God made people strong and weak. Colonel Colt equalized their chances. God created us different, but equal Samuel Colt leveled them in rights

Blog: eugenyshultz

President Putin, in his article published in The New York Times, made a number of serious mistakes, indicating a misunderstanding of the events taking place in Syria, and a misunderstanding of the mentality of American citizens, whom he addressed in his article http://kremlin.ru/news /19205 .

Let's look at the thesis of the article and look at it through the eyes of an American. Simple, far from politics. Let's start from the end. How did Putin finish his article?

Putin ended the article with the words: "God created us equal." Any American will chuckle skeptically at these words, because the phrase “God created people equal” (and this is also a borrowing from the US Declaration of Independence: “We consider it self-evident that all people are created equal, and that they are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights, in including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness") can only be adequately understood in the sense that human beings have equal birthrights given to them by God. But natural possibilities are different and there must be a force that equalizes them - it does not allow the strong to oppress the weak. Naturally, Americans see their country the USA as this force! This equality does not come about on its own... And the use of military force in Syria is precisely justified by the fact that EQUALIZING the strength of the rebels with the forces of Assad - to help the oppressed, so to speak ... I don’t understand how it was possible, even based on ordinary political technological considerations, so unsuccessfully to finish the article... As usual, Putin's PR does not shine. Cranes, pikes, tiger cubs, walruses, agents of the State Department - that's their element. In serious matters, it doesn't count.

Putin tried to shame the Americans with their eternal sense of EXCLUSIVENESS. And it would be okay, he argued that they are not exceptional at all. No…just shamed Obama by calling his people exceptional. What did Putin say? “I think it’s very dangerous to plant the idea of ​​their exclusivity in people’s heads, no matter how it is motivated.” The reference is clear. To Ubermensch and Untermensch. Those. Putin compared the US to the Third Reich. But it’s so frail that most Americans won’t even take a hint ... They are by and large not interested in anything other than their Oklahoma and the next baseball game and quite sincerely consider themselves exceptional (surprise!) ... And those who are interested know for sure that it was the United States that defeated Nazism. And then some totalitarian Putin begins to reproach the Americans for their exclusivity ... But who is he, in general, this Putin? He himself sits for the 14th year in a row at the head of Russia, because he is exceptional, and he begins to teach us Americans how to live. Here is the way of thinking. And in some ways I even agree with him ... Thus, not only a failure, but also a minus. On the contrary, it was necessary to appeal to the EXCLUSIVENESS of the Americans. Moreover, it is so. You can argue about the +/- sign, but this is really an exceptional country and people. However, like us.

Referring to the opinion of the Pope is a good move. Americans love God. Rather, they believe God loves America. But the USA is a Protestant country, so the reference to the head of the Catholic Church will work very poorly and will not move the American to serious thoughts. The Protestant ethic ultimately leads to the fact that each blacksmith has his own happiness. Screwed up - it's his own fault. With regard to Assad, this will sound - it was not good to torture the people in person for so long. This will also apply to Putin. In the end, again, it fails.

All these disadvantages are based on the foundation: Russia lost to the US in the Cold War. From the point of view of an American, Russia today is trying to limit the United States in the spread of their only correct concept - DEMOCRACY. Why? Because Russia does not like democracy. Because Russia is authoritarian. And Putin himself is a vivid proof of this. 14th year rowing in galleys. Tired, but for some reason he doesn’t want to give up his place ... They don’t understand the pain that Mother Russia will die without Putin :) In short, Putin’s personality itself, with such arguments, generates cognitive dissonance.

Putin doesn't even seem to understand how the Americans feel about their country... I assure you, they feel their country is not some big one, but a country... They feel like a UNION of states. This directly follows from their name UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. And even more - not just an alliance, but a new model of the world order. Please note that the name US (United States) is widely used - without any Americas ... America is so ... temporarily, in reality, the sight on the entire PLANET :))). This is our governor of a subject of the Federation - a puppet of the Kremlin. In the USA, a state is a very, very independent unit - it is actually a state within a state with its own laws, its own police, its own traditions. Therefore, Americans perceive the expansion of the United States on the world stage as the expansion of their IDEA - DEMOCRACY, and not as an attack by the Empire on adjacent territories. Americans are naturally wrong, but that's how they feel about it. And you need to appeal to THEIR feeling when you try to talk to THEM.

But this is not enough. Not only is Putin unable to reach the hearts of Americans. He also gets in the wake of their worldview, thereby further weakening (already from the standpoint of logic) his already weak arguments against the active position of the United States in the international arena to defend democracy. Namely, this is how Americans perceive the activities of the United States. For in line with the worldview of the United States - their actions are RIGHT. It is possible to prove the wrongness of the US actions only by directing the reader's thoughts in a different direction. Putin did not.

In general, an unsuccessful toothless article. All the same Putin has already said. And it never stopped anyone, and could not stop anyone. Moreover, the entire article is permeated with a lack of understanding of the Americans' point of view on the role of their country in history, as well as a clear dissonance between oneself and one's highly moral statements. A PERSON who considers himself exceptional cannot deny other PEOPLES in exclusivity. Namely, this is what it looks like for an American: An exceptional and unique Putin, who rules in Russia as he wants, does not allow a whole PEOPLE, which has reached the highest stage of development on Earth, to carry the banner of democracy.

It's unfortunate, but true. The maximum that Putin will achieve is the same as what he achieved with his Munich speech. That is, NOTHING.

So what will happen to Syria? In general, Putin already said this in his previous interview: “You know what, how do I know?”.

At the same time, naturally, there are many people in the United States who are categorically against military action in Syria. And without any moralizing Putin. But it's like in Russia: many people understand that Putin is long overdue for a well-deserved honorary pension, but most ... most Russians need a tsar-father. Till. And most Americans need a star-striped banner over the planet and the triumph of democracy... And for these Americans, Putin has not said anything of value... At the same time, I emphasize once again, of course, a huge number of Americans consider a military action in Syria unnecessary and harmful - this is there is the main deterrent of a military strike, and not Putin's article at all.

