal is the highest prize awarded by the British Institution of Civil Engineers for a paper, or series of papers, in the field of engineering. It was introduced in 1835 following a bequest made by Thomas Telford, the ICE's first president....
.
Colt's presence in the British market caused years of acrimony and lawsuits among British arms makers, who doubted the validity of Colt's British patent and the desirability of the American system of manufacturing
American system of manufacturing
The American system of manufacturing was a set of manufacturing methods that evolved in the 19th century. It involved semi-skilled labor using machine tools and jigs to make standardized, identical, interchangeable parts, manufactured to a tolerance, which could be assembled with a minimum of time...
. It took many more years and a UK government commission before the point became universally accepted that such manufacture was possible and economical. Colt opened his London plant on the Thames River and began production on January 1, 1853. the English saw Colt’s advanced steampowered machinery as proof of America’s growing position as a leader in modern industrial production. On a tour of the factory, Charles Dickens was so impressed with the facilities that he recorded his favorable comments of Colt's revolvers in an 1852 edition of Household Words
Household Words
Household Words was an English weekly magazine edited by Charles Dickens in the 1850s which took its name from the line from Shakespeare "Familiar in his mouth as household words" — Henry V.-History:...
. Most significant, the Colt factory’s machines mass-produced interchangeable parts that could be easily and cheaply put together on assembly lines using standardized patterns and gauges by unskilled labor as opposed to England's top gunmakers.
In 1854 the British Admiralty ordered 4,000 Navy Model Colt revolvers. In 1855 the British Army placed an order for 5,000 of these revolvers for army issue. Despite a following order later in the year for an additional 9,000 revolvers, Colt failed to convince the British to adopt his revolver as the issue sidearm for the army. Colt began to realize that British sales were failing to meet his expectations. Unable to justify the London factory’s expenses, Colt closed the London factory in 1856. Over the next few months his workmen crated and shipped the machinery and unassembled firearms back to America.
Colt's armories
Though the U.S. was not directly involved in the Crimean WarCrimean War
The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
(1854–1856), Colt's weapons were used by both sides. In 1855 Colt unveiled new state-of-the-art armories in the Hartford and London factories stocked with the latest machine tool
Machine tool
A machine tool is a machine, typically powered other than by human muscle , used to make manufactured parts in various ways that include cutting or certain other kinds of deformation...
s (some of which were of Colt's devising), many built by Francis A. Pratt
Francis A. Pratt
Francis Ashbury Pratt was a Connecticut mechanical engineer, inventor, and co-founder of Pratt & Whitney.Pratt was born in Peru, New York. In the early 1850s, he designed a milling machine for George S...
and Amos Whitney
Amos Whitney
Amos Whitney was a mechanical engineer and Connecticut inventor.Born in Biddeford, Maine, in 1860 he partnered with Francis Pratt to organize the Pratt & Whitney company to manufacture machine tools, tools for the makers of sewing machines, and gun making machinery for use by the Union Army...
, who would found the original Pratt & Whitney
Pratt & Whitney Measurement Systems
Pratt & Whitney Measurement Systems is a multinational corporation that specializes in producing high-precision measuring instruments and systems.-History:...
toolbuilding
Tool and die maker
Tool and die makers are workers in the manufacturing industry who make jigs, fixtures, dies, molds, machine tools, cutting tools , gauges, and other tools used in manufacturing processes...
firm a few years later. For example, the Lincoln miller debuted to industry at these armories.
Colt had set up libraries and educational programs within the plants for his employees. Colt's armories
Armory (military)
An armory or armoury is a place where arms and ammunition are made, maintained and repaired, stored, issued to authorized users, or any combination of those...
in Hartford were seminal training grounds for several generations of toolmakers
Tool and die maker
Tool and die makers are workers in the manufacturing industry who make jigs, fixtures, dies, molds, machine tools, cutting tools , gauges, and other tools used in manufacturing processes...
and other machinist
Machinist
A machinist is a person who uses machine tools to make or modify parts, primarily metal parts, a process known as machining. This is accomplished by using machine tools to cut away excess material much as a woodcarver cuts away excess wood to produce his work. In addition to metal, the parts may...
s, who had great influence in other manufacturing efforts of the next half century. Prominent examples included F. Pratt and A. Whitney (as mentioned above); Henry Leland (who would end up at Cadillac and Lincoln); Edward Bullard Sr of the Bullard firm; and, through Pratt & Whitney, Worcester R. Warner and Ambrose Swasey
Ambrose Swasey
Ambrose Swasey was an American mechanical engineer, inventor, entrepreneur, manager, astronomer, and philanthropist. With Worcester R. Warner he co-founded the Warner & Swasey Company....
(of Warner & Swasey
Warner & Swasey Company
The Warner & Swasey Company was an American manufacturer of machine tools, instruments, and special machinery. It operated as an independent business firm, based in Cleveland, from its founding in 1880 until its acquisition in 1980...
).
In 1860 Colt produced a new revolver model for the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
. This Colt Army Model 1860
Colt Army Model 1860
The Colt Army Model 1860 is a muzzle-loaded cap & ball .44-caliber revolver used during the American Civil War, made by Colt's Manufacturing Company. It was used as a side arm by cavalry, infantry, artillery troops, and naval forces....
appeared just in time for the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
.
Civil War Years
The American Civil WarAmerican Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
was a boon to firearms manufacturers such as Colt's and the company thrived during the conflict. Sam Colt had carefully developed contacts within the ordnance department signing the very first government contract for 25,000 rifles. Colt's Factory was described as "an industrial palace topped by a blue dome" and powered by a 250-horsepower steam engine. During the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
Colt had 1,500 employees who produced 150,000 muskets and pistols a year. In 1861 and 1863 the company sold 107,000 of the Colt Army Model 1860
Colt Army Model 1860
The Colt Army Model 1860 is a muzzle-loaded cap & ball .44-caliber revolver used during the American Civil War, made by Colt's Manufacturing Company. It was used as a side arm by cavalry, infantry, artillery troops, and naval forces....
