Inventor, Industrialist

Restless Youth. Like so many of America's nineteenth-century inventors, Samuel Colt hailed from New England. He was born to a well-off family in Hartford, Connecticut, and at ten entered his father's factory. He also went to school until his fourteenth year (a fairly rare occurrence in the 1820s) and would have gone longer if he had not run away from his Amherst, Massachusetts, boarding school. The young runaway signed on as a sailor on a ship bound for Calcutta, India, and spent some time wandering the world's oceans before returning to work again for his father. Dyeing and bleaching textiles did not, however, appeal to Samuel's restless soul. Using the meager knowledge of chemistry he learned from the dyeing work, the eighteen-year-old Colt began touring the country as the learned "Dr. Coult," lecturer on chemistry. His lectures consisted mainly of getting his listeners...