Plus, it turns out that an article in the NYT was published by the American PR agency Ketchum, which has been improving the image of Russia in the West for many years! http://news.rambler.ru/21083840/ Imagine, it turns out that they improve our image ...:) Yeah. I remember that American PR people just now improved Gaddafi’s image too… http://eugenyshultz.livejournal.com/173721.html

An American proverb says: "The Lord God created people, Abraham Lincoln gave them freedom, but only Colonel Samuel Colt finally made them equal." Indeed, with the advent of mass-produced handguns, society has changed. But it has undergone no less changes thanks to other achievements of Samuel Colt.

In 1851, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, organized the Great Exhibition in London, which was supposed to demonstrate to the whole world the technical achievements of the British Empire. Millions of visitors wandered through the fantastic crystal palace that was erected in Hyde Park especially for this event. In the American department, crowds of onlookers surrounded a noisy, temperamental gentleman who praised a revolutionary novelty - a pistol from which one could shoot not once or twice in a row, but as many as six! But the audience was much more struck by this. In those days when any piece of precision mechanics was made by hand, and all parts were customized individually, the assembly of a functional pistol right in front of the public from parts randomly removed from several boxes on the table (the parts in each were absolutely interchangeable due to very precise processing on metal-cutting machines ), looked like a real miracle. The name of the American who entertained the public is now known to almost everyone. It was Samuel Colt.

Colt Patterson 1836. .36 caliber five-shot capsule revolver

Pyrotechnician and navigator

Samuel Colt was born in 1814 in Hartford, Connecticut. When Sam was two years old, his mother died, and a couple of years later his father remarried. At the age of ten, the boy began to earn money on a farm nearby. Soon he was sent to a private school in Amherst (Massachusetts), where he showed a keen interest in chemistry. However, he did not stay there even for two years - his training ended when one of the pyrotechnic experiments with which he amazed his classmates suddenly went out of control. At age 15, Sam began working in a weaving mill in Ware, Massachusetts, where his father was a salesman. But he still had a love for pyrotechnics, and on the eve of Independence Day, July 4, 1829, he posted handwritten flyers around the neighborhood announcing that "Sam Colt will show how you can blow up a raft floating in the city pond by explosion." According to the legend, the young designer was slightly mistaken in his calculations and all the spectators were doused with water. The angry mob almost threw the experimenter into the pond, but the young mechanic Elisha Root saved him from reprisal. The pyrotechnic experiment made an impression on him. Two decades later, he would play an important role in Colt's adventurous life.

Contrary to popular belief, Samuel Colt was not the inventor of the revolver. But he turned out to be a brilliant entrepreneur who was able to appreciate the potential of this invention and use all the achievements of technological progress to build his industrial empire.

The following year, Colt persuaded his father to attach him as a sailor to the cargo brig Corvo, en route from Boston to Calcutta with a stop at London. It was on this journey that he was captured by a new idea, born as a result of observing the ratchet on the anchor capstan, or, according to another version, the ratchet of the steering wheel. It also seems likely that Colt saw in England one of the pistols with a rotary breech - a flintlock model, which was developed in 1813 by the Boston gunsmith Elisha Collier (40,000 of these pistols were sent to India to arm the British troops). To keep himself busy during the four-month voyage, 16-year-old Sam carved a crude revolver of his own design out of wood. The idea of ​​a revolver did not leave him until the end of his life, and the layout became a relic in the history of firearms.

An 1847 Walker Colt and its improved 1948 Colt Dragon. Six-shot cap revolver caliber .44

Chemist

After returning from a voyage, Colt decided to turn the idea into metal. He was a good draftsman, but had no desire to master the profession of a gunsmith. Instead, he persuaded his father to give him money and hired a professional locksmith. The result was minimal: both samples made by the gunsmith were no good. One did not fire at all, and the second exploded during testing.

Oh, one more time...

At the beginning of the 18th century, when using firearms after each shot, a very troublesome reloading process was required, which turned into a deadly weakness on the battlefield. Gunsmiths have been experimenting with multi-barreled weapons since the earliest days of gunpowder in military affairs, but such weapons were heavy and inconvenient. In the Collier revolver of the 1813 model, it was not the barrels that rotated, but only the breech (it had to be turned manually before each shot), but according to its design, the gunpowder in each chamber was ignited by a flint lock, striking a spark by hitting the flint on the iron.
The gun revolution began in 1799, when the British chemist Edward Howard discovered that mercury fulminate ("mercury fulminate") was an excellent initiating explosive, and in 1805 the Scottish priest Alexander John Forsythe first used fulminate balls to ignite gunpowder. hammer blow. In 1814, mercury fulminate began to be placed in steel, and in 1818 - in copper caps, capsules, which were put on brand pipes that conduct fire to gunpowder. The new system quickly supplanted the old flint structures.
The Colt capsule revolver used a drum with five or six powder chambers. A powder charge and a bullet were put into each of them, primers were inserted into the ignition holes of each chamber. The chambers were reloaded from the front, for which a small ramrod was used, which was traditionally attached directly to the pistol under the barrel. What was new was that when cocking the trigger, a special pawl turned the drum until the charging chamber completely coincided with the barrel, and in this position the drum was fixed. When the shooter pulled the trigger, under the action of the spring, the trigger hit the primer, which ignited the powder charge, the gases from which pushed the bullet. At the next cocking, a new charging chamber was brought to the barrel, and the revolver was ready for the next shot. Five (or six) bullets could be fired in a matter of seconds, and this provided a significant advantage in a collision with several opponents.

