The action of this pistol is automatic except that the trigger must be pulled to fire each shot; continued discharge will not result from one pull of the trigger.
But wars ran out, the market closed, and the “Patent Arms Company” failed. What put Colt on his feet again was the Mexican war a few years later. General Taylor offered Colt a contract for one thousand revolvers at $24 each, and though the young inventor was looked upon as a ruined man he took the contract, got together the necessary capital, and built a factory on the Connecticut at Hartford. From that time on there was no want of a market. The “Forty-Niners” took revolvers to California, foreign governments sent orders for them, and armories were built in England and in Russia for their manufacture. Colt died in 1862, but the Civil War had previously opened a great market for his pistols, and before the conflict ended the Colt factory at Hartford was in a highly flourishing state. In the following years the revolver became a prime necessity in dealing with the Indians of the West, and a school-book statement of that date was to the effect that: “The greatest civilizer of modern times is the Colt revolver.” Another writer, speaking of the “Peacemaker,” an effective weapon produced after 1870, said: “It has the simplicity, durability, and beauty of a monkey-wrench.”
Automatic Machine Gun Mounted on Tripod, Showing Belt Passing Out (Right Side)
Machine Guns.
The revolving idea was applied to guns about 1861 by Richard J. Gatling, the first Gatling guns fitted for use with metalling ammunition being produced by the Colt Company in 1870. These guns had ten barrels revolving around a central shaft and in their developed form were capable of being fired at the rate of one thousand shots a minute. The first of these to be used prominently in warfare was the French mitrailleuse, used by France in the war of 1870-71. The Gatling soon made its way widely, and its rapidity of fire became a proverb. If anything moved quickly it was said to “go like a Gatling” or “sound like a Gatling.”
Automatic Gun Mounted on Automobile