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SECTION I

COLT: TODAY & TOMORROW

A MESSAGE FROM COLT’S:

The Future of Colt… as Colt Sees It

“Our legacy for the twenty first century will rest on how well we lay the groundwork today for creating a company that continues to be responsive to consumer needs, and depends as much on inventiveness and innovation as it does on technology. We are striving to meet this challenge and to guarantee a secure place for Colt in the pages of history as they unfold in the decades to come.”

2007 CATALOG, COLT’S

MANUFACTURING COMPANY LLC

With a history as distinguished as any firearms company in the world, Colt’s Manufacturing Company LLC today finds itself looking in two directions: forward into the 21st century with new designs and unlimited possibilities, and backward to the 20th and 19th centuries to a record of remarkable achievement, innovative approaches to shooting problems, continuing innovation and, ultimately, strong brand identification and customer loyalty.

Since Samuel Colt opened his Hartford Armory, Colt’s (hereinafter referred to simply as Colt) has always operated with the kind of double vision that many companies attempt and few actually achieve. More than 150 years ago, the boy genius Sam Colt realized that a successful and long-lasting American firearms company would need to serve both the military and the civilian marketplace.

Thus, Colt produced arms for every market segment. It built deringers and pocket pistols for personal protection and the famous Single Action Army or “Peacemaker” for military and civilian use. Its management set the stage for a century of innovation by dozens of manufacturers worldwide when it agreed to produce John M. Browning’s 1911 automatic pistol and proceeded to manufacture the Gatling gun and the Thompson submachine gun. In the modern era it co-designed the remarkable M16, the staple of U.S. military small arms for almost half a century.

Today, Colt has two principal divisions: its commercial or civilian division (Colt’s Manufacturing Company LLC) and its defense contracting division, which encompasses law enforcement, military and private security support (Colt Defense LLC). This sectional approach to the multiple markets that Colt serves is the sign of a nimble and diversified company that is both flexible enough to tackle the challenges of the century ahead … and respectful of its legacy as well.

“I believe the Colt vision now is to reestablish our presence as a significant player in the commercial handgun market,” says Mark Roberts, Director of Sales and Marketing for the commercial division. Roberts, who worked on the manufacturing side for six years before moving to marketing, has a well-rounded view of Colt’s progress since 1998. He is personally vested in the manufacturer’s success.

During the 1990s, Colt as well as most other U.S. firearms manufacturers, found itself facing an increasingly hostile battery of attorneys who represented a small minority of the American public. Supported by numerous well-funded non-profit – and often tax-exempt – organizations such as the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence or even anti-hunting organizations such as Defenders of Wildlife and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, these attorneys were evidently tasked to “go after the gun industry.” In an era when one could receive hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars in damages for spilling one’s own coffee in one’s own lap inside one’s own vehicle, the injury was significant in time and resources.

The barrage of anti-gun lawsuits, which culminated (but did not, unfortunately, end) in 1999, forced Colt (and others) to re-evaluate their commercial product lines. Suddenly, another factor was added to the administrative overhead in addition to reliability, marketability, research and testing: additional staff lawyers.

Larry Keane, Senior Vice President and General Counsel to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, estimates lawsuits from municipalities alone cost the industry $225 million. Those costs are on-going. Insurance became a massive burden: not only were policy increases substantial, but deductibles skyrocketed and exclusions compounded – if a manufacturer could find insurance at all. There were less resources for wage increases and new product research. Overall, there was less money for capital investments and both buildings and equipment suffered. According to Keane, “1999 is the year that the entire industry, including Colt’s, was almost destroyed.”

Primarily as a result of the turbulence in the civilian marketplace, Colt dropped its tiny six-shot Mustang in 1999; dropped its small double-action .380 ACP Pony the following year; and let the 9mm Pocket Nine go in 2001. Other models, fully functional and serviceable guns, fell out of Colt’s catalog. Colt, and the industry as a whole, cautiously felt its way forward, but there was a realization that Colt’s brand equity, name and legacy – all built carefully over 150 years – made it a special target for anti-gun activists, specialists in appeasement and pacifists of all stripes.

