Most of the historical recognition of Elisha Collier comes from the 1851 and 1852 patent infringement lawsuits Colt files against Wesson & Leavitt and other revolver manufacturers. Colt was claiming these other guns in fringed on his patent, and the defense argued that Colt's patent was invalid b...

Designed and patented in 1856 by Henry North (the grandson of company founder Simeon North), approximately 450 of these revolvers were made between 1856 and 1859. A first prototype was sent to the Washington Arsenal for examination in June 1856, and its successful testing led to an Ordnance Depar...

The most-produced Colt percussion revolver was not one of the big sexy Army models, but rather the humble 1849 Pocket. It was first introduced as the Model 1848 Baby Dragoon, in .31 caliber. By 1850, the design had changed to what became known as the Model 1849 Pocket, with a round-backed trigger...

The Walch revolver was a Civil War era design with the unique feature of having superimposed loads - each chamber in the cylinder held not one shot, but two, stacked one on top of the other. The revolver had two hammers and a progressive trigger, and 10 percussions caps (for the 5-chamber model)....

Patented in 1855 by James Butterfield, this revolver is a 5-shot, .41 caliber percussion revolver with a brass frame and 7.5 inch barrel. Aside from its somewhat unorthodox grip configuration, what makes it interesting and unusual is that it was designed to automatically feed pellet primers, obvi...

Today's item is a rather unusual percussion pistol. It began life as an underhammer gun, and was rebuilt by an unknown gunsmith as a percussion gun that fired four superposed charges with a creative repeating action.

The 1862 Police Pocket was the last of Colt's percussion revolvers. It was a combination of the small 1849 model frame (intended for .31 caliber) and a 5-shot .36 caliber cylinder. The frame was stepped to allow the larger cylinder to fit without require any changes to the lockwork, and the resul...