Revolver
Small handguns were convenient weapons because they could be easily carried on horseback, and a person armed with a pair of pistols could shoot off one and then the other, getting two shots off before needing to reload. Attempts were made as early as the sixteenth century in Europe to manufacture handguns which could let off several shots consecutively. Some used a cluster of barrels, and others, like the modern revolver, rotated a series of loaded cylinders around a central barrel. A revolver is considered any gun with a revolving series of barrels or chambers that are turned to align them with the firing mechanism. A London lawyer, James Puckle (1667-1724) is credited with inventing an early revolver that met with limited success. Puckle advertised that his gun could fire 63 times in seven minutes, an extremely high rate of fire. The revolving cylinders were turned by hand, and a crank screwed each cylinder tightly to the barrel. Puckle advertised his gun widely, but it was apparently used only twice in battle, and PuckleŐs gun manufacturing company soon failed.
Puckle patented his revolver in 1718, and it was not until a hundred years later that others improved on his idea. A Massachusetts inventor, Artemus Wheeler, took out a patent in the U.S. on a handgun with an automatic mechanism for rotating cylinders around a central barrel in 1818. Apparently Wheeler gave up on selling his revolver when he could not interest the Navy in it. But another inventor, Elisha Collier, patented what might have been the same gun in England the same year. Another inventor took out a patent in France for a similar weapon. Collier claimed to have made a lot of money of his revolver in England and Europe. But the first person to produce a really successful revolver was American inventor Samuel Colt, who patented his weapon in 1836.
Colt's revolver was of the " cap-and-ball" type—that is, it was loaded from the front of the revolving cylinder with separate charges of powder and a ball. Along with the fact of the revolving cylinders themselves, Colt's weapon was unique in that the action of cocking the hammer would also bring the next cylinder, or charge, into line with the percussion hammer and barrel. Other early revolvers required the shooter to line up the cylinder and the barrel and cock the hammer in separate actions. And ColtŐs gun was simple, strong, and easy to use. The war with Mexico that broke out in 1847 provided Colt with a ready market for his weapons, and he dominated the revolver market until his patent expired in 1857. At that time, two other Americans, Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson, marketed a revolver with rim-fire copper cartridges that could be easily and quickly loaded from the rear of the weapon. When the Smith and Wesson patent expired in 1872, new revolvers appeared. An important innovation was the addition of a mechanism to eject the spent cartridge casings. Another innovation saw the trigger action serving to not only fire the gun, but to first advance the cylinder so as to bring the next cartridge into line for firing.
Among other notable innovators in revolver manufacture was the Austrian George Luger (1848-1922), whose semiautomatic weapon became the standard for military use for a number of countries both in Europe and elsewhere after its introduction in 1900. The American John Moses Browning also met with considerable success with his.32 caliber pistol --250,000 pistols were sold in the six years after its introduction in 1900. The famous Colt 45 is said to have been based on the design of the Browning pistol. Revolvers are used today by military and police all over the world. The basic design has changed little in the past 50 years.
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