Samuel Colt, (born July 19, 1814, Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.—died January 10, 1862, Hartford), American firearms inventor, manufacturer, and entrepreneur who popularized the revolver.
As a teenaged seaman, Colt carved a wooden model of a revolving cylinder mechanism, and he later perfected a working version that was patented in England and France in 1835 and in the United States the following year. Featuring a multichambered cylinder that rotated and locked by cocking the hammer, Colt’s repeating single-barreled pistols, rifles, and shotguns were slow to gain acceptance, and a company that formed to manufacture them in Paterson, New Jersey, failed in 1842. The following year he devised an electrically discharged naval mine, the first device using a remotely controlled explosive, and he conducted a telegraph business that utilized the first underwater cable.
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