Improvement in Fire-Arms and in the Apparatus Used Therewith

American inventor and businessman Samuel Colt laid out Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company and mass-produced revolvers that were commercially feasible. This petition of Samuel Colt conveyed that he is the sole patentee and proprietor of Letters Patent granted to him on the 29th of August 1839 for an improvement in firearms and the apparatus used along with it. Colt made these improvements after obtaining Letters Patent of the United States for an Improvement in Fire-Arms. In this letter he gives a complete and exact description of his said improvements. He fully described the manner in which he constructed and used his improved fire-arms, and the respective articles of apparatus concerned with that. Colt's U.S. revolver patent gave him a monopoly of revolver manufacture. His was the first functional revolver and the first applicable repeating firearm, thanks to progress made in percussion technology. No longer a usual wonder weapon, the revolver became an industrial and cultural legacy as well as a grant to the evolution of war technology, represented ironically by the name of one of his company's later innovations, the «Peacemaker.»