, alone, with production reaching 200,500 by the end of the war in 1865. In 1855 an employee of Colt's, Rollin White
Rollin White
Rollin White was an American gunsmith who invented a revolver with a bored-through cylinder which allowed metallic cartridges to be loaded from the rear.-Early life:...
, came up with the idea of having the revolver cylinder bored through to accept metallic cartridges. He took this idea to Colt who flatly rejected it and ended up firing White within a few years. Colt historian RL Wilson has described this as the major blunder of Sam Colt's professional life.
The Civil War made a huge fortune for the company, becoming America's first manufacturing tycoon, but Sam Colt did not live to see the end of it. He died of rheumatic fever on January 10, 1862 and his close friend and firearms engineer, Elisha K. Root
Elisha K. Root
Elisha K. Root was a Connecticut machinist and inventor.Root was born on a Massachusetts farm and worked as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill before switching, at the age of 15, to working in a machine shop in Ware, Massachusetts. At age 24 he was hired by Connecticut industrialist Samuel W...
, took over as Colt's company president. On February 4, 1864 a fire destroyed most of the factory including arms, machinery, plans, and factory records. On September1, 1865 Root died leaving the company in the hands of Samuel Colt's brother-in-law, Richard Jarvis
Richard Jarvis
Richard William Hart Jarvis was the brother-in-law of Samuel Colt who took control of Colt's Manufacturing Company on the death of Elisha K. Root, serving as the company's longest president from 1865 to 1901...
. The company's Vice-president was William B. Franklin
William B. Franklin
William Buel Franklin was a career United States Army officer and a Union Army general in the American Civil War. He rose to the rank of a corps commander in the Army of the Potomac, fighting in several notable early battles in the Eastern Theater.-Early life:William B. Franklin was born in York,...
, who recently left the Army at the end of the Civil War. With the Civil War over and no new military contracts Colt's Manufacturing had to lay off over 800 employees.
The company found itself in a precarious situation, the original revolver patents had expired and other companies could produce copies of his designs. Additionally, mettalic cartridge revolvers had been gaining in popularity, but Colt could not produce any because of the Rollin White
Rollin White
Rollin White was an American gunsmith who invented a revolver with a bored-through cylinder which allowed metallic cartridges to be loaded from the rear.-Early life:...
patent held by rival, Smith & Wesson
Smith & Wesson
Smith & Wesson is the largest manufacturer of handguns in the United States. The corporate headquarters is in Springfield, Massachusetts. Founded in 1852, Smith & Wesson's pistols and revolvers have become standard issue to police and armed forces throughout the world...
. Likewise, Colt had been so protective of its own patents that other companies were unable to make revolvers similar to their design. As the Rolin white patent was nearing expiration, Colt moved toward developing a metallic cartridge revolver.
Post Civil War
Smith & Wesson
Smith & Wesson is the largest manufacturer of handguns in the United States. The corporate headquarters is in Springfield, Massachusetts. Founded in 1852, Smith & Wesson's pistols and revolvers have become standard issue to police and armed forces throughout the world...
. White and Smith & Wesson would take no less than $1.1 million, but Franklin and Colt's directors decided it was too large an investment on a patent that would expire in 1868. In the meantime, Colt turned its attention to manufacturing goods other than firearms, such as watches, sewing machines, typewriters and bicycles.
Colt's first effort toward a metallic cartridge revolver was by conversion of existing percussion revolvers. The first of these conversions was patented on September 15, 1868 by Colt engineer, F. Alexander Thuer as patent number 82258. The Thuer conversion was made by milling off the rear of the receiver and replacing it with a breechplate containing six internal firing pins. The cartridges were loaded through the mouths of the chambers. Colt made 5000 of these but they were not well accepted. Colt found the mechanism so complex it included a spare percussion cylinder with each revolver.
Colt tasked its superintendent of engineering, Charles Richards
Charles Brinckerhoff Richards
Charles Brinckerhoff Richards was an engineer who worked for Colt's Patent Fire Arms Co., where he was responsible for the development of the Colt Single Action Army revolver...
, to come up with a solution. The Richards conversion was performed on the Colt 1860 Army revolver. The caliber was .44 Colt
.44 Colt
The .44 Colt was an American centerfire revolver cartridge produced commercially from 1871 until the 1940s.The cartridge was developed for the United States Army, and introduced by Colt's Patent Firearms around 1871...
and the loading lever was replaced by an ejector rod. This conversion added a breechplate with a firing pin and a rear sight mounted on the breechplate. Cartridges were loaded into the cylinder one at a time via a loading gate. Colt manufactured 9000 of these revolvers between 1873 and 1878. In 1873, Colt performed the same conversion on the M1851 and M1861 revolvers for the US Navy in .38 rimfire. Another of Colt's engineers, William Mason
William Mason (Colt)
William Mason was an engineer and inventor who worked for Remington Arms, Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company, and Winchester Repeating Arms Company in the 19th century.-Remington:...
, improved this conversion by placing the rear sight on the hammer and, along with Richards, he was granted patents in 1871 to convert percussion revolvers into rear-loading metallic-cartridge revolvers. Those converted revolvers are identified as the "Richards-Mason conversion". There were approximately 2100 Richards-Mason M1860 Army conversions made from 1877 to 1878 in a serial-number range 5800 to 7900.
After working on these conversions, Mason began work on Colt's first metallic-cartridge revolver in 1871: the Colt open-top revolver. This was a completely new design and the parts would not interchange with the older percussion pistols. Mason moved the rear sight to the rear of the barrel as opposed to the hammer or the breechblock of the earlier efforts. The caliber was .44 rimfire and it was submitted to the US Army for testing in 1872. The Army rejected the pistol and asked for a more powerful caliber with a stronger frame. Mason redesigned the frame to incorporate a topstrap, similar to the Remington revolvers, and placed the rear sight on the rear of the frame; he consulted with Richards on some other improvements. The first prototype was chambered in .44 rimfire, but the first model was in the newest caliber known as the .45 Colt
.45 Colt
The .45 Colt cartridge is a handgun cartridge dating to 1872. It began as a black powder revolver round developed for the Colt Single Action Army revolver, but is offered as a magnum level handgun hunting round in modern usage. This cartridge was adopted by the U.S. Army in 1873 and served as the...