He did not want to return to the sailor's life, and Colt started selling laughing gas, which he learned from a chemist in Ware. For three years he toured the United States and Canada under the name "Dr. Coult of New York, London and Calcutta", pushing a handcart in front of him and showing the audience the effects of nitrous oxide. Earnings reached $ 10 a day, which for the 1830s was quite good. However, Colt did not forget about his idea. With the money he earned, he hired a gunsmith from Baltimore, John Pearson, who brought the design of the revolver to mind.

In 1835, Samuel, having borrowed a thousand dollars from his father, went to Europe and patented a revolver in England and France, and in 1836 received US patent number 138, after which he persuaded his cousin Dudley Selden and several other investors from New York to invest $ 200 000 to his Patent Arms Manufacturing Company in Patterson, New Jersey, which soon began producing .36 single-action, five-shot Patterson model revolvers (you had to cock the hammer with your thumb). Colt himself took up sales and advertising of his weapons. Realizing that government patronage would be the key to success, he hurried to Washington to make federal contacts. He was sure that hospitality parties and bribes to the right people would quickly open the eyes of the authorities to the merits of his invention. Cousin Dudley, looking at the bills for liquor, grumbled: "I doubt that the old Madeira will improve the performance of the new weapon."

Six-shot cap revolver caliber .44

Bankrupt

However, it turned out that the military is hopelessly conservative. In addition, tests have shown that the invention is still very "raw": sensitive capsules created the danger of an accidental shot (or even shots) simply with a strong blow to the pistol. Gunpowder deposits or fragments of capsules could lead to jamming of the delicate mechanism. It could also break the entire drum if the shooter poured too much gunpowder into it.

Good wine and bribes were not enough to attract government dollars. In 1837, Colt managed to sell a hundred revolver rifles to arm federal troops in operations against the Seminole Indian tribe in Florida, and three years later he managed to sell another hundred to the army at $ 50 apiece, but this was too little to keep the enterprise afloat, and in 1842 the company went bankrupt.

.36 caliber six-shot capsule revolver

Bankrupt again

The failure and loss of money did not discourage Colt. He moved to New York and returned to his childhood pastimes - underwater mines controlled from the shore using electricity. Such mines lying at the bottom of a channel or strait could sink enemy ships. “This is a defense against all the fleets of Europe,” he praised his invention, “which will not require risking the lives of our compatriots.” The interested US Navy allocated $6,000 for further research, and Colt conducted several spectacular tests, sinking a couple of schooners in front of the commission. But no further funding followed. More successful was another development of Colt - waterproof cartridges: in 1845, the army bought them for $ 50,000.

Six-shot revolver chambered for a unitary cartridge of caliber .45

Colt, who organized his workshop at New York University, met Samuel Morse, whose laboratory was in the neighborhood. Inventors willingly exchanged their ideas. Colt suggested that Morse establish a telegraph connection between Washington and Baltimore by laying a 40-mile cable. In 1846, the New York and Offing Magnetic Telegraph Association was established to connect Manhattan with Long Island and New Jersey by submarine cables. But due to contradictions between investors and Colt's inattention, the company soon went bankrupt. At 32, Sam was once again poor.

Businessman

However, all this time, Colt's weapons were gradually gaining their way into life. Shortly before the first bankruptcy, the inventor sold a small batch of Patterson revolvers to a group of Texas Rangers - militias who defended the Republic of Texas from the Mexicans and Indians. Gangs of resourceful Indians managed to break through the barrage, throwing themselves at the soldiers while they were reloading their muskets. Colt's invention allowed the shooters to neutralize the Indian tactics. Samuel Walker, a Ranger captain, sent Colt a thank you note praising his pistols. “If they are improved a little more,” he wrote, “then they will become the most perfect weapon in the world.” According to Walker's story, a unit of 15 soldiers armed with revolvers dealt with a gang of 80 Comanches.

1. Barrel. 2. Drum. 3. Trigger. 4. Frame. 5. Trigger. 6. Spring. 7. Handle. 8. Overlays for the handle. 9. The plunger of the charging lever. 10. Charging lever. 11. Trigger guard.

In 1846, the US war with Mexico became inevitable, and Walker decided to equip his dragoons with new revolvers. Discussing his plans with Colt, he suggested several important improvements. Colt simplified the mechanism, made reloading easier, and increased the caliber of the Walker-named model from .36 to .44. With a nine-inch (225 mm) barrel, this massive six-shot revolver weighed almost 2 kg, that is, more than twice as much as a modern one. Colt received an order for 1,000 revolvers at a price of $25 each. If the war continued, the order was to be repeated. Colt is back in the gun business.

The upgraded pistols were needed by Walker as soon as possible. However, although Colt remained the owner of the patent for the revolver, he no longer had his own production base. He arranged with Eli Whitney, the owner of a musket factory located in Connecticut, to produce a batch of weapons. Six months later, the order was completed, and Captain Walker, who constantly hurried Colt, received a pair of revolvers named after him four days before his death in battle.

Industrialist

The gun's reputation in Mexico, as well as good reviews from owners in Florida and Texas, outweighed concerns about novelty and unreliability. The government ordered another thousand copies, and in 1847, Colt, having borrowed money from a banker relative, hired workers and opened his own small production in Hartford, capable of producing up to 5,000 pistols a year.

In 1849, Colt made the best personnel decision of his life. He lured from another company Elisha Root, who was considered the most experienced engineer in New England. By the end of the year, the factory built under the direction of Root was already producing a hundred pistols a week.

When Colt went to an exhibition in London in 1851, he was an international celebrity. His factory in Hartford employed 300 people and produced approximately 20,000 pistols a year. The hugely popular .31 caliber pocket pistol was added to the lineup, and demand was so great that the factory could barely keep up with production. Colt traveled to European capitals in search of new buyers for his pistols. In 1852, he founded a plant in London, becoming the first American entrepreneur to open a branch of his production overseas.

