Hi I'm Jonathan Ferguson,
I'm one of the firearms curators here at the Royal Armouries in Leeds
I'm holding here a particularly unusual firearm from the collection and I
wanted to share it with you. We've got it off display
At the moment, for some photography. There's a lot of interest at the moment
in the academic world, about these early revolvers.
Very early revolvers
This isn't the earliest revolver in the world although I expect we also have that
maybe for another video
this one dates to around 1680 and it's very significant
For one very important reason, well probably more than one.
But the really interesting thing about it from a technical point of view
is that it revolves itself, it's what they might have called an automatic revolver
that means something a bit different now
but when you cock the gun, and I'll just do it, there
the cylinder that contains the 6 shots, just like a modern revolver, rotates, on it's own
everything before this you had to turn the cylinder yourself.
this is what we would call today a single action revolver just like the cowboy revolvers you see in the movies
very significant in terms of Samuel Colt, famous Colt firearms company
and what he was doing from his 1836 patent onwards
he absolutely did invent the percussion revolver, the modern, functioning, single action revolver.
he's a little bit careful about how he writes about earlier attempts like this one
he's very careful to not point out that this one does revolve itself. He does talk about it in a piece he wrote.
so, we don't actually know who made this
it's very close to a couple of pieces made by the amusingly named John Daft who was an English gun maker
in round about 1660, 70, 80, hence the tentative date
It's made of brass, it's very heavy
wooden stock, that's convention. it has a belt hook on this side
I wouldn't want this swinging from my belt but nonetheless, it's there!
conventional cock, and Frizzen or steel that pivots down, we'd call this Snaphance
it's a type of flint lock
so I'll just cock it again
that's it in firing position
from the front you'll see there are 6 chambers just like in a modern revolver
and a single barrel that's what makes it a true revolver pistol
and then correspondingly, we've got the pans, with the priming powder
in each and the covers slid shut
so you'd load each of these with powder and bullet, you'd prime each pan
with powder, close it. Fairly laborious process
but bearing in mind at this time nearly all firearms are single shot or maybe two barrel or something like that.
Once you're done, you've got this internal mechanism which I can't take apart and show you right now but,
attached to the front here is what's called a pull or a hand and when you pull that back it pushes up
on a ledge that's on the back of each chamber and that pushes it around anticlockwise, one step.
cock it again, the next step and you'll see that on camera as well
very gentle, that's the next one in position
so that cover is loose there, unfortunately
and you see, there's a little nubbin there, that's the push rod, and when I pull the trigger, it's shoving it open.
hopefully that makes sense!
rotates, one more time, rotates
so what stops this from being a true single action revolver is this frizzen here
because, that's it in firing position, we pull the trigger, pull that out of the way manually because we don't want to hurt it
that flies forward, strikes sparks off the steel, pushes the pan over with this rod
sparks go in the pan, pan goes flash
the flame goes through into the chamber and one shot goes down the barrel. Then you cock it again
not quite ready for the next shot because you've got to move that into position
so it's not quite your cowboy click bang, click bang
but it's pretty close and really close for 1680. A really impressive piece of technology!
So why didn't it catch on?
well Colt was quick to point out that a lot of these early revolvers were prone to explosion
so if you get flame in from one chamber to another, they might all go off
which is problem for the long gun versions because if you're holding up here, that's going to be a bad time.
This is meant to be fired by one hand so that's not really a worry but you still have a gap somewhere and black powder is dangerous
I think Colt was over egging it though to be honest with you
properly timed and set up I don't see why this wouldn't work just as well!
but it's a flint lock, you know, percussion is what really made this a viable thing moving forward and mass production which Colt was heavily involved with
those two things really made the modern revolving pistol possible, but this is an amazing early attempt.
We mentioned Samuel Colt and his famous revolver
I think just about everybody has heard of it
This is one of them, this is the 1851 model or Navy model
The design is similar to his 1836 patent which comes 150 years after the Daft revolver that we just looked at
But very similar, you'll see when I pull the hammer back, the cylinder revolves. It revolves the other way
that's not hugely significant, certain revolvers revolve the other way
but the basic mechanism is the same
cock it, it brings a new chamber into alignment
you pull the trigger, fires it!
cock it, fire it, cock it, fire it
you can see how much simpler this is now you don't need the flint, the cock, the steel, you've just got the hammer
and then on the back of here, on these nipples here goes a copper cap
percussion system, it makes things much better
and you've got the mass production technology to make these parts fit precisely
which you could do before, but you had to do it by hand
that made a revolver like the daft revolver very expensive indeed
and this, quite affordable by 1851