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 New Service .455-inch 5.5-inch barrel Mk. I, chambered for the .455 Webley cartridge were acquired for issue as "substitute standard" by the British War Department during World War I. British Empire Colt New Service Revolvers were stamped ""NEW SERVICE .455 ELEY"" on the barrel, to differentiate them from the .45 Colt versions used by the US (and Canada). The Colt New Service was a popular revolver with British officers and many of them had privately purchased their own Colt New Service revolvers in the years prior to World War I as an alternative to the standard-issue Webley Revolver. British Empire and Canadian