i think serven made an error on the patent numbers then the citation you removed is the us patent office database there's no way to link directly to an individual patent there which is the reason i cited the database and included information in the footnote about how to see the patent itself take a look at it isn't issued to colt it has nothing to do with guns and it was issued in the wrong year then take a look at x for a revolver issued to s colt on feb for both of those you have to enter the number of the patent you want to see then click the option to see images there are no transcriptions but they have scans of the original documents the link i gave above x patent discusses the patents that were destroyed prior to and the fire that destroyed the patent office's copies of those first patents patents weren't numbered after the fire in the patent office started numbering all new patents beginning at they also started trying to recover extant copies of old patents and numbering them as they found them but beginning with x so pre fire and earlier patents are x series post fire patents don't have the x the patent colt was issued in was an x series patent because it was issued before the fire anything without an 'x' can't be the right patent number for that date when sources conflict we need to go with the primary sources above secondary sources and the actual scans maintained by the patent office are about as primary as we can get on this issue