COLT, SAMUEL (1814-1862), American inventor, was born on July 19, 1814, at Hartford (Conn.) . At 14, from a boarding school at Amherst (Mass.) , he made a runaway voyage to India, during which (in 1829) he constructed a wooden model, still existing, of what was to be the revolver (see PISTOL). In having perfected a six-barrelled rotating breech, he patented his inventions in London and Paris and secured the American rights. The same year he founded, at Paterson (N. J.), the Patent Arms Company, for the manufacture of his revolvers. As early as 1837 revolvers were used by United States troops in fighting against the Seminole Indians in Florida, but they were not gen erally appreciated; and in 1842 the company became insolvent. No revolvers were to be'had when Gen. Zachary Taylor wrote for a supply from Mexico. In 1847 the United States Government ordered 1 ,000 from the inventor; a commission which was the be ginning of an immense business. The little armoury at Whitney vile (New Haven, Conn.), where the order for Mexico was exe cuted (1852), became in time the enormous factory of the Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company, on the banks of the Connecticut river. Colt patented a number of improvements in his revolver, and invented a submarine battery for harbour de fence. He died at Hartford on Jan. 1 o, 1862.