Items related to Colt and Wesson, the story of a rivalry
Synopsis
Revised and corrected edition – 09/2026
Two names have profoundly shaped the history of the American revolver: Colt and Smith & Wesson.
Yet their story is far more complex than a simple rivalry between two manufacturers.
Samuel Colt did not single-handedly invent the revolver. Daniel Wesson did not single-handedly invent the metallic-cartridge revolver. Between them were inventors, workers, engineers, industrialists, military men, and patent holders who would transform the handgun throughout the nineteenth century.
From the early revolvers of Wheeler and Collier to the Colt Paterson, from the massive Walker to the 1851 Navy and 1860 Army, this book traces Samuel Colt's industrial rise and the birth of a true empire.
At the same time, it explores the lesser-known story of Daniel Wesson: the Wesson & Leavitt revolvers, Horace Smith, Walter Hunt, Lewis Jennings, the Volcanic, and a remarkable technical lineage that would also lead to Winchester.
Then came Rollin White.
His patent covering the bored-through cylinder upset the balance among American manufacturers and gave Smith & Wesson a decisive advantage in the field of metallic-cartridge revolvers. Lawsuits, licenses, and ingenious workarounds would directly shape the technical evolution of firearms.
It was in this context that Remington chose to operate under license, while Colt developed the remarkable Thuer conversion, using a metallic cartridge loaded from the front of the cylinder in order to work around the White patent.
When this legal barrier disappeared in 1869, the rivalry entered a new era: Richards and Richards-Mason conversions, the Colt Open Top, the Smith & Wesson Model 3, Russian contracts, the Schofield, and finally the appearance of the legendary Colt Single Action Army.
But the story does not end with the Wild West.
Double action, top-break frames, swing-out cylinders, the Colt Model 1889, the New Service, and the first Smith & Wesson Hand Ejector and Military & Police revolvers gradually led to the modern revolver.
Drawing on original patents, court decisions, military contracts, archives, museum collections, and the research of specialist collectors, this revised and considerably expanded edition seeks to distinguish established facts from legends repeated for more than a century.
A history of revolvers, of course.
But also a story of invention, industrial property, lawsuits, war, commerce, and men moving from one workshop to another.
Because behind two names engraved in steel lies a major part of nineteenth-century American industrial history.
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