Samuel Colt - Legacy

Legacy

It is estimated that in its first 25 years of manufacturing, Colt's company produced over 400,000 revolvers. Before his death, each barrel was stamped: "Address Col. Samuel Colt, New York, US America", or a variation using a London address. Colt did this as New York and London were major cosmopolitan cities and he retained an office in New York at 155 Broadway where he based his salesmen.

Colt was the first American manufacturer to use art as a marketing tool when he hired Catlin to prominently display Colt firearms in his paintings. He was awarded numerous government contracts after making gifts of his highly embellished and engraved revolvers with exotic grips such as ivory or pearl to government officials. On a trip to Constantinople he gave a custom-engraved and gold inlaid revolver to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire Abdülmecid I, informing him that the Russians were buying his pistols, thus securing a Turkish order for 5,000 pistols; he neglected to tell the Sultan he had used the same tactic with the Russians to elicit an order.

Apart from gifts and bribes, Colt employed an effective marketing program which comprised sales promotion, publicity, product sampling, and public relations. He used the press to his own advantage by giving revolvers to editors, prompting them to report "all the accidents that occur to the Sharps & other humbug arms", and listing incidents where Colt weapons had been "well used against bears, Indians, Mexicans, etc". Colt's guns did not always fare well in standardized military tests; he preferred written testimonials from individual soldiers who used his weapons and these were what he most relied on to secure government contracts.

Colt felt that bad press was just as important as long as his name and his revolvers received mention. When he opened the London armory he posted a 14 foot sign on the roof across from Parliament reading "Colonel Colt's Pistol Factory" as a publicity stunt which created a stir in the British press. Eventually the British government forced him to take down this sign. Colt historian Herbert Houze wrote that Colt championed the concept of modernism before the word was coined, he pioneered the use of celebrity endorsements to promote his products, he introduced the adjective "new and improved" to advertising and demonstrated the commercial value of brand-name recognition as the word for "revolver" in French is Le Colt. Barbara M. Tucker, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Connecticut Studies at Eastern Connecticut State University, wrote that Colt's marketing techniques transformed the firearm from a utilitarian object into a central symbol of American identity. Tucker added that Colt tied his revolvers to American patriotism, freedom and individualism while asserting America's technological supremacy over Europe's.

In 1867, his widow, Elizabeth, had an Episcopal church designed by Edward Tuckerman Potter built as a memorial to Samuel Colt and the three children they lost. The church's architecture contains guns and gun-smithing tools sculpted in marble to commemorate Colt's life as an arms maker. In 1896 a parish house was built on the site as a memorial to their son, Caldwell who died in 1894. In 1975 the Church of the Good Shepherd and Parish House was listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Colt set up libraries and educational programs within his armories for his employees which were seminal training grounds for several generations of toolmakers and other machinists, who had great influence in other manufacturing efforts of the next half century. Prominent examples included Francis A. Pratt, Amos Whitney, Henry Leland, Edward Bullard, Worcester R. Warner, Charles Brinckerhoff Richards, William Mason and Ambrose Swasey.

In 2006, Samuel Colt was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.