. The revolver was chosen by the Army in 1872, with the first order, for 8000 revolvers, shipping in the summer of 1873. The Colt Single Action Army
Colt Single Action Army
The Colt Single Action Army is a single action revolver with a revolving cylinder holding six metallic cartridges. It was designed for the U.S...
or "Peacemaker" was one of the most prevalent firearms in the American West
American Old West
The American Old West, or the Wild West, comprises the history, geography, people, lore, and cultural expression of life in the Western United States, most often referring to the latter half of the 19th century, between the American Civil War and the end of the century...
during the end of the 19th century. Colt still produces this firearm, in six different calibers, two finishes and three barrel lengths.
In 1870 Colt had bought the National Arms Company
National Arms Company
The National Arms Company was a Brooklyn, New York-based manufacturer of firearms that flourished for a decade in the mid-19th century, around the time of the American Civil War....
, a Brooklyn, New York company known for manufacturing derringer
Derringer
The term derringer is a genericized misspelling of the last name of Henry Deringer, a famous 19th-century maker of small pocket pistols. Many copies of the original Philadelphia Deringer pistol were made by other gun makers worldwide, and the name was often misspelled; this misspelling soon became...
s and for circumventing the Rollin White
Rollin White
Rollin White was an American gunsmith who invented a revolver with a bored-through cylinder which allowed metallic cartridges to be loaded from the rear.-Early life:...
patent by utilizing a unique cartridge. Colt continued to produce the .41 Rimfire derringer after the acquisition, as an effort to help break into the metallic-cartridge gun market. In addition to the derringers, Colt released a subsequent design called its “New Line” revolver models, based on William Mason's patents which debuted in 1873.
After the success of the Colt Single Action Army and Colt's conversion of existing percussion revolvers to Richards-Mason conversions, Mason went on to design Colt's first Double-action revolver, the Colt M1877. Following this, he once again teamed up with Richards to produce a larger-framed version, the Colt M1878 Frontier. It was Colt's first large-frame, double-action revolver. It combined the front end of the Single Action Army revolver with a double-action, 6-shot frame mechanism. It was available commercially in numerous calibers.
Colt finally left the "loading gate concept" for a swing-out cylinder on its revolvers with the Colt M1889
Colt M1889
The Colt Model 1889 was a revolver type pistol produced by the Colt Manufacturing Company in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.-History:...
Navy revolver, which resembled the Colt M1878 and was based on another design by Mason. The model was produced for three years between 1889 and 1892, and eclipsed by the Colt M1892
Colt M1892
The M1892 Colt Army & Navy was the first general issue double-action with a swing-out cylinder revolver used by the U.S. military.-Overview:In 1892 the gun was adopted by the Army in .38 Long Colt caliber, and the revolver was given the appellation New Army and Navy. Initial experience with the gun...
chambered in .38 Long Colt
.38 Long Colt
The .38 Long Colt is a cartridge introduced by Colt's Manufacturing Company in 1875, and was adopted as a standard military pistol cartridge by the United States Army in 1892 for the Colt New Army M1892 Revolver. It is slightly more powerful than the .38 Short Colt, or .38 SC. The .38 Long Colt...
. The M1892 was replaced by the New Service
Colt New Service
The Colt New Service was a double-action revolver made by Colt from 1898 until c.1940. It was adopted by the U.S. Armed Forces in .45 Colt as the Model 1909 U.S. Army, Marine Corps Model 1909, Model 1909 U.S. Navy and in .45 ACP as the Model 1917 U.S. Army...
Double Action revolver in 1899. In caliber .45 Colt, the New Service was accepted by the U.S. Military as the Model 1909 .45 revolver. The New Service revolver was available in other calibers such as .38 Special and, later in the 20th century, .45 ACP (as the M1917 revolver
M1917 revolver
The M1917 Revolver was a U.S. six-shot revolver of .45 ACP caliber. It was adopted by the U.S. Army in 1917 to supplement the standard M1911 .45 ACP semi-automatic pistol during World War I. Afterwards, it was primarily used by secondary and non-deployed troops...
) and .357 Magnum.
Under a contract with the U.S. Army, Colt Arms built the Model 1895 ten-barrel variant of the Gatling Gun
Gatling gun
The Gatling gun is one of the best known early rapid-fire weapons and a forerunner of the modern machine gun. It is well known for its use by the Union forces during the American Civil War in the 1860s, which was the first time it was employed in combat...
, capable of firing 800-900 .30 Army rounds per minute, and used with great effect at the Battle of San Juan Hill
Battle of San Juan Hill
The Battle of San Juan Hill , also known as the battle for the San Juan Heights, was a decisive battle of the Spanish-American War. The San Juan heights was a north-south running elevation about two kilometers east of Santiago de Cuba. The names San Juan Hill and Kettle Hill were names given by the...
. The M1895 Colt-Browning machine gun
M1895 Colt-Browning machine gun
The Colt-Browning M1895, nicknamed potato digger due to its unusual operating mechanism, is an air-cooled, belt-fed, gas-operated machine gun that fires from a closed bolt with a cyclic rate of 450 rounds per minute...
or "Potato Digger" was built by Colt. The Colt-Browning was one of the first gas-operated machine guns, originally invented by John Browning. It became the first automatic machine gun adopted by the United States and saw limited use by the U.S. Marine Corps at the invasion of Guantánamo Bay
1898 invasion of Guantánamo Bay
The Battle of Guantánamo Bay was fought from June 6 to June 10 in 1898, during the Spanish-American War, when American and Cuban forces seized the strategically and commercially important harbor of Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Capturing the bay from the Spanish forces was instrumental in the following...
and by the 1st Volunteer Infantry
Rough Riders
The Rough Riders is the name bestowed on the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry, one of three such regiments raised in 1898 for the Spanish-American War and the only one of the three to see action. The United States Army was weakened and left with little manpower after the American Civil War...
in the Santiago campaign during the Spanish-American War
Spanish-American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, effectively the result of American intervention in the ongoing Cuban War of Independence...
. In 1901, Elizabeth Jarvis Colt sold the company to a group of outside investors based in New York and Boston.