.45 caliber semi-automatic pistol

By becoming the owner of the largest private arms manufacturer in the world, Colt managed to extend the validity of some key patents and retained a monopoly in this area, and the events that unfolded in the next decade were simply the realization of any gunsmith's dream. The US victory over Mexico opened the way to the southwest. Complete anarchy reigned in those wild places, which gave rise to a huge demand for revolvers. The gold rush in California and Australia added new crowds of buyers. Sales also increased thanks to the Crimean War of 1853-1856.

Innovator

During a visit to the British World's Fair, Colt received an invitation to speak to members of the famous English Institute of Civil Engineers. He took advantage of this opportunity to further promote his pistols to the European market, but also spoke in his speech about what later became known as the "American system of production." Colt did not come up with this system, but he was one of the first to put it into practice.

Double action revolver in caliber .357 Magnum

Traditionally, firearms were made by skilled artisans. The weapons were produced in small batches, all the details were made by hand, and then customized "in place". State factories have established a single line of models and templates that are mandatory for manufacturers. The arsenals required their contractors to use the same technological techniques, so that the Connecticut Valley became the vanguard of the technological revolution, as Silicon Valley in California is today.

Colt understood how important issues of standardization and interchangeability were for government customers. In addition, the automated technological process also opened the way to cost reduction (the price of $50 by 1859 dropped to $19 due to large production volumes).

Although at that time narrow specialization was not yet very typical, at the Colt plant, on each of the machines, the worker performed any one operation - for example, drilling a barrel or making a cut. All work on the manufacture of the pistol was divided into 450 separate operations. The grandiose factory in Hartford became a tourist attraction, where tourists were taken, showing them "a jungle inhabited by strange iron monsters" that set in motion five steam engines. “Fragile girls with delicate hands do the work here that hefty smoked blacksmiths do in other gun shops,” wrote a journalist who visited Colt’s London factory in 1852.

1. Barrel. 2. Drum. 3. Trigger. 4. Frame. 5. Trigger. 6. Spring. 7. Handle. 8.9. Handle pads. 10. Trigger guard. 11. Drummer. 12. Ejector. 13. Charging window.

Benefactor

The new system of production, organized at the Colt factory, quickly spread and went beyond the arms industry. The system was based on almost military discipline: the workplace was supposed to be at 7.00, when the steam engines were started, and if the worker was late, he was no longer allowed into the shop. Absolute sobriety was categorically required from the staff. Narrow specialization and a hierarchical management system became the rules.

Samuel Colt's Mistake

Despite his talent, Colt missed one of the most critical moments in the development of small arms - the transition to a unitary cartridge. Until the 1850s, firearms were primed. The weapon was loaded through the muzzle, pouring gunpowder into the breech, and then rolling the bullet. The Colt pistol was the same traditional design, but only in a variant with several powder chambers.
In 1855, the gunsmith Rollin White developed a revolver, in which the powder chamber was not a closed cavity with an ignition hole, but a through hole drilled in the drum. The shooter inserted a copper cartridge into this hole from the back (Jacques Flaubert's French patent of 1846), consisting of a cartridge case with a powder charge, a bullet and a primer. The metal bottom of the cartridge served as the back wall of the powder chamber. Reloading became much faster than in capsule revolvers. If legend is to be believed, White first proposed his idea to Colt, but was rebuffed by him. Because of this Colt blunder, White's design was bought by Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson, who released the Smith & Wesson Model 1 revolver in 1857 - the first revolver with a metal unitary cartridge. When White's patent expired in 1869, all pistol manufacturers switched to this system, and capsule revolvers sunk into oblivion.

Soon the British government, despite the resistance of the gunsmiths' shops, borrowed the American system for a new weapons factory in Enfield. Colt felt that the new principles would change the very way of life of the working class, and he sought to somehow avoid such phenomena as poverty and degradation, which the industrial revolution brought to some regions of Europe. His solution to the problem was Coltsville, a compact area of ​​Hartford, where, in addition to the factory, there were residential areas for workers, parks, and even a club. Baseball teams and glee clubs were organized, and salaries were more than generous in those days.

Legend

Colt did not serve a day in the American army, but for many years of helping the Democratic Party and supporting the governor of Connecticut, Thomas Seymour, he was awarded the rank of colonel in the 1850s. In 1856 Colt married Elizabeth Yarvis, the daughter of a minister. The young people built a large house in Hartford and fit into the city's high society. They had four children, but only one son survived to adulthood. Colt was deeply distressed by the death of his children, he himself began to have serious health problems, and on January 10, 1862, at the age of 47, he died, leaving behind a capital of $ 15 million and one of the largest and most advanced enterprises in the country. The funeral was like the final act of a grand opera: Colt was seen off by the entire city, led by Mayor Deming and Governor Seymour, and the 12th Infantry Regiment stood guard of honor.

Today it is clear that Colt's main legacy is not the design of a revolver, but an innovative approach to the problems of mass production and marketing. The technological solutions that Colt introduced into the production of weapons were later used in the production of typewriters, sewing machines, and bicycles. Now almost everything is made in full accordance with the principles that became the life work of Samuel Colt, the first of America's great gunsmiths.

According to The Wall Street Journal and other leading American media, the American arms company Colt Defense is on the verge of bankruptcy. Currently, the issue of restructuring the company's debt is being resolved. If the problem is not resolved soon, which is unlikely, the company's assets will be put up for auction. Bankruptcy could be the end of a 160-year-old firm's prolonged agony.

Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company, Samuel Colt created in 1855. By that time, the name of Colt and him was already well known both in America and abroad. In 1836, Colt patented the "revolving gun" - a weapon with a rotating breech part, in combination with a trigger mechanism and primer ignition.The idea of ​​​​a multiply charged revolver was not new in Colt's time (according to one of the popular versions, Colt himself learned about the revolver scheme during his trip to England, where revolvers of another inventor Elisha Collier were already produced However, Colt was the first to combine the revolver scheme with the primer invented shortly before (say, Collier's revolvers had a complex scheme with a trigger with flint and a flint on the drum casing). Colt was able to find creditors to start production of his revolver and in 1836 in Paterson, New Jersey, the production of revolvers was launched, named after the name of the locality - Colt Paterson.