Fortunately, although Colt and other firearms manufacturers briefly went into what Roberts refers to as “something of a hunker down” mode, the damage was not permanent. Life, indeed, has gone on because of simple need and customer demand from both civilians and the military. The international requirement for quality firearms has, if anything, increased, but at Colt the vision had to be renewed. And that could not happen overnight.

Looking at the firearms marketplace, Colt management understands that the world is now a highly competitive and highly integrated place, and that the 21st century already is filled with great gun makers from many nations. Competitive contract bids for new or old designs may be received from almost any corner of the earth.

“A lot of guns are being made now that are very comparable to Colt’s,” Roberts reflects, accepting the fact that all of Colt’s original patents – on guns like the redoubtable 1911, for instance – expired long ago. “So it has been up to us to redefine our vision, our product lines and our quality standards, to insist that, at every level, they become the best in this business.”

The results of nearly a decade of thoughtful planning have left Colt – at least on the commercial side – as more of a “niche marketer” than they were in the generation of the World War II veterans. For long-term profitability, it is much more important for a company to carefully study the market before launching a new product line than it was even a dozen years ago. A new firearms concept may now cost millions of dollars and take years of study, and even then may go nowhere … or may be immensely profitable. So production of guns to match every shooting opportunity is not, at present, in the new vision. Shotguns for sporting clays; hunting rifles for big game; new deringers for self-defense – none of these appears to be in Colt’s immediate future.

These days, looking at a more dangerous and quixotic international playground than perhaps ever before in Colt’s or America’s history, Colt has accepted its role as a niche player on the commercial side and as a robust contractor to the U.S. government (and to other, friendly governments as well) on the defense side. Consequently, the majority of Colt’s internal resources and external public relations and lobbying efforts are targeted to meet defense-contracting opportunities.

Still, Colt has a commercial handgun capacity with both legacy and product that remain in high demand. According to Roberts, “Colt’s Manufacturing has not defined its niche as bells and whistles, guns with seven sorts of whiz-bang features and any ‘gun of the week’ syndrome. We believe that at this time, our niche is the basic, mil-spec single-stack .45 and some offshoots of that trusted firearm. We are also committed to maintain a very strong presence in the single-action community with our Model P, the classic Colt Peacemaker. These directions are intended for the Colt purist, the person who likes guns with the refinement, aesthetics and quality they had 40 and 50 years ago.” To promote the brand, Colt’s continuing task is therefore to maintain a competitive competence in price, quality and distinctiveness.

So, according to Mark Roberts, Colt’s commitment to the civilian market remains solid, even if it may not carry as extensive a product line as it once did. For example, the Hartford manufacturer went through a major “commemorative era” from the 1960s to the 1980s wherein dozens of special guns were produced in the “Lawman Series”: the 3,000 guns designated the 1967 Bat Masterson Frontier Scout, or the 250 .45 automatics in the 1979 Ohio President’s Special Edition. Colt has made a decision to move beyond that market, perhaps finding that the resources invested in building and marketing a few hundred specialized guns, even one for which the pattern was well-established, could not be recouped in profitability and that the dozens of commemoratives produced may, in effect, have softened the brand when the guns did not hold their initial commemorative values.

“Although the manufacturing process is continually changing, we, like other companies that manufacture intricate mechanical instruments continue to look for ways to build excellent, durable parts at less expense,” Mark Roberts says. “Basically though, we still operate the way we did a generation ago, with high quality forged steel and machined bar stock, and making very limited use of MIM (metal injection molded) parts. I believe that most people would be truly astonished at the amount of hand finishing and team evaluation that our quality inspectors require for that perfect Colt fit and feel.”

