Much of this has already been covered.
The 44-40 version of the Colt Single Action Army was known as the Frontier Six Shooter. I posted a photo of one in post #28.
S&W did not 'lease' the Rollin White patent.
Yes, Rollin White was a Colt employee. And yes, he came up with a prototype to show Colt. The main idea of the prototype was not so much a cylinder with chambers bored through to accept cartridges, as a magazine system to load linen cartridges from the front of the cylinder and an automatic primer feed in front of the hammer. This is a scan of the prototype that White cobbled together to show Colt. Scanned from
History of Smith and Wesson by Roy Jinks. Is it any wonder Colt rejected this kludge?
After Colt passed on White's idea, White obtained a patent. This is White's patent drawing of his kludge from 1855. In those days the patent office was not terribly concerned if a design would actually work, patents were issued for many bizarre devices.
After Daniel Wesson and Horace Smith left the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company (they were bought out by Oliver Winchester), Wesson designed a small 22 Rimfire revolver. It was designed to shoot a 22 caliber Rimfire cartridge designed by a Frenchman named Flobert. Today we would call the cartridge the 22 Short. Wesson came up with the idea of a cylinder bored though to accept cartridges independently, but when he did a patent search he discovered one aspect of White's ridiculous design was a bored through cylinder. Here is another Patent drawing of White's also dated 1855.
Wesson wrote to White on October 31, 1856 regarding White's patent. A meeting between Daniel Wesson, his old partner Horace Smith, and Rollin White took place on November 17, 1856. White refused to sell the rights of his patent outright. Instead an agreement was signed where White granted Smith and Wesson exclusive license to manufacture revolvers with bored through cylinders. White was to be paid a royalty of $.025 for every revolver S&W manufactured. White in turn would not have the right to manufacture any revolvers covered by his patent, and White would have to pay all expenses defending the patent against patent infringements.
S&W began manufacturing the little 22 Rimfire revolvers in 1857. As I described earlier, they were called Tip Up revolvers because the barrel had to be rotated up and the cylinder removed to load them.
Like this 32 Rimfire No. 1 1/2:
S&W did not miss any boats, the little Tip Ups were simply not strong enough for any cartridges other than 22 and 32 Rimfires. They experimented with a 44 Rimfire Tip Up but decided the design was not strong enough for a 44 caliber cartridge, so the Tip Ups were only made chambered for 22 and 32 Rimfire cartridges. This photo illustrates the three different Tip Up models. Top to bottom, the six shot 32 Rimfire No. 2 Old Army, the five shot 32 Rimfire No. 1 1/2, and a seven shot 22 Short No. 1.
In 1868 Remington signed a contract with Smith and Wesson to convert a number of the 1858 New Model Army Cap & Ball revolvers to fire cartridges using a conversion cylinder. These revolvers were converted to fire a 46 Rimfire cartridge, and because the cartridge was so large they were made into five shot revolvers instead of the original six. The work was done at the Remington plant in Ilion NY, and the guns were inspected by Smith and Wesson in Springfield MA. S&W received a royalty of $1.00 for each of the 4,500 or so revolvers converted under the White Patent.
The White Patent expired in 1869. White applied for an extension of his patent, and the Congress passed a bill to extend White's patent, but White had ticked off the Army so badly during the Civil War that President Grant refused to sign the bill.
Colt designed the Thuer Conversion specifically to get around White's patent. This revolver had an unusual reverse tapered cartridge. The idea was that since the chamber was tapered from front to back, it could get around the White patent. The Thuer Conversion was an economic failure, only about 5,000 of them were made.
After the White patent expired in 1869, Colt was able to freely design other revolvers converted from percussion to fire cartridges with conversion cylinders bored through for cartridges.
The first of these was the Richards Conversion, designed by C.B. Richards, a brilliant Colt employee. It used parts from the 1860 Army 44 caliber Cap & Ball revolver, but the rear of the cylinder was cut off where the nipples had been, and a Conversion Ring was screwed to the frame to take up the empty space. A new cartridge, the 44 Colt, was designed for the Richards Conversion.
William Mason, who later did most of the design work on the Single Action Army, made changes to the Richards Conversion making them simpler and less expensive to manufacture. This was the Richards-Mason Conversion.
Finally, the Open Top was designed just prior to the Single Action Army being released. It was the last of the Colt conversion revolvers.
Meanwhile Daniel Wesson had not been sleeping. He was sure the other revolver manufacturers would have their own cartridge revolvers ready for the market once the White Patent expired. So he designed a radical new revolver. It was a big, 44 Centerfire revolver that broke open from the top to load. It employed a mechanism that automatically ejected spent cartridges when the broken open. This new Top Break revolver hit the market in 1870, and the Army promptly bought 1000 of them.
It took Colt until 1873 to finally release the Single Action Army cartridge revolver, and unlike the radical S&W design, it had to unloaded and reloaded one chamber at a time.
As I said earlier, there were far more Single Action Army revolvers chambered for 45 Colt than for 44-40.