However, Colt's first pancake came out lumpy - the revolver suffered from a lack of design, and the level of technical equipment of the first factory did not allow achieving the proper quality of parts processing. As a result, the revolver was not reliable and did not gain much popularity. In 1843, the first Colt factory closed and its equipment was auctioned off. For a while, Colt abandoned the idea of ​​a gun business and switched to the new fashion of the time - the production and sale of telegraph cable.

However, chance intervened. A number of Colt revolvers were bought for trial by the Texas Rangers, who during this period were cleaning up the living space for the American nation. In one of the many skirmishes, a squad of 15 Rangers armed with, among other things, Colt revolvers, shot 70 Comanches.

Impressed by the capabilities of the new weapon, the commander of this ranger squad, Samuel Walker, went across the country to New York (then it was a non-trivial journey, it was before the era of transcontinental railroads) to convince the inventor of the Colts to continue producing revolvers. Walker gave the inventor money, plus he borrowed a little from the banks on Walker's recommendation. This made it possible to restore the production of revolvers in the workshop. The design of Colt's revolvers was improved - a sixth cartridge appeared in the drum, shortened chambers for a cartridge with a smaller charge (less charge - less wear on parts and recoil), a longer barrel. Colt revolvers managed to play a significant role in the outbreak of the Mexican-American War. As a result of this war, the living space for the American nation expanded into the territory of several modern states - California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, parts of Colorado and Wyoming. The conquests cost the lives of many famous sons of the American people, among whom was Captain Samuel Walker, who gave Colt a ticket to big business.

Things at Colt himself quickly went uphill. Production volumes were constantly growing, the American army and navy were added to the rangers. Colt's revolvers reached Europe, where they managed to take part in the Crimean War, and on both sides. The capacities of the old workshop were no longer enough for all orders. In 1855, Colt opens a new Colt Armory plant in Hartford and establishes Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company. It is from this date that it is customary to trace the history of Colt's weapons empire.

What are the reasons for the success of Colt and his revolvers? In addition to the innovative design, organizational skills of the Colt and the case in the person of Captain Walker, it is necessary to note the excellent marketing company. Colt, being a talented inventor, was certainly a real genius in advertising, marketing, product placement and, at times, outright selling. Colt's signature gimmick was to give his revolver as a gift to someone needed or important to promote the product. At first they were newspaper editors - the print press was then, in fact, the only media and a real fourth power. As a reward, the newspapers did not skimp on praise in the spirit of "Colt revolvers - a reliable tool against bears, Indians, Mexicans and others." It is believed that the phrase “God Made Man, Colt Made Them Equal” itself was coined either by Colt himself or by one of his gifted newspaper editors. As the business developed, effective PR was backed up by powerful GR. Colt presented his brainchild to presidents, kings, generals. In 1854, in St. Petersburg, Colt was received by Emperor Nicholas I and presented him with several of his revolvers.

Among those who received their Colt with the inscription "From the Inventor" were not only crowned persons, but also those who constantly fought with them, such as professional revolutionaries Giuseppe Garibaldi or Lajos Kossuth. Who knows, maybe such marketing moves - like the sudden appearance in service of riflemen or motor catchers, say, ORSIS or A-545 - are not enough for our gunsmiths to promote their products on the market? Is it not ethical, you say, to do PR on the supply of weapons for participants in the civil war? Well, Colt himself never shunned this - the most commercially successful war during his lifetime was also a civil war, and in his own country - the American Civil War of 1861-1865.

However, back to the history of the Colt company. After the death of the great inventor and marketer, his widow Elizabeth Colt and brother Jarvis took over the leadership of his weapons empire. The reputational and technological backlog created by Samuel lasted until the end of the 19th century. Calibers changed, cartridges were added, details were added, but Colt revolvers continued to be recognizable by the good old Colts. However, the 20th century came and the development of small arms approached a new revolution - the transition to semi-automatic and automatic schemes. John Moses Browning, an inventor working for Colt at the time, developed the magazine-fed self-loading pistol that defined the development of personal firearms for more than a hundred years. The launch of the Colt M1900 and its development, the M1911, became one of the most famous pistols and an important part of American culture, to match its predecessor.

The next well-known products of the Colt factories were John Thompson submachine guns. Thompson's own company, Auto-Ordnance, at first lacked the capacity, and therefore the first mass-produced "Tommy Guns" were released under the name Colt-Thompson Model 1921. As you know, they were first armed with all sorts of bandits from the highway.

During the Second World War, Colt's factories produced pistols, submachine guns, and M1917 Browning machine guns, the main heavy machine gun of the American army in that war and in the Korean.

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Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company's next major commercial success came during the Vietnam War. Armalite designers Eugene Stoner and James Sullivan developed this design

In 1959, Armalite sells the production rights to this rifle to Colt, which begins commercial production. In 1961, a trial batch of these rifles was purchased by the US Army. In 1964, the rifle under the designation M16 is officially adopted. Well, we will not talk in detail about the M16.

We note something else - after the death of Colt, the well-being of the company was no longer based on its own developments, but on purchased licenses. Browning, Thompson, Stoner... No, of course, fine-tuning the purchased samples, the same M16, required a lot of work from engineers and production workers, but still, a certain growing crisis of Colt's Company creativity in the 20th century was obvious. This was clearly hinted at by Colt's by the American army, choosing the Beretta 92F pistol developed by the Italian company Beretta as the main personal weapon at the 1985 competition. For the first time in many years, the American army received small arms designed and produced by a non-American company. The army was followed by the police, who increasingly changed their American pistols and revolvers for the same Beretta and Austrian Glock 17. Since the end of the Cold War, another crisis has been added to the creative crisis - the crisis of overproduction. Huge stocks of small arms accumulated by all sides during the years of confrontation were thrown into the arms market. Why buy a new M16 for $1,600 when you can buy the same from the army warehouses for $600 and a Kalashnikov assault rifle for $300. Sales in the US civilian arms market began to fall following the fall in army orders.

