Talk:Samuel Colt

message: This was the first wikipedia article I ever wrote/edited and I was hoping to get some feedback on what I should do differently in the future, so any comments on the article are appreciated.
~jk
"his firearms were credited in taming the western frontier" = genocide of the native americans?
:There were also wolves, bears and other wild animals that had to be dealt with in "taming the western frontier." This article is about the man who virtually created the modern revolver. This page is to discuss that article. It is not a forum for political POV-pushing. Jororo05  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.248.185.22 (talk) 15:56, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggestions

message: I realize that this is a pretty low importance edit, but the term used on the show Supernatural was a "devil trap" not a "demon trap". I can't make the edit as I am not a registered user, but I figured someone would want to correct the error. 71.192.54.222 (talk) 20:10, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello? 71.192.54.222 (talk) 06:11, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed. --Lendorien (talk) 13:55, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

text: I stopped in hoping to find some of these popular media references and was disappointed that they were not here. Checking the talk page and finding out someone had compiled them but they had been removed two years prior without reason or conversation is just sad. TheTyrant (talk) 13:48, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you have a source for those?  I don't know anything about either one of those, but if they were removed it is probably because they were unsourced.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 16:02, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I dug these out of the history and put them in a popular media section with sources back in 2010. Someone has removed them again between here and there. Not worth an edit war, but it does seem odd. TheTyrant (talk) 20:20, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Supernatural 

message: I read over this article. Parts of it need to be rewritten for tone. It's written sort of like a children's biography rather than a encyclopedia article... the early life section especially. It also needs sourcing. There is a lot of unsouced claims int his article that need to be resolved.--Lendorien (talk) 13:55, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, every quote in the article needs to be attributed.  Most aren't.  I found one reference buried in a comment tag under the references section.  Some points in his life could be expounded on more, but without those sources I can't do much more myself. Banaticus (talk) 06:45, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleanup + sourcing issues

message: Colt pistols were neither breech loading nor breach loading. J8079s (talk) 00:44, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Loading 

message: Germany did not even exist in 1835 so the sentence claiming there was tension between Germany and America seems suspect to me. Actually, a lot of the section on gunsmithing seems to be uncorroborated; I see other users have been requesting citations, too   Faulty (talk) 17:51, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Conflict with Germany?

message: Is this source used:from Jstor MathewTownsend (talk) 18:38, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Not that I can see.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 18:56, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: This sentence: "Samuel's four brothers would each play a part in his professional life;" is in the Early years section. But is it ever explained how his four brothers played a  part in his professional life? (Maybe I just missed it.)  MathewTownsend (talk) 03:04, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

text: We can probably delete it, its another vestige from before I started working on it.  Apart from James being a partner and Christopher lending him money early on; they really didn't play that big a part in his life...most of their fame (even John's) was from being his brother.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 04:18, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: helped soldiers and settlers "fend off larger forces which were not armed in the same way." - Does this mean forces that had inferior fire power, or does this mean American Indians with bows and arrows, or both?   MathewTownsend (talk) 23:34, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Both. In the War with Mexico, smaller groups of Texas Rangers held off larger forces of Mexicans armed with single shot weapons; Walker had been impressed seeing a force of 15 Rangers under Hays fight off a larger group of 60-70 Comanche  using Patersons and even in the battle where he was killed (while armed with a pair of Dragoons) his small company of Rangers was victorious over a much larger force of Mexicans.  The Indians at this time were typically armed with single shot rifles as well. Thanks again with all your help on this, sometimes I fall prey to thinking everybody already knows this stuff.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 00:05, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I was trying to figure out how to put some subheadings in that large section, but I'm not familiar enough with the relative importance of things. Didn't he buy his "manor" because he married?  MathewTownsend (talk) 00:30, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Had it built is more accurate, the name basically means "built by Arms on the meadow" see page 20: meaning that the fortune he made from making arms built his home (the first year at Hartford he made $75,000 profit which is $4.4 million by today's standards)--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 00:43, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Did he build it because he was marrying? Or would he have anyway?   MathewTownsend (talk) 00:46, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: With Colt, image was everything.  He built it in anticipation of his marriage.  I would not be surprised if he got married so he could build it as it might have been unseemly for a bachelor to live so lavishly!--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 00:50, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Ha, ha, ha! Quite a guy. Hope that personality comes through in the article.  MathewTownsend (talk) 00:53, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Kind of what I was hoping for.  I try to do that without coming outright and saying it...in some cases I let the "historians" say it in the interest of summary.  For example, if you read Colt's letters he was a worse speller than a third-grader he spelled nephew as Neffue, probably spelled revolver 6 different ways,  etc.  Pearson, who built his prototype called him on it and Colt said "anyone who spelled a word the same way more than once had no imagination."--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 01:06, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