20th century
During World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Colt surpassed all previous production achievements. Prior to America's entry into the war, orders from Canada and the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
swelled the backlog of orders to three years. Colt hired 4,000 more workers, making a total of 10,000 employees—and its stock's price increased by 400%. By 1918, Colt had produced and sold 425,500 of the John Browning
John Browning
John Moses Browning , born in Ogden, Utah, was an American firearms designer who developed many varieties of military and civilian firearms, cartridges, and gun mechanisms, many of which are still in use around the world...
-designed M1911. Because the factory could not keep up with demand for this pistol, the US Military decided to accept Colt New Service
Colt New Service
The Colt New Service was a double-action revolver made by Colt from 1898 until c.1940. It was adopted by the U.S. Armed Forces in .45 Colt as the Model 1909 U.S. Army, Marine Corps Model 1909, Model 1909 U.S. Navy and in .45 ACP as the Model 1917 U.S. Army...
revolvers in caliber .45 ACP, called the M1917 revolver
M1917 revolver
The M1917 Revolver was a U.S. six-shot revolver of .45 ACP caliber. It was adopted by the U.S. Army in 1917 to supplement the standard M1911 .45 ACP semi-automatic pistol during World War I. Afterwards, it was primarily used by secondary and non-deployed troops...
, as a substitute weapon. Competing manufacturer Smith & Wesson
Smith & Wesson
Smith & Wesson is the largest manufacturer of handguns in the United States. The corporate headquarters is in Springfield, Massachusetts. Founded in 1852, Smith & Wesson's pistols and revolvers have become standard issue to police and armed forces throughout the world...
made double-action revolvers in .45 ACP, which were accepted and issued by the U.S. military under the same name. Colt produced 151,700 revolvers during the war as well as 13,000 Maxim-Vickers machine guns and 10,000 Browning machine guns with an additional 100,000 under subcontract to other companies. Since Auto Ordnance had no tooling for production, Colt acquired the license for the Thompson 1921 SMG and made 15,000 units in the first production year.
The stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
resulted in a slowing down of production for Colt. In anticipation of this, company presidents William Skinner
William Skinner
William Skinner , was bishop of Aberdeen in the Scottish Episcopal Church.-Biography:Skinner, second son of John Skinner , bishop of St. Andrews, was born at Aberdeen on October 24, 1778, and educated at Marischal College, University of Aberdeen and at Oxford, where he matriculated from Wadham...
and Samuel Stone
Samuel Stone
Samuel Stone was a Puritan Minister.Stone was born in Hertford, England. In 1620, he left Hertford to study at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, from where he graduated in 1624. He was ordained on July 8, 1626 at Peterborough and a year later became curate at Stisted, Essex...
implemented a diversification program similar to that done at the close of the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. Colt acquired contracts for business machines, calculators, dishwashers, motorcycles, and automobiles; all marketed under a name other than Colt. Samuel Stone acquired a firm which manufactured plastics and renamed it "Colt rock" as well as a company that manufactured electrical products. Colt weathered the financial crises of the time by cutting the work week, reducing salaries, and keeping more employees on the payroll than they needed. These measures kept the company in business but ate up the cash surplus they had acquired during the World War I years.
In 1935, after employees voted to disband a labor union, 1,000 workers went on strike for 13 weeks. Strikers became violent, attacking workers and detonating a bomb in front of company president Samuel M. Stone's house. The company set up a barracks, dining room, and recreation room for workers within the Colt Armory
Colt Armory
The Colt Armory is a historic factory complex for the manufacture of firearms, created by Samuel Colt. It is located in Hartford, Connecticut along the Connecticut River, and as of 5 December 2007 is part of the Coltsville Historic District, named a National Historic Landmark...
during the strike. On June 3, 1935 the National Recovery Administration
National Recovery Administration
The National Recovery Administration was the primary New Deal agency established by U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. The goal was to eliminate "cut-throat competition" by bringing industry, labor and government together to create codes of "fair practices" and set prices...
ruled that the company was within its rights not to deal with the union and the strike ended. In the year following the strike, the factory was hit by a hurricane and flood. Many company shipping records and historical documents were lost as a result.
At the beginning of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Colt ceased production of the Single Action Army revolver to devote more time to filling orders for the war. During the war Colt manufactured over 629000 M1911A1 pistols as well as a large number of M1917 water-cooled machineguns. The company had a workforce of 15,000 men and women in three factories and production ran on three shifts, 24 hours a day, and won the Army-Navy rating of "E" for excellence. However, the company was losing money every year due to mismanagement, an embittered workforce that had been stretched to its limits, and manufacturing methods which were becoming obsolete.
As the war ended and demand for military arms came to a halt, production literally ceased. Many long-time workers and engineers retired from the company and nothing was built from 1945 to 1947. Mismanagement of funds during the war had a serious impact as the 105-year-old firm faced possible bankruptcy. In September 1955 the board of directors voted to merge Colt with an upstart conglomerate called Penn-Texas, which had acquired Pratt & Whitney Machine Tool
Pratt & Whitney Measurement Systems
Pratt & Whitney Measurement Systems is a multinational corporation that specializes in producing high-precision measuring instruments and systems.-History:...
the same year. In 1958 Penn-Texas merged with Fairbanks-Morse
Fairbanks-Morse
Fairbanks Morse and Company was a manufacturing company in the late 19th and early 20th century. Originally a weighing scale manufacturer, it later diversified into pumps, engines, windmills, locomotives and industrial supplies until it was merged in 1958...
to form the Fairbanks-Whitney Corporation and in 1964 the conglomerate reorganized as Colt Industries. In 1956 Colt resumed production of the Single Action Army revolver and in 1961 began making commemorative versions of their classic models.
The 1960s were boom years for Colt with the escalation of the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, Robert McNamara
Robert McNamara
Robert Strange McNamara was an American business executive and the eighth Secretary of Defense, serving under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to 1968, during which time he played a large role in escalating the United States involvement in the Vietnam War...
shutting down the Springfield Armory
Springfield Armory
The Springfield Armory, located in the City of Springfield, Massachusetts - from 1777 until its closing in 1968 - was the primary center for the manufacture of U.S. military firearms. After its controversial closing during the Vietnam War, the Springfield Armory was declared Western Massachusetts'...
