Leavitt's Early Patent
Leavitt took out a patent on his new design on April 29, 1837, when the U.S. Patent Office granted him United States patent number 182 for an 'improvement in many-chambered cylinder firearm.' The early weapon, the second of its kind, was a .40-caliber percussion, 6-shot single-action revolver with a 6¾-inch octagon tip-up barrel.
Leavitt took out his patent less than a year after Samuel Colt had obtained a patent on his seminal revolver, and before Colt had a chance to bring his new weapon to market. The patent was granted to Leavitt at his residence in Cabotville, Massachusetts, now part of Chicopee, Massachusetts. The design was radical in one respect. "The revolving cylinder which I use does not differ from such as have been previously employed in many-chambered guns," Leavitt wrote in his patent application. "The improvement which I have made consists in giving a convex form to that end of the revolving cylinder which is in contact with the barrel."
Leavitt's innovation was the beveled face of the cylinder, which was designed to direct flash from the fired cylinder away from adjacent chambers, thus preventing multiple discharges, the major problem with early percussion revolvers. "The problem with all the early breechloaders, as well as Colt's revolver," write the authors of Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, "was the escape of gas from the breech." In his design, Leavitt attempted to solve the problem through the beveling and the new convex shape he imparted to the revolving cylinder.
Leavitt's design, wrote Philadelphia's Journal of the Franklin Institute in 1838, was "one of those fire arms which have several chambers bored in a cylinder, the axis of which is parallel to the axis of the barrel of the gun, and which chambers can be successively made to coincide with the said barrel." But Leavitt's innovation, noted the Journal, was to make the end of the cylinder convex to draw off the fumes and flash of the cartridge explosions.
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