who invented the revolver?

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I thought it was some guy named A. Gore or Algore. Same guy who invented the internet.
 
Well, first you have to decide what defines a revolver. Various types of firearms with revolving cylinders or barrels have been around for centuries, including the Puckle Gun, invented in 1718. Granted, not all of these designs are man-portable.
 
who invented the revolver?
W.H.B. Smith "Small Arms of the World" 1948 thru 1966 eds. all cite Samuel Colt as "the first actually successful revolver". Smith does point out that the Royal United Service Museum, Whitehall, England has circa 1650 revolver with snaphaunce ignition. There are multiple examples of early revolvers in Geoffrey Boothroyd, "The Handgun", almost all one-of-a-kind or handmade in very small numbers and not popular. Tower of London has an 1820 flintlock revolver by Collier. Flintlock. Revolver. Whole nother dimension of "chain fire" possibilities.

Colt invented the first successful, popular, mass-produced revolver, made practical by percussion ignition.
 
Sam Colt invented the first mass produced reliable revolving cylinder revolver. There were many hand made "revolvers" made years and years before this.

Remember the old "Pepperbox" revolver where each bullet had it's own barrel and even the barrels revolved? This got by the timing problem where only the cylinder revolves.
 
Moonpie, I'll bet that revolver was found in the same cave where an ancient deteriorated battery post was supposedly found.

The Egyptians have wall drawings that seems to show electric lights from centuries ago.

Fun (or maybe scarey) to think about, right?

There was a saying that I don't remember who said it: "There are more things in heaven and earth that man has ever dreamed of in his small philosophies.
 
Sam Colt certainly did not invent the first revolver or even the first successful revolver. Amazing as they were, the Paterson designs were really overly complicated and an utter failure. His first successful revolver was really the 1847 "Walker" model. Elisha Collier had a military contract with Great Britain long before Colt. We must also remember that Colt's design was only made possible by the invention of the percussion cap. There are revolver designs similar to Collier's that long predate it as well. The one linked-to above dating 1597 is certainly in the running and I remember seeing others from that period as well. Truth is, nobody really knows who invented the first.

Collier's design:
Collier.jpg


One from 1606:
Revolver%201606.jpg


Neither Sam Colt or Elisha Collier ever claimed to have invented the concept.
 
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Worthy of note is that Collier also had a percussion design and even a design that rotated the cylinder upon cocking by means of an internal wound spring. So Colt did not invent that concept either but I do believe he was the first to put it into production.
 
Well Henry the 8th had shields made, with a fixed barrel that had a revolving cylinder behind it that were manually turned and fired. Go to England and see them. There were many flintlock revolvers, and while Sam was making his first single actions, many of the revolvers in England were DA. Sam popularized the revolver, much like Henry Ford popularized the car, but neither of them invented them.
 
I don't think anything was ever "invented" solely by one man. It is a process of building on a succession of ideas. Sometimes, a device is simply "in the air" as the self-loading pistol was c. 1890. The auto pistol depended on the metallic cartridge, which depended on the percussion cap, which depended on research into brissant chemicals, etc. When the necessary pieces fall into place, someone will put them together and "invent" something.

Jim
 
Hi all, yes, I like this community here, certainly there are very knowledgable people here doing justice to THR. I was wrong when I expected all would wrongly say Samual Colt.

There is a difference in inventing and design. Samuel Colt not only designed the first successful revolver but he was probably (I am guessing) the first to indroduce mass production.

Problem in identifying early weapons will be shown by the following. The snapp hounce, ( intermediate between wheel lock and flintlock) originated in Spain or Italy. Traveling gun smiths then took such ideas where the went. It took more than a hundred years before the exact and indistingishable design tunrned up in the easten balitcs 2000km away. Only the engraved name and date indicate where these were made. Thierbach GESCHICHTE DER FEUERWAFFEN.

However, I do not appreciate silly comments of people who are ignorant. I am sure the interesting contributions were of much interest to many people here.

Thank you Gentlemen

Regards

WAH
 
Elisha Collier certainly had a working revolver before Sam Colt did. Colt just found a big market for his products here in the US what with the Indian Wars and later the Civil War. His name became associated with the first revolvers because of being the first percussion cap revolvers. Those two things combined made for a much faster firing gun after the initial cylinder was empty. That made his guns highly desirable.

BTW the Walker Colt became much more popular because it was much more powerful than the earlier Colt Paterson. That was Captain Walker's contribution to the effort - getting more power involved. Unfortunately with the added power came exploding cylinders. People used them anyway because if they needed a gun like that it was worth taking the risk of it blowing up in your face.

If you remember in Clint Eastwood's masterpiece "Unforgiven" Little Bill talked about how Two Gun Corcoron had his Walker Colt blow up in his hand which allowed English Bob to walk up and shoot him. Little Bill said, "The Walker Colt blew up in his hand which was a failure that was common to that model." The state of metallurgy just hadn't caught up with the ambition of Captain Walker and that's why the Navy Colt became the preferred handgun of that era. Although it was much lighter than the Walker it was less prone to blow up because they limited power. The Navy Colt fired a .36 caliber bullet and was very similar to our .380's in its ballistics. The Walker was an ambitious .44 caliber weapon and it just wouldn't stand up. Only about 1100 Walker Colts were ever built. The Navy Colt had about a quarter of a million built and sold so you can see the first real success story of Mr. Colt was the Navy revolver.
 
I was wrong when I expected all would wrongly say Samual Colt.
Click to expand...
I got in a big fight over on TFL for suggesting that Sam Colt did not invent the revolver. They bent over backwards to refute historical fact. I don't know how it happened but a lot of people falsely believe that he did invent the revolver. Even though he never claimed to.

Whether or not Colt designed the first successful revolver is debatable as well. The Paterson models, by all accounts, were not successful.
 
Guys, if it makes things easier, you can just say it was me. :eek:

You can send your donations to me for inventing such a great firearm. :D
 
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