The Wild West is known for its cowboys and gunslingers. In the Wild West the pistol
was an important piece of equipment. Samuel Colt played an important part in the Wild West
because of the invention of the Colt Revolver.
Samuel Colt was born on July 19, 1814 in Hartford, Connecticut. He was one of
eight children. As a young boy Samuel Colt’s principle interest was guns and machinery. His
father, Christopher Colt, was a textile manufacturer and was married to Sarah Coldwell Colt
(“Samuel Colt”). Samuel Colt’s parents lived there in Hartford until their death.
Sam Colt at the age of 16 attended the Amherst Academy in Massachusetts and was
eventually expelled from it for his behavior. After he was expelled from the Amherst Academy
Colt’s father sent him to sail on a ship. The ship was called the Corvo (“Samuel Colt”).
While Sam Colt was on the Corvo he came up with the idea of a revolving cylinder for a
pistol. He got it from watching the wheel and that the spokes came back in line with the wheel.
When Colt got back to land he went to a man named Mr. Anson Chase who was a gunsmith
(Haven 14). After they came up with the idea they made their first revolver. It was a four barrel
cluster revolver. The only problem was that the revolver blew up when they shot it. The reason
why it blew up was there were no partitions between the nipples to prevent one discharge from
making all the rest explode. That was Sam Colt’s first gun design he made (Peterson 209).
Samuel Colt’s first invention that worked was an underwater mine. He made a galvanic
battery that made it detonate underwater. Sam Colt got a bunch of business men and made a
demonstration for them. He stuck a raft out in a stream over the mine he stuc...
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Colt’s most famous pistol that he made was the .45-calibre peacemaker introduced
in1873. Colt made a lot of pistols in his lifetime. Colt will always be remembered for his
revolvers and how he changed the wild west and the way we fight to this day.
Works Cited
Haven, Charles T. and Frank A. Belben. A History of the Colt Revolver. New York: Bonanza
Books, 1978. Print.
Peterson, Harold L. The Treasury of the Gun. New York: Golden Press, 1962. Print.
“Samuel Colt”. The Biography Channel Website. (2013). Web. 8 Nov. 2013.
Schreiner, Philip. “Former Texas Ranger Samuel Walker Collaborated with Samuel Colt on a
Powerful New Revolver.” Wild West 13.2 (2000): 10. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 8 Nov.
2013.
Silva, Lee A. “Sam Colt’s Big Business Was a Boon to Other Gunmakers.” Wild West 25.5
(2013): 68. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 5 Nov. 2013.
The West is a very big part of American culture, and while the myth of the West is much more enticing than the reality of the west, it is no doubt a very big part of America. We’re constantly growing up playing games surrounded by the West such as cowboys and Indians and we’re watching movies that depict the cowboy to be a romanticized hero who constantly saves dames in saloons and rides off into the sunset. However, the characters of the West weren’t the only things that helped the development of America; many inventions were a part of the development of the West and helped it flourish into a thriving community. Barbed wire, the McCormick reaper and railroads—for example—were a large part of the development in the West—from helping to define claimed land boundaries, agricultural development and competition, and even growth of the West.
He gives a lengthy account of events that led to the Second Amendment; the people carried a deep-seated fear of a national army, this is because of their history of oppression by the European monarchs. Consequently, the people of the individual states were creating their own militia and during the Valley Forge men had refused to take an oath to the United States, instead claiming that his state was his country. There arose a need for a national army. “The same First Congress that approved the right to keep and bear arms also limited the nation army to 840 men; Congress in the Second Amendment then
A plethora of companies began introducing water guns to the toy market before the 1980s. No name companies began creating water pistols in the shapes of sea-creatures and cartoon characters, while others introduced more intricate designs from movies like Star Trek and Rambo. One company, Entertech, even went so far as to produce battery-powered water weapons but the designs proved to be a little too life-like. The water guns began resembling real live machine guns like those used by G.I.'s and some even came equipped with a back pack and grenade devices. The water weaponry market continued evolving, and soon enough, perhaps the most important contributor, Lonnie Johnson, came into the picture. A nuclear engineer, who, in 1982, thought of creating a water gun, that could shoot up to great distances without the technicalities and expenses of battery power, Lonnie Johnson gave birth to the industry's most successful water weapon. After 8 years of inventing and innovating a high performance toy water gun, the Power Drencher (eventually renamed the Super Soaker) was born. The "water weaponry revolution" began in 1989 (Johnson 1).
optometry school even after the war. He was in that school before the war and the war
In response to a request by a patron, a search of the copyright status for the book Texas Guns by Paul Lehman was conducted. This report discusses the steps taken and the information that was found during that investigation.
Each shot couldn’t be more than inches from the center of the bull’s eye. At the end of these contests, 1,000 winners were enlisted in the 1st United States sharper shooters. The next generation of breechloaders, called magazine rifles, would prove ever more deadly to confederate opponents. “Guns such as Spencer and Henry repeating rifles were designed to carry preloaded magazine of seven to fifteen bullets which could be inserted into the rear of the gun. ”3
The Taming of the West: Age of the Gunfighter: Men and Weapons of the Frontier 1840-1900.
Lee, Robert W. "Gun Report: The Buford Furrow Tragedy." The New American 15 (1999): 33
On March 2, 1793, Samuel Houston was born to Major Sam Houston and Elizabeth Paxton Houston. He was the fifth of nine children. Born at Timber Ridge, Rockbridge County, in the Shenandoah Valley. At the age of thirteen, his father, Major Sam Houston, died suddenly at Dennis Callighan's Tavern near present-day Callaghan, Virginia in Alleghany County, 40 miles west of Timber Ridge while on militia inspections. Mrs. Elizabeth Houston took her nine children to a farm on Baker Creek in Tennessee.
gun and steadied it, and he brought the muzzle of it close to the back
Actually that came from another characteristic of a western, the conflict between settlers and Indians, after being raised with the Indians for three years he had killed several settlers. Then after he had left the Indians side to join the white mans army he killed many more Indians, that's how he had crafted his skills as a gunman and survivalist. It even is shown in the story that he has been killing for years, when he kills the first two Indians, he has a fast and accurate shooting style. Also he has the background to know were others may be hiding such as in a bush, or
Gun. N.d. Photograph. Chicago Mag. Chicago Tribune, 1 Aug. 2012. Web. 17 Nov. 2013. .
'This radical discrepancy between the sense of eroding masculinity and the view of America as a great history of men against the wilderness has created the need for a means of symbolic expression of masculine potency in an unmistakable way. This means is the gun, particularly the six-gun'; (Crane 299).