, and the U.S. Army's subsequent adoption of the M16
M16 rifle
The M16 is the United States military designation for the AR-15 rifle adapted for both semi-automatic and full-automatic fire. Colt purchased the rights to the AR-15 from ArmaLite, and currently uses that designation only for semi-automatic versions of the rifle. The M16 fires the 5.56×45mm NATO...
, for which Colt held the production rights and would sell over 5 million units worldwide. Colt would capitalize on this with a range of AR-15
AR-15
The AR-15 is a lightweight, 5.56 mm, air-cooled, gas-operated, magazine-fed semi-automatic rifle, with a rotating-lock bolt, actuated by direct impingement gas operation. It is manufactured with the extensive use of aluminum alloys and synthetic materials....
derivative carbines. They developed AR-15-based Squad Automatic Weapons, and the Colt SCAMP
Colt SCAMP
The Colt SCAMP was conceived in 1969 as a replacement to the aging Colt M1911A1 pistol. The resulting weapon, embodied in a single SCAMP prototype built in 1971, was designed to give an individual operator a huge increase in firepower, with only a slight bump in weight and bulk...
, an early PDW design. The Colt XM148 grenade launcher was created by Colt's design project engineer, gun designer Karl R. Lewis. The May 1967 "Colt's Ink" newsletter announced that he had won a national competition for his selection and treatment of materials in the design. The newsletter stated in part "In only 47 days, he wrote the specifications, designed the launcher, drew all the original prints, and had a working model built". At the end of the 1970s, there was a program run by the Air Force to replace the M1911A1. The Beretta 92S won, but this was contested by the Army. The Army ran their own trials, leading eventually to the Beretta 92F being selected as the M9.
The 1980s were fairly good years for Colt, but the coming end of the Cold War would change all that. Colt had long left innovation in civilian firearms to their competitors, feeling that the handgun business could survive on their traditional revolver and M1911 designs. Instead, Colt focused on the military market, where they held the primary contracts for production of rifles for the US military. This strategy dramatically failed for Colt through a series of events in the 1980s. In 1984, the U.S. military standardized on the Beretta 92F. This was not much of a loss for Colt's current business, as M1911A1 production had stopped in 1945. Meanwhile, the military rifle business was growing because the U.S. military had a major demand for more upgraded M16s, the M16A2 model had just been adopted and the Military needed hundreds of thousands of them.
In 1985, Colt's workers, members of the United Auto Workers
United Auto Workers
The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers , is a labor union which represents workers in the United States and Puerto Rico, and formerly in Canada. Founded as part of the Congress of Industrial...
went on strike for higher wages. This strike would ultimately last for five years, and was one of the longest running labor strikes in American history. With replacement workers running production, the quality of Colt's firearms began to decline. Dissatisfied with Colt's production, in 1988 the U.S. military awarded the contract for future M16
M16 rifle
The M16 is the United States military designation for the AR-15 rifle adapted for both semi-automatic and full-automatic fire. Colt purchased the rights to the AR-15 from ArmaLite, and currently uses that designation only for semi-automatic versions of the rifle. The M16 fires the 5.56×45mm NATO...
production to Fabrique Nationale.
Some criticized Colt's range of handgun products in the late 1980s as out of touch with the demands of the market, and their once-vaunted reputation for quality had suffered during the UAW strike. Colt's stable of double-action revolvers and single-action pistols was seen as old-fashioned by a marketplace that was captivated by the new generation of "wondernines" - high-capacity, 9x19mm Parabellum caliber handguns, as typified by the Glock 17. Realizing that the future of the company was at stake, labor and management agreed to end the strike in an arrangement that resulted in Colt being sold to a group of private investors, the State of Connecticut, and the UAW itself.
The new Colt first attempted to address some of the demands of the market with the production in 1989 of the Double Eagle
Colt Double Eagle
The Colt Double Eagle is a double-action / single action, semi-automatic pistol manufactured by Colt's Manufacturing Company between 1989 and 1997. It was available in standard full-size, as well as in more compact versions, features a decocking lever, and was chambered for several calibers...
, a double-action pistol heavily based on the M1911 design, which was seen as an attempt to "modernize" the classic Browning design. Colt followed this up in 1992 with the Colt All American 2000
Colt 2000
The Colt 2000 or All American 2000 is a polymer or aluminum-alloy framed, locked-breech, rotary bolt, semiautomatic 9 mm handgun with a magazine capacity of 15 rounds. Designed by C...
, which was unlike any other handgun Colt had produced before—being a polymer-framed, rotary-bolt, 9x19mm handgun with a magazine capacity of 15 rounds. It was designed by Reed Knight, with parts manufactured by outside vendors and assembled by Colt; its execution was disastrous. Early models were plagued with inaccuracy and unreliability, and suffered from the poor publicity of a product recall. The product launch failed and production of the All American 2000 ended in 1994. This series of events led to the company's Chapter 11 bankruptcy
Chapter 11, Title 11, United States Code
Chapter 11 is a chapter of the United States Bankruptcy Code, which permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Chapter 11 bankruptcy is available to every business, whether organized as a corporation or sole proprietorship, and to individuals, although it is most...
in 1992.
1992–present
The 1990s brought the end of Cold WarCold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, which resulted in a large down turn for the entire defense industry. Colt was hit by this downturn, though it would be made worse later in the 1990s by a boycott by the shooting public in America. In 1994, the assets of Colt were purchased by Zilkha & Co, a financial group owned by Donald Zilkha. It was speculated that Zilkha's financial backing of the company enabled Colt to begin winning back military contracts. In fact during the time period it won only one contract, the M4 carbine
M4 carbine
The M4 carbine is a family of firearms tracing its lineage back to earlier carbine versions of the M16, all based on the original AR-15 designed by Eugene Stoner and made by ArmaLite. It is a shorter and lighter variant of the M16A2 assault rifle, with 80% parts commonality.It is a gas-operated,...