Colt first faced bankruptcy in 1992. It was acquired by the financial group Zilkha & Co, which was then able to carry out the restructuring. The Marine Corps also helped by issuing an order for the production of M4 carbines - a shortened version of the M16. With the beginning of the American campaign in the Middle East, new orders for the M4 followed - in the conditions of dense Iraqi urban development and Afghan villages, they seemed to be more profitable than the long and excessively powerful M16. All this won the company two extra decades of life. However, the experience of operating carbines in Iraq and Afghanistan caused a lot of criticism from the military. In 2007, the US Department of Defense conducted a series of tests, as a result of which the number of failures of the Colt's M4 turned out to be higher than the total number of failures of other weapons that participated in the tests - the German HK XM8, HK 416 and the Belgian FN SCAR-L.

Another factor that knocked Colt down was Obama's election campaign and his victory in the presidential election. His team's proposals included joining the United States to the International Arms Trade Treaty and tightening regulations on private ownership of small arms. Everyone was mobilized to defend the second amendment - the "National Rifle Organization",

"Second Amendment Sisters"

and "Jews for the preservation of the right to own weapons."

As a result, the attack on the Second Amendment by the Republicans and shooters managed to repulse, but the frightened arms sellers staged mass sales of weapons on the eve of the expected tightening, collapsing prices and once again knocking down the positions of manufacturers. Well, the final nail in the coffin of Colt was the lost 2013 competition for the supply of the US Army with 120,000 Belgian F.N. Herstal.

However, it is certainly premature to talk about the death of the Colt trademark. According to the 11th article of the US Bankruptcy Code, the company will be put up for auction, where it is likely to be bought out by new owners. Recall that in 1992 a similar step was taken, as a result of which in 1994 the company was bought by the current owner, the Zilkha financial group. So Colt products will equalize people for some time.

If God created people and Lincoln freed them from slavery, then Colonel Samuel Colt made them truly equal - provided, of course, that each of the equality seekers had a 45th or at least 36th toy at hand in time. caliber.

Desire is the beginning of passion, and passion is the beginning of all beginnings!

Samuel Colt was born July 19, 1814 in the town of Hartford, in the family of the owner of a textile factory, Christopher Colt. When the boy was four years old, one of his relatives gave him a bronze toy pistol for his birthday.

This was ahead of his future fate.

The next day the boy stole a pack of gunpowder from his father and began to experiment. It's not hard to guess how it ended. There was just a small explosion in the house. Thank God, there were no injuries, severe fright and fire. However, this did not discourage little Sammy from engaging in machines, mechanisms and ... pistols!

Exactly ten years later, secretly from everyone, he personally designed and manufactured at his father's factory, in a repair shop, a four-barreled pistol that fired simultaneously from all four barrels. What happened next, history is silent, but, apparently, the tests passed ... not very successfully. Throwing this "stupid idea", in the sense of shooting simultaneously from four barrels, he still "did not get sick" with the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bcreating a perfect, ideal pistol. And so, when, at the age of 17, Samuel blew up a raft with gunpowder on the lake, leading electric wires to it and blowing up the gunpowder with a spark from a battery he made himself. However, as a result of a mistake, the explosion of a mine brought down a huge stream of water on the assembled audience. He was saved from the crowd by a tall young man, a meeting with whom determined Colt's life path. It turned out to be the mechanic Elisha Ruth, the future designer and organizer of the Kolt production.

The father, after this incident, apparently fearing for his factory, quickly sent the boy away from his native city. To study. To university.

Sam had trouble with his studies, and after a while in the university laboratory ... an explosion thundered. Who was the reason, it was not difficult to guess!

Afraid to appear home after such a shame, Samuel got a job as a sailor on the merchant ship Corvo. It was while sailing on this ship that he came up with his first drum revolver design, which then became the prototype of all revolver designs around the world. Observing the work of the ship's mechanisms, he drew attention to two of them: the steering wheel with fixation after each turn and the mechanism for raising the anchor chain, which rotated only in one direction. Based on the principles of operation of these mechanisms, Colt created the first, then still wooden model of a rotating drum with fixation, the basis for the design of any drum revolver. Spitting on overseas countries and delighted with his great discovery, he spent several months to create a prototype of the world's first revolver. This significant event happened in 1835. And although neither friends nor gunsmiths believed that "this thing could shoot," Samuel Colt patented his invention in America, England and France. In the patent application, Colt pointed out the main difference between his system: the central ignition of the charge and a cylindrical bullet (before that, bullets from pistols and revolvers were spherical).

It was this patent application that determined the rest of Samuel's life.

Having received an American patent for his first revolver on February 25, 1836 (in France he received a patent a year earlier), 22-year-old Samuel Colt, then borrowed money from his wealthy businessman uncle and, having registered the Patent Arms Manufacturing Co, opened a gun shop in the city of Patterson. Here the first working sample of a revolver appeared - "Colt Paterson".

The main advantage of the Colt Paterson revolver was, unlike other pistols of that time, that it allowed for quick shooting and confronting several opponents alone.

And yet, despite the positive reviews, the Colt company was slowly but surely going to ruin. Purchasing batches of revolvers did not exceed 100 pieces. As a result, the workshop, which had already grown into a small factory, was closed in Paterson, and the company was on the verge of bankruptcy. In order to somehow stay afloat, Colt went on a tour of the United States with his popular science show with nitrous oxide, while simultaneously trading in waterproof ammunition and those very underwater mines with an electric fuse, the prototype of which he tested at the age of 14. For mines, he, without any hope, filed a patent, which, a few years later, brought him millions of dollars.

