Investors Were Timorous.
His lectures brought him money enough to enable him to continue his work, and in 1835 he patented his first revolver. It was a heavy, cumbersome affair, but the device whereby the various chambers were brought in line with a single barrel put it far ahead of all previous revolvers and double, triple, and quadruple barreled pistols.
The easiest part of Colt's work was the invention of the weapon. The hard part came when he organized a company and started in to manufacture fire-arms. Investors didn't care for the idea, and in 1842 the Colt Manufacturing Company suspended for lack of funds.
"I'll give you one thousand dollars for the entire rights to the thing," said a Hartford business man to Colt.
Colt took a couple of days to think it over. He did not have any money or any prospect of money, and a thousand dollars was a big temptation. However, he decided not to take it.
"It wouldn't pay me for the work I put into it," he said. "I'm going to try again."
The new attempt met with more success, for toward the end of the Seminole War in Florida the United States soldiers had begun to appreciate the effectiveness of the Colt revolver. Then the adventurers in Texas and through the Middle West came to look upon the six-shooter as the most valuable part of their outfit, and there was a sufficiently large band of these adventurers to cause a fair-sized demand. This enabled the Colt Company to struggle on until the Mexican War became certain.
Then General Taylor, who had used the Colt revolver in his Indian campaigns, recommended that the United States troops be furnished with it. The little factory in Hartford suddenly found itself confronted with an order for twenty thousand revolvers. It was necessary to work day and night to meet the demand, and while this was going on Colt enlarged his place of business in anticipation of future orders of like magnitude. They came plentifully enough during the two years of the Mexican War, for the Colt was the only small arm that played any part in that contest.
After the war, business did not fall off materially, for the great Western migration was on, and every one who made it went armed. The pioneer and the traveler depended upon the Colt in an emergency, and the workmanship was so good that the revolver itself never failed. It played a great part again in the Civil War, for most of the Northern troops, in addition to their Springfield rifles, carried Colt revolvers. Thus the idea that a runaway boy evolved during his trip to India helped to win the Mexican War, to settle the West, and to decide the Civil War.