. However, the U.S. Military had been purchasing Colt Carbines for the past 30 years (See Colt Commando). During a 1998 Washington Post interview, CEO Ron Stewart stated that he would favor a federal permit system with training and testing for gun ownership. This led to a massive grass-roots boycott
Boycott
A boycott is an act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for political reasons...
of Colt's products by gun stores and US gun owners.
Zilkha replaced Stewart with Steven Sliwa and focused the remainder of Colt's handgun design efforts into "smart gun
Smart Gun
The Smart Gun or "Personalized Gun" is a concept gun that aims to reduce the misuse of guns by children/felons through the use of RFID chips or other proximity devices, fingerprint recognition, or magnetic rings...
s," a concept favored politically, but that had little interest or support among handgun owners or Police Departments. This research never produced any meaningful results due to the limited technology at the time. Colt announced the termination of its production of double action revolvers in October 1999 The boycott of Colt gradually faded out after William M. Keys, a retired U.S. Marine Lt. General, took the helm of the company in 2002. Keys salvaged Colt's reputation and brought Colt from the brink of bankruptcy to an international leader in Defense production. In 2010 Gerald R. Dinkel replaced Keys as CEO, while Keys remained on the Board of Directors for Colt Defense.
Colt has to compete with other companies that make M1911-style pistols such as Kimber
Kimber Manufacturing
Kimber Manufacturing is an American company that designs, manufactures, and distributes small arms such as M1911 pistols, Solo pistols and rifles. The USA Shooting Team, Marines assigned to Special Operations Command, and the LAPD SWAT team use Kimber pistols....
and AR-15 rifles such as Bushmaster. Bushmaster has subsequently overtaken Colt in the number of AR-15s sold on the civilian market. Colt suffered a legal defeat in court when it sued Bushmaster for trademark infringement
Trademark infringement
Trademark infringement is a violation of the exclusive rights attaching to a trademark without the authorization of the trademark owner or any licensees...
claiming that "M4" was a trademark
Trademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
that it owned. The judge ruled that since the term M4 is a generic designation that Colt does not specifically own, Colt had to pay monetary reimbursement to Bushmaster to recoup Bushmaster's legal fees. The M4 designation itself comes from the U.S. military designation system, whose terms are in the public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
.
Colt has entered in several US contracts with mixed results. For example, Colt had an entry in the Advanced Combat Rifle
Advanced Combat Rifle
The Advanced Combat Rifle was a United States Army program to find a replacement for the M16 assault rifle. The program's total cost is approximately US$300 million...
(ACR) program of the 1980s, but along with other contestants failed to replace the M16A2. Colt and many other makers entered the US trials for a new pistol in the 1980s, though the Beretta entry would win and become the M9 Pistol
M9 Pistol
The Beretta M9, formally Pistol, Semiautomatic, 9mm, M9, is a 9×19mm Parabellum pistol of the United States military adopted in 1985. It is essentially a military specification Beretta 92F, later the 92FS....
. The Colt OHWS
Colt OHWS
The Colt OHWS was a semi-automatic pistol created by Colt to compete for the United States Special Operations Command Offensive Handgun Weapon System tender. The winner of this competition would become the standard-issue handgun for most US special forces groups...
handgun was beaten by H&K for what became the MK23 SOCOM, it was lighter than the H&K entry but lost in performance. Colt did not get to compete for the XM8
XM8 rifle
The XM8 was a developmental U.S. Military designation and project name for a lightweight assault rifle system that was under development by the United States Army from the late 1990s to early 2000s...
since it was not an open competition. Colt is a likely entrant in any competition for a new US service rifle
Service rifle
The service rifle of a given army or armed force is that which it issues as standard to its soldiers. In modern forces, this is typically a highly versatile and rugged assault rifle suitable for use in nearly all theatres and environments...
. Current M16 rifles have been made primarily by FN USA since 1988. However, Colt remains the sole source for M4 carbines for the US military. Under their license agreement with Colt, the US military could not legally award second-source production contracts for the M4 until July 1, 2009.
Colt Presidents
- Samuel ColtSamuel ColtSamuel Colt was an American inventor and industrialist. He was the founder of Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company , and is widely credited with popularizing the revolver. Colt's innovative contributions to the weapons industry have been described by arms historian James E...
(1855-1862) - Elisha K. RootElisha K. RootElisha K. Root was a Connecticut machinist and inventor.Root was born on a Massachusetts farm and worked as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill before switching, at the age of 15, to working in a machine shop in Ware, Massachusetts. At age 24 he was hired by Connecticut industrialist Samuel W...
(1862-1865) - Richard JarvisRichard JarvisRichard William Hart Jarvis was the brother-in-law of Samuel Colt who took control of Colt's Manufacturing Company on the death of Elisha K. Root, serving as the company's longest president from 1865 to 1901...
(1865-1901) - John HallJohn HallJohn Hall may refer to:American government:* John Hall , U.S. Representative from New York and former member of the band Orleans...
(1901-1902) - Lewis C. Grover (1902-1909)
- William SkinnerWilliam SkinnerWilliam Skinner , was bishop of Aberdeen in the Scottish Episcopal Church.-Biography:Skinner, second son of John Skinner , bishop of St. Andrews, was born at Aberdeen on October 24, 1778, and educated at Marischal College, University of Aberdeen and at Oxford, where he matriculated from Wadham...
(1909-1911) - Col. Charles L.F. Robinson (1911-1916)
- William SkinnerWilliam SkinnerWilliam Skinner , was bishop of Aberdeen in the Scottish Episcopal Church.-Biography:Skinner, second son of John Skinner , bishop of St. Andrews, was born at Aberdeen on October 24, 1778, and educated at Marischal College, University of Aberdeen and at Oxford, where he matriculated from Wadham...
(1916-1921) - Samuel StoneSamuel Stone (disambiguation)Samuel Stone may refer to:* Samuel Stone , Puritan minster* Samuel J. Stone, micro philanthropist* Samuel John Stone , Anglican minster and hymnwriter*Samuel Hanson Stone, American politician...
