Coral Snake's Firearms History - Single Shot Pistols and Revolvers Part 1 - From Matchlock to Colt By Coral Snake
Early Muzzle Loading Handguns
This history goes back to Europe when the handgun first began to emerge from its musket ancestory. The first known handguns were like their larger musket cousins matchlocks that were usually built into things like jail keys and hand shields. With a burning match as the means of their ignition the primary purpose of a handgun today, concealability was out of the question with matchlock pistols so they were simply used to make other weapons deadly at a longer range than they would usually be or add a weapon to some other device. THis sort of thing would go on with handguns throughout most of their development.
The first genuine concealable handgun came about when the wheel lock was created from modifing the tinder lighters of the time into a gun lock. Basically a wheel lock worked on the same principle as the flint cigarette lighter where sparks from the action of a spring loaded rotating serrated wheel and a piece of pyrite placed on the jaws of an arm called the "dog" or "cock" to ignite the priming powder in an otherwise matchlock like priming pan. "Pistol" is basically a lazy corruption of the town where the first wheel lock handguns were made that stuck to handguns in general in usage. However even at this time handguns were not used primarily for concealability. They were primarily used by soldiers on horseback as cavalry was again coming into the vogue in warfare. The wheel lock pistol was primarily designed to make a horesback soldier deadly at a longer range than a sword or lance just as the matchlock musket did for the foot soldier. However the new mechansim actually caused fear on the part of rulers and several European jurisdictions started passing or decreeing the next phenoninon oc accompany the handgun "gun control" laws aimed at the new firearms that "ignited themselves" rather than requiring a burning match for ifnition. However "gun control" did not work any better in the 16th Century than it does now and the so called "self igniting" firearm would continue to develop.
However there was another problem with the wheel lock besides the debut of "gun control" laws. This was complexity and it made the wheel lock too expensive for any but cavelry knights to use militarily. The answer came by creating new friction lock with a spring loaded "cock" and a steel "frizzen" to simplify the ignition of priming powder by sparks. Also the new lock was improved by using flintstone rather than the more delecate pyrite stone as the spark generator. The first locks of this type used a separate covered pan like the matchlocks and wheel locks before them and were called "snaphaunce" locks. The spanish and the English simplified the friction lock even further by making the "frizzen" and the pan cover a single part. the French finally perfected the new locks design by the creation of the "tumbler" which bore the sear notches and allowed most of the fireing mechanism of a firearm to be mainly internal with the exception of the "cock", trigger and "frizzen" pan cover. They also gave the "cock" its artistic "gooseneck" look and gave the name to this perfected friction lock, the flintlock.
With the rise of the flintlock there could be a common lock mechanism for all firearm types and the handgun benifited from this and developed into a weapon to four basic types by the time the era ended. The horse pistol was a military handgun of the same smoothbore .75 caliber as the standard military muskets of the flintlock age. This allowed it to fire the contents of the same paper cartridges used in the standard flintlock military musket and led to a standardisation of ammunition between handgun and shoulder arm that would show up again throughout the development of firearms. The next popular type of pistol of the flintlock age was the "target dueller" which was usually made for the very wealthy in pairs by very exclusive gunsmiths. Basically these handguns were used for early target shooting and for the LETHAL settling of arguments in formal individual engagements known as "duels". In addition to these non lethal dueal using wax balls with the contents of the priming pan alone as their propellent became a common gun related game that prefugured modern "paintball" and "airsoft" gaming. The fronteer pistol or Pennsylvania type pistol was a purely American addition to the Flintlock pistol family that was basically intended to be a shorter companion to the Long Rifle and was itself rifled and chambered for the same .44 caliber ball. Finally the pocket pistol arrived in the Flintlock era. These early handguns designed spacifically for concealmnet and for "booby traps" on money coffers differed from the other three types of flintlock handguns in having a "box lock" style with the "cock"/frizzen/pan arrangement located at the top center of the gun.
The snaphaunce/flintlock period also saw some early experementation with pepperbox and even true cylender/single barrel revolvers but the gunsmith tools of the time did not allow for the proper tolerances for making a safe cylender/barrel gap. Another non standard flintlock pistol was the "duck's foot" pistol designed to allows officers to quickly dispatch mutinous mobs on ships. Basically this pistol was a "box lock" design with barrels pointing in different foreward directions resembling the foot of a bird. when the gun was fired all the barrels went off at onces essentially killing everyine in front of the captain or other ship's officer being attacked. Needless to sau a more practical means of mutiny control was the use of shot loads in standard smoothbore horse pistols and this approach ended the "duck's foot's" short sea carreer.
The Percussion System
There was one area where the flintlock still continued to do poorly however and that was sport hunting. the problem was the two stage explosion that sent the ball on its way to the prey animal in the flintlock. Basically the priming pan explosion and that of the main powder charge were two time separated events allowing the priming pan explosion to serve as a warning of the presence of a firearm about to discharge for the pray animal who then could run or fly away before the main explosion. This led to the "lead" shooting method of hunting where the gun was pointed in the direction the animal was expected to run or fly when the priming explosion went off rather than directly at the animal. This system was based on experience with animal fleeing techniques and was difficult to master.
