In the development of firearms, an important limiting factor was the time required to reload the weapon after it was fired. While the user was reloading, the weapon was useless, allowing an adversary to attack the user. Several approaches to the problem of increasing the rate of fire were developed, the earliest involving multi-barrelled weapons which allowed two or more shots without reloading. Later weapons featured multiple barrels revolving along a single axis.
In 1836, American Samuel Colt patented a popular revolver which led to the widespread use of the revolver. According to Colt, he came up with the idea for the revolver while at sea, inspired by the capstan, which had a ratchet and pawl mechanism on it, a version of which was used in his guns to rotate the cylinder by cocking the hammer. This provided a reliable and repeatable way to index each round and did away with the need to manually rotate the cylinder. Revolvers proliferated largely due to Colt's ability as a salesman, but his influence spread in other ways as well. The build quality of his company's guns became famous, and its armories in America and England trained several seminal generations of toolmakers and other machinists, who had great influence in other manufacturing efforts of the next half century.
In 1873, Colt introduced the famous Model 1873, also known as the Single Action Army, the "Colt .45" (not to be confused with Colt-made models of the M1911 semi-automatic) or simply, "the Peacemaker", one of the most famous handguns ever made. This popular design, which was a culmination of many of the advances introduced in earlier weapons, fired 6 metallic cartridges and was offered in over 30 different calibers and various barrel lengths. It is still in production, along with numerous clones and lookalikes, and its overall appearance has remained the same since 1873. Although originally made for the United States Army, the Model 1873 was widely distributed and popular with civilians, ranchers, lawmen, and outlaws alike. Its design has influenced countless other revolvers. Colt has discontinued its production twice, but brought it back due to popular demand and continues to make it to this day.
