Gun Barons: The Weapons that Transformed America and the Men Who Invented Them

This weeks book is Gun Barons: The Weapons that Transformed America and the Men Who Invented Them by John Bainbridge Jr.

The book opens with a cast of characters, basically a family tree  of firearms. So we start with Samuel Colt and Eliphalet Remington, both stand alone. So does Christopher Spencer. But to get to Oliver Winchester, you go through Walter Hunt, who initially invented the Volition Repeater Rifle, the patents of which were purchased by Lewis Jennings, who wanted to improve on the design and eventually created the Volcanic Repeater. Horace Smith, later of Smith & Wesson , would work for Jennings on the Volcanic Repeater and they would create the Volcanic Repeating Arms company, which would be purchased by Oliver Winchester. B Tyler Henry would work for Winchester and while working for Winchester create the famous Henry repeating rifle. Edwin Wesson was the older brother of and master gunsmith who would train Daniel Baird Wesson. Daniel Wesson would pair up with Horace Smith and create Smith & Wesson, with their major technological break through coming when they purchased the patent for the bore through cylinder from Rollin White. Got it? Ok.

Now, the search for a repeating firearm was on pretty early, and while the volition repeater was an early rifle version of a repeater, it was buggy as hell and never quite worked right, which led to Walter Hunt selling his patent quite early on to Lewis Jennings. But the fact that a repeater was possible, in any format, led to the designs of everyone else. Starting with Colt. Ok not really, since Colt’s entire product line was focused around handguns, not rifles. But Colt did invent and patent the first revolving cylinder pistol. But, since this was before copper case cartridges were a thing, the original Colt pistols were muzzle loaders, you would just revolve the cylinder to load the next round. But, speed was produced when you didn’t have to stop to reload.

This became a game changer in early Texas, before the Mexican/American War, when the Texans were fighting the Comanche. Specifically, Samuel Walker, Texas Ranger…the original Walker Texas Ranger. He swore by the Colt and pushed for the Republic of Texas and later the US Army to buy them in bulk. Which was done, and left Colt with the problem of needing to manufacture them. Now, Colt had the patent as of 1835, and patents were good for 10 years, and you could apply for a patent extension, which Colt did, effectively giving him a 20 year monopoly, which expired in 1857. And he aggressively protected that patent, suing everyone successfully for patent violations, including Smith and Wesson.

Those two bided their time and waited for Rollin White. Ok, they did not know they were waiting for Rollin White, they just knew some day they would get their revenge in the courts for Colt having basically wiped out their first business, the Volcanic Repeating Arms. It was Colt’s law suit that resulted in the Volcanic Repeating Arms being purchased by Winchester, and rebranded to the New Haven Repeating Arms company. Rollin White was a machinist and he was actually working in that capacity for Colt and he started trying to figure out how to make a cylinder that would load through the breech instead of the muzzle. And he figured out the pass through cylinder and how to make it work, all before the advent of brass cartridges. And Smith and Wesson did something not even a little shitty to him. They licensed the patent from White, and agreed to pay him a royalty for each firearm sold; however, White had to defend that patent against violation. White would come to resent this clause immensely, as all royalties he earned were lost in the never ending lawsuits. Which he won, but he still had to pay the lawyers fees to file them.

Where Smith and Wesson would really reap their rewards was when the all in one cartridge, aka modern bullet, was invented. This was not invented by an American, it was invented by Louis Nicolas Auguste Flobert in Paris. His original rimfire cartridges did not have a lot of power and he meant them to be single shot for like parlor games. Smith and Wesson figured out how to take this idea and create a new .22 caliber rimfire, to go with their new 7 shot revolver, which began production in 1857, the very second Colt’s patent on the revolving cylinder ended, as he failed to secure a second extension on his patent.

Remington were actually not firearms makers directly, at least not while Eliphat Remington, patriarch of the clan, was alive. They were also machinists and they produced everything from rifle barrels to plowshares. This lasted until the civil war and the expiration of Colt’s patent on the revolver design, at which point Remington started making basically knock off pistols. Remington’s big contribution to the firearms industry would happen a decade after the Civil War with their Remington Rollingblock rifle, which was a favorite of big game hunters.

Spencer’s sole contribution to the firearms industry was a big one, as his was the favored rifle of Union troops during the Civil War. So important was the Spencer rifle that Union troops, if they believed they were dead, dying, or about to be overrun, would disable the rifle in such a way that they could not be used against other Union troops by Confederate soldiers. For like seven glorious years, Spencer rifles were the absolute best, and Spencer got huge chunks of the Union contract, with the remaining advanced riflery being the Henry repeating rifle from Winchester Arms.

I’m not going to go into the bad blood between Henry and Winchester, because I went over that quite a bit in Captive of the Labyrinth. But Rollin White, in his attempt to undercut his very bad patent contract with Simth and Wesson, had a second patent, nearly identical to his first, which S & W did not license from him. And he had that lined up and ready to go as an end run around the patent licenses of S&W. I get it, White basically lost everything he had earned in royalties to defending his patent from encroachers, and S&W reaped all the benefits of massive sales.

The long standing rivalry between Colt and S&W did not die with Samuel Colt, who passed on January 10, 1862 at the age of 47. Colt manufacturing continued well after his death, with both Colt and S&W producing higher powered revolvers. S&W shot itself in the foot…metaphorically speaking. They had worked their revolvers so that they could fire Colt cartridges. But Colt did not reciprocate. Which meant if a unit in the field had Colt revolvers but only S&W ammunition, they had nothing to shoot.

Walter Hunt, who created the first volition repeater, was a consistent inventor through out his life, selling his patents almost as fast as he could create them, to keep some money coming in to feed his family. He was right at the brink of full financial solvency, having invented a sewing machine, the patent of which he was set to sell to Isaac Singer for $50,000, when he died at 62.

Rollin White also kept inventing, patenting many inventions in the textile industry, which is where he got his start. He died December 16, 1890 at 74 years of age.

Benjamin Tyler Henry kept inventing, but he moved into vehicles, inventing an axle box for vehicles. He died on June 8, 1898 at 77 years old. The Henry name lives on in the very active Henry Firearms, where they still make lever action rifles which are beautiful and accurate.

Samuel Colt’s factory kept on keeping on until May 2021 when the Colt name was purchased by Ceska zbrojovka group SE, based in the Czech Republic.

The Remington name still exists and still makes Remington firearms in the USA. They closed briefly in 2020 before reopening May 2021. However, the Remington family has not been part of the Remington brand since the 1880s.

Smith & Wesson was eventually also purchased by CZG, the same company that purchased Colt, but this purchase happened in 2005.

Winchester was discussed in Captive of the Labyrinth.

Spencer did keep inventing guns, but never reached the level of success he did with the Spencer Repeating Rifle, although he did invent a repeating shotgun in the 1880’s. he also invented an early automobile that was coal powered. He died at 88, after flying in a plane that had been invented by his son.

This book would be a good introductory primer for anyone who wants a general overview of some of the great names and inventors of modern weaponry. And it is modern, even the original muzzle loading revolver designed by Colt, as this advanced the general footprint of semi-automatic weaponry. But this is a general primer. If you want to know details about any particular brand or inventor, there are books dedicated to each of these men.

This book wove each of these narratives together, which did not always flow smoothly…some of the transitions were definitely clunky. But overall I enjoyed this book. It had lots of good history and covered the corporate tensions that drive innovation in any industry.

Review is up on YouTube and Rumble. PodBean was having problems, I’ll try and revisit this to add a link later.