Amongst these frustrated hunters were Reverend Alexander Forsyth of England and Jean Sanuel Pauly of France. Both of them were concerned with the production of a firearm lock that would end the need for "lead" shooting in hunting but Pauly would take this even farther. He would be onr of the first to successfully eliminate the muzzle loading system itself with a system that would pre figure the modern cartridge.
The Forsyth system was built around a new type of priming powder based on explosive metal fulminates that exploded on impact as well as by spark or fire. While explosive metal fulminates were far too powerful to make an impact exploding main charge in a firearm Forsythe concluded that they were safe enough to use for the smaller priming explosion of a firearm whole black powder could continue to be used for the main charge. Because these early uses of fulminates were loose powder based like flintlock priming powder Forsyth's impact locks used a "scent bottle" shaped magazine to detonate them with a fireing pin over the detonation area of the magazine. This magazine was placed in the "frizzen" area of the lock while the jawed "cock" of the flintlock was replaced with an impact based hammer. The result of all of this was patented as the Forsyth percussion lock and variations of it found their way onto target duellers and pocket handguns with sleight differences in fulminate magazine design. The target duellers generally had the rotating "scent bottle" design for the magazine while the pocket pistols used a simpler sliding magazine design that started out as a Forsyth patent infringement but was later produced by Forsyth himself when the infringing design was awarded to him.
Pauly however would go even beyond Forsyth in early 19th century firearms design. While they ended the need for "lead" shooting in hunting and defensive handgun use the Forsyth firearms whatever the type were still muzzle loaders. Pauly aimed to create a percussion/fulminate based system that would eliminate the ram rod and its long loading ritual entirely and was indeed before his time especially with his target dueler handguns. for these he made a metallic cartridge with a round ball bullet and a standard target dueller charge of powder that was primed by compacted loose powder in a pan at the center of the cartridge head. The pistol itself was loaded by "breaking" it open on a barrel hinge at the breech much like a modern single shot or double barrel shotgun. However this cartridge was designed way before its time and went by the wayside in favor of continued development on muzzle loading percussion systems. But for the fact that the Pauly pistol cartridge had to be primed with loos powder before use actually prefigured the primary cartridge in use today, the modern centerfire.
Four other steps in muzzle loading percussion lock development came after the loose powder locks of Forsyth andf Pauly. the first of these was the tube lock. For this design a closed tube filled with fulminate as placed directly into the touch hole and the gun fired by a hammer mounted fireing pin that crushed the tube. The second, the pill lock was simply a way of using "pills" of fulminate rather than loose powder to give the proper priming dosage to otherwise loose powder designs. The punch lock basically used removable hammer noses containing the fulminate that would impact a "nipple" screwed into the touch hole to fire the gun. This finally led up to the percussion system that like the flintlock would give a commonality of design to firearm locks across firearm types like the flintlock did and make further development including practical forms of the Pauly cartridge possible, the percussion cap system.
Basically the percussion cap system was similar to the punch lock but instead of using a removable hammer nose it used a solid hammer and a discardable copper cap for the fulminate charge that was placed directly on the nipple to prime the gun. With the percussion cap system once again handguns settled into their customary types, Horse Pistols, Target Duellers, Fronteer pistols and pocket pistols. Probably the most famous maker of the pocket types at this time was Henry Darenger, so much so that his name with a double r (Darrenger) in order to avoid trade mark infringement would becaome the name of virtually all pocket handguns except automatic pistols for the remainder of the handgun's development.
The Pepperbox and the Colt Percussion Revolver
Almost immediately upon having developed an efficient and inexpensive percussion system gunsmiths and manufacturers began ernest experements with repeat fireing weapons. With muzzle loaders it soon became obvious that the easiest way of doing this was to have a thick barrel bored into a series of sub barels that rotated around an arbor on the gun frame and as the hammer was cocked in a hammer cocking design or the trigger was pulled in a trigger cocking design. Such guns came to be called "peperboxes" because the six sub barrels drilled into the main barrel around the arbor resembled the top of a salr or pepper shaker but they were esssentially the earliest and easiest to build in commercial quantities type of revolver. Basically the pepperbox came in two forms. One was single action requiring the hammer to be cocked by a thumbspur for every shot and the other was trigger action. A double action lock which allows both functions was not yet known when the pepperbox reigned as the supreme repeat fire handgun. These guns were popular in both Europe and America and basically came in .44 caliber "horse pistol" size, .36 caliber "standard size and .31 caliber "pocket" size. In America Ethan Allen became the most well known maker of this type of firearm.