THE RAMPANT COLT:

SAM COLT

(1814 - 1862) – American Genius, American Original

Sam Colt was a prodigy. In 20 years, he went from penniless to immensely wealthy; from being a literal nobody to consorting with the richest, most famous and, occasionally, the most powerful people in the world. Beginning with a prototype revolver carved from a chunk of wood, he orchestrated a firearms revolution and organized one of the largest and most successful industrial enterprises in America. Almost 200 years after his birth, his story is still amazing and inspiring.

The son of a sometime farmer, sometime small businessman, Samuel Colt was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1814. Although his father and stepmother worked hard to give him a good education – his biological mother died when he was just a few years old – at the age of 11, he was indentured as a farm servant. And like most rural youngsters, he was at home with the muzzleloaders of the day.

As a youth, the boy had a profound mechanical curiosity and was greatly influenced by a book titled the Compendium of Knowledge, an encyclopedia of a scientific nature. This book contained articles about inventors such as Robert Fulton who – by linking an idea with a challenge, and with the ability to work mechanically with gears, wheels and levers – succeeded in expanding the frontier of human accomplishment. When Sam’s father subsequently took over the operation of a Massachusetts textile mill, the young Sam worked there also.

Shortly afterward, Sam Colt spent a year at sea. It may very well have been there, watching the action of the ship’s wheel as it spun and locked (or perhaps the capstan, a rotating wheel used to control lines to sails and spars, and to redirect the force of the wind) controlling the sailing ship’s movements, that he conceived his idea for spinning or rotating chambers that would hold firearms ammunition. On board the ship, he even worked with the carpenter to carve a realistic model of a six-shooter. The boy was just 18 years old.

The best-known American gunmaker of all time, Samuel Colt (1814-1862).

Returning to New England, Sam and his father commissioned several gunsmiths to build revolving cylinder firearms to Sam’s specifications, but because the Colts lacked the finances to hire truly first-class metalsmiths, these models operated poorly or not at all. One of the first two exploded in Colt’s hands. So to raise money to bring his ideas to fruition, the young man took to the road as an entertainer (“Doctor Coult of Calcutta”) giving lectures about and demonstrations of laughing gas (nitrous oxide) in fairs and auditoriums from the Mississippi River to Montreal.

The income from his laughing gas tour allowed him to commission excellent working models and engineering drawings of his revolvers. The tour also gave him valuable experience in promotion and marketing, experience he would soon put to the test with his own inventions. At just 21 years of age, in 1835, he sailed to England and France to patent his revolver, fearing that the Europeans would immediately pirate his work. Afterwards, he returned to the U.S. and patented his drawings and ideas at home.

In his book COLT: An American Legend, R.L. Wilson reminds us that when Colt organized his first factory in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1836, the president of the U.S. was Andrew Jackson, and that the Union encompassed only 25 states and a vast frontier had been purchased just 33 years before by Thomas Jefferson.

Although that time seems an eternity ago, financing options were about the same. With patents, working models and a personal investment, Colt incorporated as the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company, borrowed enough money to capitalize his factory and begin turning out revolving cylinder handguns, rifles and even shotguns for the cap-and-ball or percussion era that was replacing the older flintlocks.

For a collector, finding a Paterson Colt in a dusty, rarely-visited attic would be better than finding a friendly Irish leprechaun willing to take him to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It did not turn out as well for Colt, however. His Paterson models were functional, even remarkable for the time, but hardly efficient or reliable. In New Jersey, Colt developed and produced three different revolving-cylinder handgun models – pocket, belt and holster; two types of revolving long rifle – one cocked by a hammer and the other by a finger lever or ring; a revolving carbine; and a revolving-cylinder shotgun. In all cases, gunpowder and bullets were loaded into the front of the cylinder while the primer was inserted into a hollow nipple located on the outside of the cylinder, where it would be struck by the hammer when the trigger was pulled.