This continued until one of the officers of the Texas Ranger Corps, Captain Samuel Walker, praising the excellent fighting qualities of the new revolver, knocked out a government order for 1000 revolvers for the Texas Expeditionary Force.

The reason for this was the successful outcome of the battle of his group of 16 people, armed with revolvers designed by Colt, with 80 Indians. At the same time, not a single person from the detachment was even injured !!! It was then that the Texas Rangers forever refuted the Indian philosophy: “Trunks are for suckers, knives are the choice of real warriors!”

Such combat episodes and reviews of the rangers simply could not be ignored by officials of the military department, and fueled the demand for Colt revolvers. Sales, and with it profits, began to grow rapidly. In 1846, when the war with Mexico began, the government urgently ordered Colt another thousand new, modified revolvers. At the same time, Captain Walker met with Colt and asked him to take him as an assistant. Colt and Walker create a new model of the Colt-Walker revolver, which marked the beginning of the industrial production of this type of weapon.

However, in order to fulfill this, at that time, huge government order, a new plant was needed, and Colt begged Eli Whitney (the son of the inventor of the cotton gin) to give production to his unused textile factory in Connecticut. It was there that the world's first weapons production on an industrial scale was launched. After the brand new revolvers entered service with the army, the name of Colt became known throughout America. Therefore, even after the end of hostilities with Mexico, government orders continued to flow like a river.

In 1852, Samuel Colt received a large government order for revolvers for naval officers.

That same year, he bought a piece of wasteland near his hometown of Hartford, the capital of Connecticut. It cost a lot, even for Colt, money. But even more expenses were demanded by the newest weapons factory, equipped with the latest science and technology, which had been standing on this wasteland for more than three years. However, Colt did not lose here either! During the Civil War alone, the Colt company delivered hundreds of thousands of small arms, mostly revolvers, to government troops. All expenses paid off very quickly! In total, for a century and a half, the company manufactured at this plant more than 30 million revolvers, pistols and rifles with the branded engraving "Colt".

Colt was an innovative inventor not only in the field of weapons production. It was he who, for the first time in business, began to engage in marketing and advertising, organized targeted distribution of samples of his products.

In 1851, S. Colt entered the international market - not only weapons, but also labor, opening his first factory in England. At the same time, he systematized the development, design and production of various models of his revolvers and guns, using, wherever possible, the unification of parts.

When the opportunity arose, Colt divided production: in addition to the mass production of revolvers and shotguns, a line of expensive exclusive weapons was opened. These were works of weapon art, decorated with exquisite engraving and woodcarving. Exclusive samples of weapons from the Colt company were presented at the most prestigious exhibitions and auctions, presented as a gift to politicians and royalty: "Colts" were kept in the collections of Nicholas I and Alexander II, the Danish King Frederick VII and the Swedish Charles XV.

After the outbreak of the American Civil War, the health of the "gun king" deteriorated sharply. Samuel Colt died on January 10, 1862 in Hartford, at the age of 47.

The funeral of the colonel of the US Army was held at public expense - the guard of honor was part of the 12th Connecticut Infantry Regiment, led by the governor, General Thomas Seymour. America said goodbye to Colt in a purely American way - with volleys of thousands of rifles and revolvers of his production - in a word, so, according to the local newspaper, "the cannonade was like on a battlefield."

The "great equalizer" left behind a fortune estimated at $15 million - simply unimaginable money at that time. Around that time, the state of Alaska was sold by Russia to the United States for about HALF OF THIS AMOUNT!

The management of the company passed to his widow Elisabeth, who managed not only to keep the brand of the company high, but also to lead it to further prosperity.

reference Information

Few people know that the world-famous, equal to God and Lincoln, Colonel Colt did not serve in the army for a single day! And yet, he was a real colonel! It’s just that he received his title already being a millionaire, for his support in the elections from the governor of Connecticut. That's how it happens!

And yet….

1. The first underwater mine; 2. the first drum revolver "Colt Paterson"; 3. the first cartridge revolver "Single Action Army", with the original nickname "Peacemaker", because where he fired, the world came well, very quickly; 4. the famous gangster machine «Tommy gun»;5. the legendary Colt 1191, which was in service with the US Army for more than 70 years (you heard right - seventy years, from 1911 to 1985!); 6. modern American assault rifle "M-16"; all these are "children" of the firm founded by Samuel Colt.

And yet, Colt's passion, what he considered the main achievement of his life, was precisely the revolver. And it is precisely as the inventor of the revolver that Samuel Colt is known all over the world.

Material from the encyclopedia

“Samuel Colt (1814-1862) - the inventor of the revolver, an American, fled from his father's house to India at a young age and during the journey made a wooden model of what later became known as the revolver. Returning, he studied chemistry, lectured on it in the United States and Canada, visited Europe in 1835 and took patents for his invention in London and Paris and founded a company for the production of revolvers, but in 1842 he went bankrupt; For 5 years in a row, revolvers were not made and became a rarity.

When the government ordered the inventor 1000 pieces, he had to make a new model, since it was impossible to find a copy previously made by the company anywhere. This order was the beginning of Colt's prosperity. He replaced a small workshop in Whitneyvilles with a large one in Getford, in 1852 he founded a huge trading post, doubled in 1861, on the shallows of the Connecticut River. From here, a huge mass of revolving mechanisms was annually sent to Russia and England.

Look, nothing is said here about underwater mines, nor about the Tommy gun, or the M-16. All this came later, after his death. And the lifetime monument to Colonel Colt was, in his personal opinion, an ordinary revolver!

Here they are, Colt revolvers, which became classics during the life of their creator.