text: The whole laughing gas episode is great: "When Colt returned to the United States in 1832, he went back to work for his father, who financed the production of two guns, a rifle and a pistol. The first completed pistol exploded when it was fired, but the first rifle performed well. Later, after learning about nitrous oxide (laughing gas) from the factory chemist, Colt took a portable lab on the road and earned a living performing laughing gas demonstrations across the United States ... etc." is great -- but it doesn't go with the two sentences. Somehow his "pitchman" skills need to be gathered together. His inventiveness and his pitchman/marketing stuff are two separate skills, though he used them in combination.  MathewTownsend (talk) 01:10, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I will expand on it a bit, he did the demonstartion with Hiram Powers who made it a Dante's Inferno kind of theme about the Infernal regions.  So these people were getting high on nitrous and then seeing these grotesque mummies, wax demons, centaurs, etc.  Colt designed fireworks in these exhibits and Powers had some of the pieces electrified, do if a visitor touched them, they would get a shock.  I read somewhere that he "made $10 a day doing this, but spent $11".  One biographer wrote that the cholera thing was a turning point...people were actually following him after that thinking he was a healer, but he realized he'd rather be a gun maker.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 01:26, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I put it in there, what do you think?--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 01:49, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Tomorrow - too tired now!  MathewTownsend (talk) 02:25, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments on Colt 

message: The section regarding Colt and Ethan Allen needs to accurately report the information in the reference cited, (Houze 2006) and to be consistent with all other sources on Ethan Allen firearms. What was originally in the article was blatantly wrong and simply is not what was reported in the text that was cited. Ethan Allen remained in the firearms business for a decade after Colt threatened to sue him, and according to Houze, Colt never did actually sue. Allen’s first partner Charles Thurber simply retired and Allen continued in business, making pepperboxes and later revolvers with Thomas Wheelock. A later law suit brought by Rollin White, on behalf of Smith and Wesson, was a far greater inconvenience for Allen and Wheelock than the threat from Colt’s lawyer, but that is another story.
The original text was:
In 1852, gun maker Allen & Thurber infringed on the patent; Colt sued and the court ordered that Colt receive royalties on each gun that had been sold by the rival company. This caused Allen & Thurber to cease production of its pepperbox revolver and eventually go out of business.
I proposed a change to:
In 1852, gun makers James Warner and Mass. Arms infringed on the patent; Colt sued and the court ordered that these companies cease revolver production. They also threatened to sue Allen & Thurber over the cylinder design of their double action pepperbox revolver. However it is unclear that this suit would have been successful and the case was resolved with a modest settlement of $15,000. Production of Allen pepperboxes continued until the expiration of Colt's patent in 1857.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rlpapke (talk • contribs) 20:22, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ethan Allen and Sam Colt 

message: In first paragraph under the heading of "Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company (1847–1860)" concerning the fulfillment of the contract to manufacture the Colt Walker, it states this work was done by Eli Whitney Blake, Jr. with a link to that inventor's page.   However,it not was Eli Whitney Blake, Jr,  but was instead Eli Whitney, Jr. the son of Eli Whitney (inventor of the Cotton gin).   Eli Whitney Blake, Jr. was the son of the nephew of inventor of the cotton gin. 
Evidently Eli was a common surname for the Whitney family since it has been reported that the father of the cotton gin inventor was also named Eli.   However, it appears that the Eli who invented the cotton gin never used the suffix of junior.  This was used for his son though, and this son was running the Whitney arms factory at the time Colt hired them to fulfill the contract to build the Walker revolver.
Eli Whitney, Jr. (actually, Whitney the 3rd if one uses the standard convention)had taken over the family business in the 1840's and did quite well with it according to the following short biography found at the Whitney Museum site.
http://www.eliwhitney.org/new/museum/eli-whitney/family
It would seem that he also may deserve a short bio on Wikipedia.
I did not want to take on the actual editing since I am new to this, but thought I would pass on the information that I found.
Forward observer (talk) 21:42, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Manufacture of the Colt Walker 

message: In the Later Years and Death section the wording makes it unclear if what is being claimed is Colt's beliefs about the cause of the Civil War or if the article is asserting a "real" cause of the Civil War ... one that would be quite contentious. If it is Colt's belief, the language should be cleaned up. If it is an assertion by the article, it should be deleted as non-encyclopedic. (25 Feb 2015).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.95.126.175 (talk) 16:18, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cause of the Civil War 

message: The article contradicts itself on this point.
The beginning says: "his factory in Hartford supplied firearms only to the North and not to the South."
This is later directly contradicted, saying he saw no problem selling to both sides, including 2000 revolvers to a Conderate agent. (This must be the Hartford factory as he had closed the London operation years earlier.)
Obviously something needs to be corrected.
06:38, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Selling guns to Confederacy? 

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thread_title:  External links modified