page_title: Daniel Leavitt
section_title: The aftermath of Colt's litigation
hierarchical_section_title: Daniel Leavitt / The aftermath of Colt's litigation
caption_attribution_description: Samuel Colt (1814 – 1862) English: Samuel Colt, founder of the firearms manufacturer Colt Deutsch: Samuel Colt, Begründer des Waffenherstellers Colt
context_page_description: Daniel Leavitt was an early American inventor who, with his partner Edwin Wesson, patented the first revolver after Samuel Colt's, and subsequently manufactured one of the first American revolving pistols. The innovative design was manufactured only briefly before a patent suit by Colt forced the company to stop producing the Leavitt & Wesson Dragoon revolver. But Leavitt's early patents, and those of his partner Wesson, stoked competition and helped drive the technological and manufacturing boom that produced the modern firearms industry.
context_section_description: Altogether the Massachusetts Arms Company – considered a predecessor of arms manufacturer Smith & Wesson  – manufactured roughly a thousand of the .31-caliber belt models of the original patented revolver, 200 of which were purchased by the abolitionist Massachusetts-Kansas Aid Committee in 1856. Many of these firearms later found their way to abolitionist John Brown.
  The Massachusetts Arms Company continued in business, and after the expiration of some of Samuel Colt's original patents, as well as improvements in the design of its revolvers, the company manufactured an assortment of weapons. Several of its early employees, notably designer Joshua Stevens, went on to found other successful weaponry companies. (The J. Stevens Company, founded by former Wesson & Leavitt employee Stevens, was ultimately sold to New England Westinghouse Company in 1915 to produce military arms for World War I).
  The early inventor, although eventually crushed by the legal team of arms magnate Samuel Colt, had helped spur competition and drive technological improvements in the design of American pistols – guns later used in the Old West, the American Civil War and elsewhere, and the envy of the world's firearm manufacturers. Leavitt himself served in the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia in 1847 as  Captain of Company F, 10th Regiment, 6th Brigade and was a member of the Chicopee Freemasons lodge.
  Leavitt did not confine himself to the design of firearms. On August 18, 1842 he was granted a patent (number 2755) for a 'Mode of Securing Bobbins in Shuttles for Weaving'. Leavitt's patent for an innovation for bobbins used in power looms demonstrated that the inventor had his eye on another emerging New England industry. It was an industry in which Leavitt had more than passing interest: his father Benning owned a Chicopee factory that produced bobbins. There is no indication whether Leavitt's patent for textile manufacturing was more successful than his firearm patents.
caption: Samuel Colt, firearm manufacturer who crushed his competitors in his patent infringement case in 1852
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS6 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2013:09:14 00:18:09", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4529", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1135", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1631"}