Jesse James lived by the revolver, and he died by it as well. Throughout his career as a bushwhacker and robber, Jesse made use of Samuel Colt's revolutionary new pistol to inflict mayhem at close ...

1835 - The first Colt revolver. Samuel Colt developed the first mass ... In the second half of the 18th century, musket design branched out. This period produced a number of single-purpose firearms.

In the 1870s, Colt needed a double-action revolver design to compete with many of the emerging double-action revolvers on the market, particularly a number of competitors in Great Britain.