Colt

Founded in 1847, Colt's Manufacturing Company (CMC) had become a sort of byword in firearms long before any other company of its kind. The fact that the name Colt became synonymous with revolvers, thanks largely to Western films and frontier novels based in America’s formative years in the 19th century by such authors as Oliver Strange and Louis L’Amour, is significant and has a lot to do with the its legendary status. As most lovers of such renditions know, the model most frequently featured in these fictional depictions of the American West is the iconic Colt .45. This revolver was the 1873 Single Action Army, and it has carved such a niche in public imagination that CMC still makes them on a limited basis for collectors. They can cost as much as $10,000 per piece, and most gun lovers value such an acquisition as much as a philatelist would a Penny Black.

Colt's Manufacturing Company was launched by Samuel Colt, who possessed the patent to a firearm that was fated to rewrite history – the revolver. He had invented this handgun as early as 1836. CMC’s story begins at a time when firearms were in great demand – specifically, the Mexican-American war. This was a prolonged and bloody event that has also seen much depiction in Hollywood films.

This was not Samuel Colt’s first venture into firearm manufacturing. He had, in fact, launched the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company much before the establishment of CMC. Though this company had to declare bankruptcy in 1842, the demand for Colt’s revolvers was firmly established and the US Army was quick to reestablish contracts with Samuel Colt for their manufacture. After the legendary .45, the first most innovative firearm to leave Colt’s renewed production line was the world’s first automatic machine gun – specifically, the Colt Model 1895, sometimes referred to as the ‘Potato Digger’. This weapon, which featured in the Spanish-American war, was not an exclusive Samuel Colt design. It was actually invented by yet another iconic gun designer – John Browning. The Potato Digger was a gas-operated machine gun, and one of the first to incorporate a technology that would later be adopted by various other armament manufacturers.

In fact, John Browning was also the mastermind of yet another Colt classic – the M1911. This revolver joined the ranks of Colt’s famous .45 series and was widely used as a standard sidearm by the US Army for three quarters of a century. In fact, it is a favored sidearm by gun aficionados and law enforcement personnel to the present day. The period that followed was an extremely productive one for Colt's Manufacturing Company – the Vietnam War in the ‘60s and the removal of Springfield Armory as a competitor had much to do with this. Yet another feather in the company’s cap was the official adoption of the M16 - an assault rifle chambering NATO 5.56 mm rounds that was extensively employed in Vietnam was well as the Gulf and Iraq wars. Colt held the exclusive patent to this firearm, which has the distinction of having seen the highest scale of production of its kind.

Such success in the military arena may have led to CMC’s first major error of judgment. By the time the Cold War became a firm reality, the company seemed to have assumed an attitude of indifference to the civilian market and was concentrating almost exclusively on supplying guns to the military. With the removal of Colt from this burgeoning arena, there were no further innovations on this front from the company. This allowed other emerging armament manufacturers to forge ahead. As a result, the Italian manufacturer Beretta saw the famous Beretta 92F become the US Army’s standard sidearm in1984. What followed was a series of setback – including strikes among Colt’s workers, a decided drop in firearm quality and the eventual loss of the manufacturing contract for the M16 to Fabrique Nationale. The 1994 boycott saw the company’s assets sold to the financial group Zilkha & Co.

Colt's Manufacturing Company is nowhere near its original potential and production scale today and other companies have overtaken it. While it is certainly doing what it can to reestablish footing, it would seem that the legendary status it once enjoyed is now firmly beyond reach.