But Sam Colt’s designs were still immature and the black powder of the day was extremely “dirty,” leaving a great deal of fouling that complicated the functioning of moving parts. For these reasons and because of the lack of government orders, Colt closed the doors of his Paterson enterprise in 1842.

Nevertheless, Colt’s Paterson plant did in fact produce working models of multi-shot handguns, rifles and shotguns. His guns were used in the Seminole War in Florida and, most important, in the fighting to establish the Republic of Texas that would culminate in the Mexican-American War.

The Paterson failure was not the end of Sam Colt, though. Filled with ideas and with insufficient hours in the day to bring them all to life, he experimented with waterproof ammunition, underwater harbor defense systems via coordinated explosive mines and, with Samuel F.B. Morse, the telegraph. In fact, having narrowly averted a war with Louis Philippe’s France in the mid 1830s, the government awarded Colt $50,000 – an immense sum in those days – to further his plans for harbor defense. But hostilities with Mexico, from whom the U.S. demanded a huge chunk of territory, interrupted Colt’s East Coast harbor defense efforts and turned him, once again, into a firearms entrepreneur.

It may have been luck, in the form of a couple of famous Texas Rangers, as much as his personal inventive genius that gave Colt a second chance. Captain Samuel Walker was recruiting for the fighting in Texas when he exchanged letters with Colt, whose Paterson guns he had used successfully against the Comanche. Many frontiersmen regarded that southwestern tribe as the finest light cavalry of the era. Working together, Colt and Walker soon developed a fresh design, more powerful and more reliable than Colt’s Paterson guns, and Colt induced Eli Whitney, Jr., son of the inventor of the cotton gin, to financially back his enterprise.

Colt sold the subsequent 1847 Walker Colt percussion revolver to the government and to civilians alike. Based on the new designs, these guns were an immediate success and Colt was on his way to fame and fortune. Walker, on the other hand, died the following year, killed by the thrust of a lance during the Battle of Juamantla, near Tlaxcala, Mexico.

By 1851, Colt was organizing and building a modern factory along the Connecticut River in Hartford. Four years later, the factory was fully operational and, incorporated as Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company, was turning out fresh firearms models to supply a national sense of unrest and the flood of immigrants moving west. The California Gold Rush, the Indian Wars and looming sectional conflict that would become the Civil War, or War Between the States, fueled Colt’s armory and his almost boundless energy. Soon, a factory in London was also producing the indefatigable Yankee’s designs.

In his new factory, which was built to the latest standards of the day, Colt lost no time in specifying interchangeable parts for his firearms, some 80 percent of which were turned out on precision machinery. Because of the undeviating attention Colt – and capable lieutenants such as Elisha K. Root, a long-time friend and highly qualified engineer – paid to the manufacturing process, the Hartford production machinery achieved a remarkably high degree of uniformity for the mid-19th century. Typically, the metal parts of a Colt revolver were designed, molded, machined, fitted, stamped with a serial number, hardened and assembled right there in Hartford.

In the mid-1850s, Colt finished his remarkable factory and topped it with a marvelous blue onion dome resplendent with gold stars. Above it stood a cast bronze “rampant colt,” the rearing stallion holding a broken spear – half in its mouth and half in tandem across its legs – that would become the internationally-recognized Colt logo.

Sam also oversaw the building of a mansion, complete with greenhouses and formal gardens, which he named “Armsmear,” and he got married. His wife, Elizabeth, the daughter of a New England parson, would be instrumental in guiding the company through turbulent times following his early death in 1862.

Colt, who was by now extraordinarily wealthy and well-connected, took his bride on a six-month tour of Europe. The highlight of couple’s honeymoon was undoubtedly their attendance at the coronation of Czar Alexander II in St. Petersburg, Russia. (Sam and Elizabeth had several children, but only one survived into adulthood. The one surviving boy was named Caldwell. Unfortunately, Caldwell proved to be an heir of no importance, a dilettante yachtsman and skirt-chaser. He was shot to death in 1894 while fleeing from an irate husband in Key West, Florida.)