1. Five-shot "Colt Paterson" model 1836. Caliber 0.36 in. (9 mm). The first pistol in the world, firstly, equipped with a fuse, and secondly, allowing rapid fire, firing back from several opponents. The rate of fire was achieved due to interchangeable drums, two of them came with the revolver and it was possible to buy as many more as you like.

2. "Dragoon" or "Big Colts", produced in three versions. Caliber 0.44 inches (11.2 mm), size - almost 40 cm! A sort of small repeating shotgun without a butt! Not everyone could accurately shoot from it - the weight of this "toy" was four pounds (over one and a half kilograms!).

3. "Colt - Navy" Model 1851, caliber 9 mm, designed for the navy, but was also popular on land. The features of this weapon were an octagonal drum (probably so that it would not roll when rolling) and the complete absence of a front sight! And why shoot accurately at sea?

4. Army "Colt" of the 1860 model, the main weapon of the war between the North and the South. Caliber - 0.44 inches (11.2 mm), but the weight is less than that of the "Dragoon" - only about a kilogram;

5. Upgraded "Colt-Navy". Model 1861. Produced in caliber 0.45 and 0.36 inches. He began his military career during the Civil War and remained popular until the Second World War.

The rest of the weapons "hits" of the Colt company were created by his followers after his death. And the Peacemaker revolver, and the Tommy gun, famous for the gangster "showdowns" of the Prohibition era, and the American M-16 assault rifle, which is in service in more than 20 countries around the world.

By the way, it was in Colt's guns that the pump-action reloading scheme was first used, in contrast to the "winchester" system, in which the gun is reloaded with a special bracket near the trigger. Then Winchester also tried to introduce it into his guns, but, after experimenting, he refused. These two systems have long been the strongest competitors in the American gun market. Colt won here too!

Today, the company, founded in 1847 by Samuel Colt, remains one of the world's leading manufacturers of firearms. Its model line extends from miniature ladies' pistols to heavy army machine guns, "shoulder" anti-aircraft weapons and other "lethal tools".

Before Colt

The design of drum-loading small arms has been around long before the Colt, at least since the 17th century. But its first samples were not widely used due to the complexity of production and high cost. Reliability also left much to be desired. The revolution in the production of rapid-fire weapons became possible only with the spread of primer lock and machine production. In 1836, Samuel Colt proposed his model.

Texas Choice

Colt received a U.S. patent on February 25, 1836, and set up production in Paterson, New Jersey, where he created his first masterpiece, the Colt Paterson revolver, also known as the Texas Colt, due to its popularity among the rangers of the Wild West. The first revolvers, as well as rifles and carbines of a similar design, were acquired by the armies of the United States and the Republic of Texas. The standardization of parts made this weapon affordable and could be purchased for $20. But he still had flaws, in particular, army customers complained about "too much consumption of cartridges" - a consequence of the high rate of fire. The number of buyers decreased every year and in 1842 the company went bankrupt. The production of Colt revolvers resumed only in 1847. By this time, competitors had already appeared on the market for Samuel, with whom Colt entered into a difficult struggle for a buyer.

Caliber and marketing

Even before the bankruptcy, in 1842, a group of Russian officers visited the Paterson enterprise and got acquainted with the sensational weapon. So the first official acquaintance of the Russians with the products of Colt took place. Already by 1854, small-scale production of Colt revolvers was launched in Russia at three state-owned factories: in Tula, Izhevsk and Helsingfors. The following models dominated: "saddle pistol" (Dragoon), "belt pistol" (Navi), "five-shot pocket pistol with a 6-inch barrel" (Pocket). They were recognized by the military department as fit and useful. Contrary to popular belief, in the Russian Empire they were already used during the Crimean War, but not everywhere, except perhaps the guards naval crew and officers of the rifle regiment of the imperial family. Colts were not issued to ordinary soldiers, believing that they could not cope. But, as you know, the results of the Crimean War showed that the modernization of the army is necessary. So, starting from the 1850s and until the first half of the 20th century, when the Smith-Wesson and Nagant revolver came into fashion, Colts were used everywhere.

Legendary "Peacemaker"

The symbol of the Wild West, the Colt Peacemaker revolver is still produced in small batches. The model was created in 1873 specifically for the American cavalry and was called the "Colt single action army" (Single Action Revolver). The weapon acquired the famous nickname later, thanks to the availability and ease of use of the revolver, even for untrained shooters. Together with the famous "Winchester", the "Peacemaker", which fired similar cartridges, is one of the attributes of the "typical" cowboy, whose image has come down to us in numerous "westerns". By the way, despite the fact that the revolver was six-shot, they preferred to load it with only five cartridges - the design did not provide for a fuse, so the cartridge in the drum opposite the barrel could already be fatal for the owner.

most famous phrase

"God made people different, but Colonel Colt made them equal." According to legend, this inscription is carved on the tombstone of the famous gunsmith. In fact, there is nothing on it except the name and dates of life. The witty phrase appeared during the American Civil War and sounded like: "Abraham Lincoln gave people freedom, and Colonel Colt equalized their chances." True, Colt did not serve in the US Army and was not a colonel. He died in 1862 at the age of 47, one of the richest and most famous people in the United States. His fortune was estimated at 15 million dollars, which corresponds to half a billion in modern money. During the Civil War, his firm was the exclusive supplier of the US Army, which did not prevent it from selling weapons to the Confederate troops.

Present day

In 1848, near his birthplace in Hartford, Colt built a gun factory that is still in operation today, one of the largest in the industry. And the restored enterprise in Paterson switched to the production of small-scale, personalized and piece models. Dozens of revolvers and pistols were produced under the Colt brand, including such famous models as the Colt 1911 pistol, which was in service with the US Army of the 20th century, and the Colt Detective Special compact revolver, the "star" of detectives and films of the genre " Noir". In 2006, Samuel Colt was inducted into the US Inventors Hall of Fame.