page_title: Samuel Colt
section_title: London
hierarchical_section_title: Samuel Colt / Colt's Patent Manufacturing Company (1847–1860) / Colt's armories / London
caption_attribution_description: English: Colt Model 1855 Carbine .56 caliber
context_page_description: Samuel Colt was an American inventor, industrialist and businessman who established Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company and made the mass production of revolvers commercially viable.
  Colt's first two business ventures were producing firearms in Paterson, New Jersey and making underwater mines; both ended in disappointment. But his business affairs improved rapidly after 1847, when the Texas Rangers ordered 1,000 revolvers during the American war with Mexico. Later, his firearms were used widely during the settling of the western frontier. Colt died in 1862 as one of the wealthiest men in America.
  Colt's manufacturing methods were sophisticated. His use of interchangeable parts helped him become one of the first to use the assembly line efficiently. Moreover, his innovative use of art, celebrity endorsements, and corporate gifts to promote his wares made him a pioneer of advertising, product placement and mass marketing.
context_section_description: Soon after establishing his Hartford factory, Colt decided to establish a factory in or near Europe and chose London. He organized a large display of his firearms at the Great Exhibition of 1851 at Hyde Park, London and ingratiated himself by presenting cased engraved Colt revolvers to such appropriate officials as Britain's Master General of the Ordnance. At one exhibit Colt disassembled ten guns and reassembled ten guns using different parts from different guns. As the world's major proponent of mass production techniques, Colt delivered a lecture concerning the subject to the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) in London. The membership rewarded his efforts by awarding him the Silver Telford Medal. With help from ICE secretary Charles Manby Colt established his London operation near Vauxhall Bridge on the River Thames and began production on January 1, 1853. During a tour of the factory, Charles Dickens was so impressed with the facilities that he recorded his comments of Colt's revolvers in an 1852 edition of Household Words:
  Among the pistols, we saw Colt's revolver; and we compared it with the best English revolver. The advantage of Colt's over the English is, that the user can take a sight; and the disadvantage is, that the weapon requires both hands to fire.
  The factory's machines mass-produced parts that were completely interchangeable and could be put together on assembly lines using standardized patterns and gauges by unskilled labor, as opposed to England's principal gun makers who made each part by hand. Colt's London factory remained in operation for only four years. Unwilling to alter his open-top single-action design for the solid frame double-action revolver that the British asked for, Colt sold scarcely 23,000 revolvers to the British Army and Navy. During 1856 he closed the London plant and had the machinery, tooling, and unfinished guns shipped to Hartford.
caption: Colt Model 1855 Carbine with London Proofmarks
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