Samuel Colt Samuel Colt Samuel Colt (; July 19, 1814 – January 10, 1862) was an American inventor, industrialist, businessman, and hunter. He founded Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company (today Colt's Manufacturing Company) and made the mass production of the revolver commercially viable. Colt's first two business ventures were producing firearms in Paterson, New Jersey and making underwater mines; both ended in disappointment. But his business expanded rapidly after 1847, when the Texas Rangers ordered 1,000 revolvers during the American war with Mexico. During the American Civil War, his factory in Hartford supplied firearms both to the North and the South. Later,
Colt 1851 Navy Revolver rimfire or centerfire cartridges, the "Colt Model 1851 Richards- Mason Conversion" by the Colt factory. Famous "Navy" users included Wild Bill Hickok, John Henry "Doc" Holliday, Richard Francis Burton, Ned Kelly, Bully Hayes, Richard H. Barter, Robert E. Lee, Nathan B. Forrest, John O'Neill, Frank Gardiner, Quantrill's Raiders, John Coffee "Jack" Hays, Wallace, Frederick Townsend Ward, Ben McCulloch, Addison Gillespie, John "Rip" Ford, "Sul" Ross and most Texas Rangers prior to the Civil War. Use continued long after more modern cartridge revolvers were introduced. The Ottoman Empire used the revolver as late as the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 even though