Charles Dickens and Colonel Colt

[Ballistics in Scotland]

While playing around with scanner and OCR, I thought I ought to practice on something useful. Here is part of Charles Dickens's article from his magazine "Household Words" of the 27th May 1854, in which he describes a visit to Colt's London factory. It is a text file, and I think it will open when clicked on, even if you see nothing but that little red cross.

[Scrounger]

While playing around with scanner and OCR, I thought I ought to practice on something useful. Here is part of Charles Dickens's article from his magazine "Household Words" of the 27th May 1854, in which he describes a visit to Colt's London factory. It is a text file, and I think it will open when clicked on, even if you see nothing but that little red cross.

It opened OK but is a very hard 'read' as it runs much wider than the moniter screen. To make it more pleasant to read: While the file is open, click on 'edit' in your browser, then 'select all', then 'copy'. Close the file and click on 'start', then 'word pad', then 'edit', then 'copy'. Voila, you have a clean, readable copy. To save, if you wish.

[Buckshot]

...............BiS, very interesting. Thanks for posting that. I had read a similar article that had been printed in the British magazine, "The Engineer". In it they mentioned the assembly process. In front of each person was a couple boxes of parts and as the revolvers passed down the line the person would just take parts at random fron the boxes and put them into the pistol and send it on down the line. This was pretty interesting stuff. The magazine article call it the "American Pattern" I think it was.

Too bad Colt didn't make a go of it, eventually failing via not being a DA handgun. It was either Adams or Deene who did produce such, and eventually ended up with all the British government contracts. It was correctly seen that a handgun was a close quarters weapon, and in such a scenario aiming to wring the best accuracy with a SA was actually a liability in such a fracas.

.............Buckshot

[Ballistics in Scotland]

It was originally a Word .doc file, in Times New Roman with the inverted commas going the right way, etc. (and if anybody has a use for it in that form, just send me an E-mail address, for it's no copyright of mine.) But I had to convert it to fit the Castboolits file size limit, which is lower than for pictures. .doc is the only way to make it stay edited, and is too large. But for me .txt files open automatically with Word, and are fully visible. That may be because I've set it as a preference, but if it worries you, you could save the file, right-click on it in "My documents", and you'll get "Open with..." to choose Word from.

The Colt design did indeed use interchangeable parts, and although I believe this was claimed considerably earlier (by Whitney?), I think he was the first to really make it work. I believe the system of automatic machines making interchangeable parts was known as armory practice in Detroit within living memory, and like many another thing must be reckoned an advantage American industry received by way of the firearms business.

I know Adams used copying milling machines, working from templates, at some point, but I doubt if it preceded the Colt London factory. But the British and Belgian designs were intended for a good deal of hand work. Colt's small, open frame with detachable grip etc. was designed around the desire to use autmatic machines at an early stage in its development. It can be seen as a result of the US having a smallish population, expanding into the western lands, to which just about anybody might suddenly disappear if there was a gold-rush or something. Colt couldn't count on the British or Belgian pool of relatively inexpensive skilled labour. So they worked with extremely valued and well-paid engineers, machines and readily replacable machine-tenders.

Foreign observers in the Civil War used to condemn the cavalry of both sides for their unwillingness to charge home. It was more usual to halt twenty or thirty yards apart, and fire revolvers at one another - which probably wasn't a bad tactic, except in sudden surprises or at night, and even better in Indian encounters by civilians, who didn't possess or understand the sabre or lance. The European philosophy, however, was that a revolver was a sort of short-range bludgeon to get an officer or specialist out of trouble, when something interfered with his true function.