(1921-1944) - Graham H. Anthony (1944-1949)
- B. Franklin Conner (1949-1955)
- Chester Bland (1955-1958)
- Fred A. Roff, Jr. (1958-1962)
- David C. Scott (1962-1963)
- Paul A. Benke (1963-1969)
Handguns
The years in brackets indicate the year when production started, not the year of the model's patent.- Colt PatersonColt PatersonA Colt Paterson is a revolver. It was the first commercial repeating firearm employing a revolving cylinder with multiple chambers aligned with a single, stationary barrel. Its design was patented by Samuel Colt on February 25, 1836, in the United States, France, and England, and it derived its...
revolver (1836) - Walker ColtWalker ColtThe Colt Walker is a single action revolver with a revolving cylinder holding six charges of black powder behind six bullets. It was designed in 1846 as a collaboration between Captain Samuel Hamilton Walker and American firearms inventor Samuel Colt....
revolver (1847) - Colt DragoonColt Dragoon RevolverThe Colt Model 1848 Percussion Army Revolver is a .44 caliber revolver designed by Samuel Colt for the U.S. Army's Mounted Rifles, also known as "Dragoons". This revolver was designed as a solution to numerous problems encountered with the Walker Colt...
revolver (1848) - Colt 1851 NavyColt 1851 Navy RevolverThe Colt Revolving Belt Pistol of Naval Caliber , later known as the Colt 1851 Navy or Navy Revolver, is a cap and ball revolver. It was designed by Samuel Colt between 1847 and 1850. It remained in production until 1873, when revolvers using fixed metallic cartridges came into widespread use...
revolver (1851) - Colt ArmyColt Army Model 1860The Colt Army Model 1860 is a muzzle-loaded cap & ball .44-caliber revolver used during the American Civil War, made by Colt's Manufacturing Company. It was used as a side arm by cavalry, infantry, artillery troops, and naval forces....
revolver (1860) - Colt 1861 NavyColt M1861 NavyThe Colt Model 1861 Navy cap & ball .36-caliber revolver was a six-shot, single-action percussion weapon produced by Colt's Manufacturing Company from 1861 until 1873. It incorporated the "creeping" or ratchet loading lever and round barrel of the .44-caliber Army Model of 1860 but had a barrel one...
revolver (1861) - Colt Model 1862 revolver (1862)
- Colt Single Action ArmyColt Single Action ArmyThe Colt Single Action Army is a single action revolver with a revolving cylinder holding six metallic cartridges. It was designed for the U.S...
"Peacemaker" revolver (1872) - Colt Lightning, Thunderer and RainmakerColt Model 1877The Colt M1877 was a double action revolver manufactured by Colt's Manufacturing Company from January 1877 to 1909 for a total of 166,849 revolvers. The Model 1877 was offered in three calibers, which lent them three unofficial names: the "Lightning", the "Thunderer", and the "Rainmaker"...
revolvers (1877) - Colt Model 1878 FrontierColt Model 1878The Colt M1878 was a double action revolver manufactured by Colt's Manufacturing Company from 1878 to 1907. It is often referred to as the "Frontier" or the "Double Action Army" revolver.-History:...
revolver (1878) - Colt New Army/Navy RevolversColt M1892The M1892 Colt Army & Navy was the first general issue double-action with a swing-out cylinder revolver used by the U.S. military.-Overview:In 1892 the gun was adopted by the Army in .38 Long Colt caliber, and the revolver was given the appellation New Army and Navy. Initial experience with the gun...
(1882 to 1903) - Colt M1900Colt M1900The Colt Model 1900 was a self-loading semi-automatic .38 caliber handgun introduced by Colt at the turn of the 20th century. It also marked the introduction of .38 ACP, the round for which it is chambered ....
semiautomatic pistol (1900) - Colt Model 1903 Pocket HammerlessColt Model 1903 Pocket HammerlessThe Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless is .32 ACP caliber, self-loading, semi-automatic pistol designed by John Browning and built by Colt Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company of Hartford, Connecticut...
semiautomatic pistol (Model M, 1903) - Colt Model 1908 Vest PocketColt Model 1908 Vest PocketThe Model 1908 Vest Pocket is a compact, hammerless, striker-fired, semi-automatic single action pistol. Manufactured by the Colt's Manufacturing Company from 1908 to 1948, it was marketed as a small concealable firearm which could be easily tucked into a gentleman’s vest pocket for unobtrusive carry...
(Model N, 1908) - Colt M1911 semiautomatic pistol; also known as the Government Model (Model O, 1911)
- Colt M1917 revolverM1917 revolverThe M1917 Revolver was a U.S. six-shot revolver of .45 ACP caliber. It was adopted by the U.S. Army in 1917 to supplement the standard M1911 .45 ACP semi-automatic pistol during World War I. Afterwards, it was primarily used by secondary and non-deployed troops...
/ New Service / M1909Colt New ServiceThe Colt New Service was a double-action revolver made by Colt from 1898 until c.1940. It was adopted by the U.S. Armed Forces in .45 Colt as the Model 1909 U.S. Army, Marine Corps Model 1909, Model 1909 U.S. Navy and in .45 ACP as the Model 1917 U.S. Army...
/ Colt Shooting Master - Colt 2000Colt 2000The Colt 2000 or All American 2000 is a polymer or aluminum-alloy framed, locked-breech, rotary bolt, semiautomatic 9 mm handgun with a magazine capacity of 15 rounds. Designed by C...
semi-automatic 9 mm - Colt AnacondaColt AnacondaIntroduced in 1990, the Colt Anaconda is a large frame double-action revolver featuring a full length under-barrel ejection-rod lug and six round cylinder, designed and produced by the Colt's Manufacturing Company...
revolver (AA Frame) - Colt Cadet 22
- Colt Delta EliteColt Delta Elite-See also:*Bren Ten, the first pistol chambered for 10mm Auto*Glock 20, another relatively successful pistol chambered for 10mm Auto*M1911A1, the design from which the Delta Elite was created*Kimber Eclipse, another 1911-style handgun chambered in 10mm Auto...
a modified Colt M1911A1 chambered for the 10mm Auto - Colt Detective Special / CobraColt Cobra .38 Special revolverThe Colt Cobra is a lightweight, aluminum-framed, double-action short-barrelled revolver chambered in .38 Special, .32 Colt New Police, and .22 LR...