In the 1850s, Sam Colt was considered one of the 10 wealthiest men in America. The Governor of Connecticut presented him with the honorary title of Colonel of State Militia, probably as payback for political and financial support. Still, Sam’s life was anything but calm. Because he gave lavishly engraved sets of firearms inset with gold and silver as gifts to men he believed would look favorably upon his company, he was investigated by the U.S. Congress. Adding to his troubles, several of his children died at birth or shortly thereafter. He also fought his way through numerous lawsuits, all of which sought a slice of the Colt enterprise.

In those days, Colt sold his firearms through a small force of traveling salesmen, known as agents, and between 15 and 20 “jobbers,” the old term for wholesalers who sold large quantities of guns to smaller retail outlets such as hardware stores. In addition, the company maintained sales offices in both New York City and London. The sales department also would accept direct orders at the plant, providing they were from someone who was rich and famous, a friend of the Colt family, or a buyer of a large quantity of weapons. This practice would continue long after Sam’s death. (In July of 1885, frontiersman and some-time marshal/sometime outlaw W.B. “Bat” Masterson sent Colt his order for a nickel-plated .45 caliber single action revolver. “Make it very Easy on [the] trigger,” he wrote under the letterhead of the Opera House Saloon of Dodge City, Kansas. His letter still survives in the Colt archives.)

Sam Colt was later recognized as one of the earliest American manufacturers to fully realize the potential of an effective marketing program that included sales promotion, publicity, product sampling, advertising and public relations. Whether or not any specific bribes were asked or offered is not known, but given the climate of the time, such would not have been unusual.

Samuel Colt’s health began to fail late in 1860 as the country moved toward total war. He was tired and overworked. Prior to the actual outbreak of war, Colt continued to ship product to customers in southern states; as soon as war was “official,” however, Colt supplied only the Union forces. By the end of 1861, the Hartford Armory was operating at full capacity, with more than 1,000 employees and annual earnings of about $250,000.

In his lifetime, Sam Colt had produced more than 400,000 firearms.

On January 10, 1862, Sam Colt died at the age of 47. The cause of his death remains obscure even today; contemporary accounts suggest rheumatic fever or possibly pneumonia. In his lifetime, he had produced more than 400,000 firearms. His estate was reportedly worth $15 million, an enormous sum for the time, an amount of money equivalent to more than $350 million by today’s economic standards. Following Sam’s death, control of the company passed into the hands of his widow, Elizabeth, who had promised that she would carry out her husband’s wishes for the future.

Colt died while the Civil War raged – indeed, while the outcome was very much in doubt. On a cold February morning two years after he was buried, the city of Hartford awoke to the news that Colt’s factory was in flames. At 8:15 that morning, smoke was reported issuing from the attic wing. Flames spread so rapidly that by 9:00 a.m. Colt’s well-known blue and gold onion dome with its trademark rampant colt weathervane had collapsed into the fire. Although the workers battled valiantly to save the building, its machinery and stock, by evening everything was reduced to smoking rubble. The cause of the fire was never determined, but there was some evidence of Confederate sabotage.

Unfortunately Sam had never bothered to insure the ruined building. Elizabeth had done so in a partial manner and she spearheaded reconstruction with the pitiful one-third of replacement value they eventually wrung from the reluctant insurance companies. By 1867 the new armory, now with firewalls three feet thick, was “not only an unsurpassed workshop but, also a monument to the memory of the late Colonel Colt and was fully consistent with Elizabeth’s determination to live a life of ‘faithful affection’ and memory.”

Control of the company remained in the hands of Elizabeth and her family until 1901 when she, having no living heirs, sold it to a group of investors. Thus ended the Colt family’s direct affiliation with the company that had become, and remains, one of the most widely-recognized in American history.