However at time of the pepperbox's highest popularity a man named Samuel Colt had patented his plans for the true revolver with a single barrel in front of a cylender with the firing chambers bored into it. Probably for horn tooting purposes Colt said he came ip with the idea when as a cabin boy he saw how the wheel of the ship could be locked in place to keep the ship on course and theorized that a revolver cylinder that could be rotated and locked in place by the action of the cocking hammer would bring about a practiclal single barreled revolver. It is more likely however that he studied earlier revolver attempts from the flintlock age and saw one of their deficiencies was the lack of a cylinder locking method that could cause the cylinder to go dangerously out of alignment with the barrel when the weapons were fired.
Colt not only solved the defficiencies of the single barrelled revolver that existed up to his time in his patents, he also solved those of the pepperbox as well. The main one other than the weight of such a weapon was its hammer design. Weather single or trigger actioned pepperboxes basically had their percussion nipples set at right angles to the bore of the fireing chambers and this caused the hammer to have to opperate on an up/down arc that gravely interfered with the gun's sight picture. Colt set his cylinder's percussion nipples so that they would parralel with the fireing cchambers allowing for a more back/front type hammer arc that did not interfere with the gun's site picture. The basic colt design was also simple. It consisted of a cylender bmounted on a frame containing the fireing mechanism and the cylender arbor. The cylender was then mounted on the arbor and the barrel connected to it by a phlange at the bottom of the frame and a pin through the cylender arbor. One problem with the earlest Colts produced at Patterson Jew Jersey however was the trigger. Rather than using a conventional trigger guard system Colt designed the guns so they would fold into the bottom of the frame when the gun was not cocked. Needless to say this created a dangerous and delecate system for such an important part of the weapon. Another deficiency was that the guns were not available in the standard sizes and calibers of the pepperboxes. They basically came in two sizes the pocket and standard or "holster" size, both in .36 caliber and bored for five shots. Because of this there would be only one major order for the patterson design Colts before Sam went bankrupt in his first attempt at a revolver business. That was for a shipment of holster sized handguns to the then forming Texas Rangers.
This revolver gained the interest of one Colonel Sam Walker who had left the Texas Rangers for the U.S. Army Dragoons at to fight in the mexican war. He tinkered with the revolver on paper by remaking it horse pistol size and adding a trigger guard/trigger arrangement along with a loading lever that would function like the ram rod on other percussion weapons. He had Sam Colt found and requested that 1100 of these new revolvers be made for Mexican War service. Since Colt did not have a factory at this time his Patterson factory having gine into receivership he paid Ely Witney the inventor of the Cotton Gin to manufacture the guns for part of the price that Walker was offering for them. This "hail Marry" order set Cold back in the firearms business and he re established a new factory at Hartford Connetcutt in just a nick of time.
It turned out after its service in the Mexican war that not only wad the Witneyville Walker Colt the most powerful handgun of its time, it was TOO POWERFUL for the time and fully charged fireing chambers would sometimes blow up on the cylinders. Upon hearing this Colt set up to work on revising the design of his horse pistol sized revolver. Amongst the new improvements Colt added was superior materials to make and a shorter cylender that would not allow overcharging burt did not sacrifice the power of the pistol. Also the barrel and loading lever were redesigned to both fit the shorter cylinder and allow for more positive securing of the loading lever at the end of the barrel. The first run of this new gun was givven to the army for free to replace cylinder blown Walkers and the subsequent runs were put on general sale as the First Model Dragoon revolver. As this was the time that the independent mountain man brigades gave way to more perminant settlement of the West the First Model Dragoon drew the interest that the pattersons did not with civilians.
The year 1850 saw another change with Colt as the company desided to start building in the three standard sizes, horse, holster and pocket. With this series the internals of the guns were improved to those seen on colt style single action revolvers even today and the oval cylinder lock notches were changed to the modern rectangular ones. The three sizes offered were the Second Model Dragoon at the hores pistol size, the Navy Model at the holster pistol size and the Baby Dragoon model at the pocket pistol size. Of these the Navy Model at .36 caliber became the most popular one with western settlers and the Baby Dragoon for the gamblers and prostitutes of the time. THerefore these two models became essentially the first revolvers of the "Wild Wolly West". The last changes that colt would make before his patents ran out for revolvers with mechanically revolving and locking cylinders was simply a redesign of the trigger guard on his guns to a more rounded one we see on single action revolvers today. However even that change led to some model name changes on the bart of Colt. The Horse postol size was now represented by the Third Model Dragoon, the holster size continued to be represented by the Navy Model but with the new rounded trigger guard, and the pocket pistol cnanged from the Baby Dragoon to simply the Pocket Model.
These models saw the end of the monopoly years for Colt, His patents were about to expire there would be Competition to his revolvers and that would include the first Cartridge handguns as the result of another patent fluke much like his own back in the 1930s. Nor only that but his patents never took hold in the British isles and Europe which were becoming centers of revolver innovation
Next - Part 2 - Colt gets Competition and the Opening of the Cartridge Era.