/ Agent / snubnosed revolverSnubnosed revolverA snubnosed revolver has a barrel length of less than three inches. It was a popular type of firearm with undercover police officers due to its compact size and ease of handling...
(D frame) - Colt DiamondbackColt DiamondbackThe Colt Diamondback is a revolver manufactured by Colt's Manufacturing Company of Hartford, Connecticut, in calibers of .22 LR, .22 WMR and .38 Special....
revolver - Colt Double EagleColt Double EagleThe Colt Double Eagle is a double-action / single action, semi-automatic pistol manufactured by Colt's Manufacturing Company between 1989 and 1997. It was available in standard full-size, as well as in more compact versions, features a decocking lever, and was chambered for several calibers...
Pistol - Colt Junior
- Colt King CobraColt King CobraFirst introduced in 1986, the Colt King Cobra is a medium frame double-action revolver featuring a six round cylinder which was designed and produced by the Colt's Manufacturing Company and marketed to law enforcement agencies and civilian firearms enthusiasts...
revolver - Colt New Agent semiautomatic pistol
- Colt Official PoliceColt Official PoliceIntroduced to the firearms market in 1927, The Colt Official Police is a medium frame, six-shot, double-action revolver with a six round cylinder, primarily chambered for the .38 Special cartridge, and manufactured by the Colt's Manufacturing Company...
revolver / Officers Model (Match, Target & Special) / New Army & Navy (E/I frame) / Colt .357 (I Frame) - Colt Officer's ACPColt Officer's ACPThe Colt Officer's ACP or Colt Officer's Model is a single-action, semi-automatic, magazine-fed, and recoil-operated handgun based on the John M. Browning designed M1911...
- Colt Police PositiveColt Police PositiveThe Colt Police Positive is a small frame double-action revolver featuring a six-round cylinder, chambered for either .32 or .38 caliber cartridges...
revolver - Colt Police Positive SpecialColt Police Positive SpecialIntroduced to the firearms market in 1908, The Colt Police Positive Special is a small frame, double-action revolver with a six round cylinder, primarily chambered for the .38 Special cartridge, designed and manufactured by the Colt's Manufacturing Company...
revolver / Viper (D Frame) - Colt SCAMPColt SCAMPThe Colt SCAMP was conceived in 1969 as a replacement to the aging Colt M1911A1 pistol. The resulting weapon, embodied in a single SCAMP prototype built in 1971, was designed to give an individual operator a huge increase in firepower, with only a slight bump in weight and bulk...
- Colt SF VI, DS II, Magnum Carry (.357 Magnum)
- Colt PythonColt PythonThe Colt Python is a .357 Magnum caliber revolver formerly manufactured by Colt's Manufacturing Company of Hartford, Connecticut. It is sometimes referred to as a "Combat Magnum". It was first introduced in 1955, the same year as Smith & Wesson's M29 .44 Magnum. The now discontinued Colt Python...
revolver (I frame) - Colt Trooper revolver (I frame), Trooper Mk III (J frame), and trooper Mk V (V Frame)
- Woodsman/Woodsman Match Target/Huntsman/Targetsman (Model S)
Long guns
- Colt-Browning M1895M1895 Colt-Browning machine gunThe Colt-Browning M1895, nicknamed potato digger due to its unusual operating mechanism, is an air-cooled, belt-fed, gas-operated machine gun that fires from a closed bolt with a cyclic rate of 450 rounds per minute...
machine gun - Colt Lightning CarbineColt Lightning CarbineThe Colt Lightning Carbine or Colt Lightning Rifle was a slide-action or pump-action rifle manufactured by Colt from 1884 to 1904 and was originally chambered in .44-40 caliber. Colt eventually made the Lightning Rifle in three different frame sizes, to accommodate a wide range of cartridges,...
- Colt 1861 Special Contract Musket
- AR-15AR-15The AR-15 is a lightweight, 5.56 mm, air-cooled, gas-operated, magazine-fed semi-automatic rifle, with a rotating-lock bolt, actuated by direct impingement gas operation. It is manufactured with the extensive use of aluminum alloys and synthetic materials....
type rifles, such as the M16 rifleM16 rifleThe M16 is the United States military designation for the AR-15 rifle adapted for both semi-automatic and full-automatic fire. Colt purchased the rights to the AR-15 from ArmaLite, and currently uses that designation only for semi-automatic versions of the rifle. The M16 fires the 5.56×45mm NATO...
, M4 carbineM4 carbineThe M4 carbine is a family of firearms tracing its lineage back to earlier carbine versions of the M16, all based on the original AR-15 designed by Eugene Stoner and made by ArmaLite. It is a shorter and lighter variant of the M16A2 assault rifle, with 80% parts commonality.It is a gas-operated,...
and Colt Commando (see AR-15 variantsAR-15 variantsThis article is a review of many variations of the AR-15 family of weapons. Weapons patterned on the original ArmaLite AR-15 have been produced by numerous manufacturers and have been used by nations around the world, some of which created their own variations. The tables here are split in a...
for a complete list) - Colt ACRColt ACRThe Colt ACR was Colt's entry in the U.S. DoD Advanced Combat Rifle program, which concluded with the result that none of the entrants achieved enough of an improvement over the M16 to be worth the cost....
- Various Shotguns
Colt manufactured several military long arms under contract including the M1918 BAR and Thompson SMG.
See also
- List of modern armament manufacturers
- List of firearms
- Colt CanadaColt CanadaColt Canada is a firearms manufacturer owned by US based Colt and located in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.The company is a defense contractor that manufactures and supplies small arms to the Canadian Forces and Canadian law enforcement agencies, as well as defense research & development, training,...
- Antique GunsAntique gunsAn antique firearm is, loosely speaking, a firearm designed and manufactured prior to the beginning of the 20th century. The Boer War is often used as a cut-off event, although the exact definition of what constitutes an "antique firearm" varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction...
- Sodium silicateSodium silicateSodium silicate is the common name for a compound sodium metasilicate, Na2SiO3, also known as water glass or liquid glass. It is available in aqueous solution and in solid form and is used in cements, passive fire protection, refractories, textile and lumber processing, and automobiles...
(used as a cement for paper cartridges used in early Colt revolvers during the American Civil War)