Early Cartridge Technologies: Tinfoil Cartridges

In our last post, we studied linen cartridges. In today's post, we will study cartridges made of a more exotic material: tinfoil. Yes, there really were tinfoil cartridges made at one point.

Tinfoil cartridges were originally made by Samuel Colt for his revolvers. During this period, paper cartridges were common, but if the paper got wet, it would ruin the black powder. The idea behind using tinfoil was to make a cartridge that was not affected by water as much.

At the time that Colt first started working on tinfoil cartridges, his first company that he had set up to manufacture Colt Paterson revolvers was not doing so well (it soon went bankrupt in 1842, due to lack of sales.) He initially experimented using rubber as the material, before switching to tinfoil. Soon after, the US Government got interested in his developments. In April 1840, the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy asked a mixed board of officers from the Army, Navy and Marine Corps to make experiments and evaluate Colt's tinfoil cartridges. The officers were: Colonel G. Croghan of the Army, Captain C.S. McCauley of the Navy and Lieutenant J.G. Reynolds of the Marines. They met at Washington Arsenal and performed several experiments and wrote a report of the results, an abridgement of which is below:

The board relying upon the correctness of the experiments as above recited, are unanimously of the opinion that in reference to the usual incidents of our service, naval as well as military, the cartridge now in use is greatly to be preferred to the tin-foil cartridge submitted by Mr. Colt. It appears evident from the facts set forth by the foregoing experiments that the tin-foil is entirely unsuited for cannon service; yet from its imperviousness to water, the tin-foil cartridges for small arms might be found useful in certain cases. The board would, therefore, recommend the partial adoption of the tin-foil cartridge for small arms.

The tests that they performed for these cartridges may be of interest to readers:

"Experiment 1, April 10, 1840: Twenty six cartridges of tin-foil and as many of paper, were fired from well cleaned muskets, no difference was perceptible."

"Experiment 3, April 20, 1840: Four 6-pounder and thirty musket cartridges, all of tin-foil, which had been immersed in water from the 10th instant, were taken therefrom; two of the 6-pounder cartridges appeared to have been injured by accident, the other two were fired and appeared not to have been injured by the water; a dry sponge was used in these firings, and it was burned each time by the contents left in the gun. The musket cartridges were then examined; sixteen of them were selected for firing, seven of which only could be discharged"

"April 21: In order to test the relative strength of the tin-foil and cartridge paper, strips of each were tested; the foil could not support a weight of forty pounds, whilst the paper did not break with the weight of eighty pounds"

Most of the remaining tests correspond to use in cannon and the tin-foil cartridges left more residue globules in cannon, which is why the board recommended to only use the cartridges for small arms and only partially.

The US Army purchased a few thousand more tinfoil cartridges for further evaluation and in 1843, they placed a large order for 250,000 tinfoil musket cartridges, for the purpose of trying them in field service. This large order was an unexpected gift for Colt, since his revolver manufacturing factory in Paterson had gone bankrupt shortly before in 1842. The funds from the US Army were used by Colt to fund research for his "New and improved revolver" and he attempted to start a new Colt's Patent Manufacturing Company with this money. He also used some of the money to produce a waterproof telegraph cable for his friend, Samuel Morse (the inventor of Morse code and inventor of the single-wire telegraph). Then came the order from Samuel Walker for the Walker Colt revolver and the profits were large enough for Colt to go back into the firearms manufacturing business in 1847. A few years later, Colt also established a factory in London in 1853.

While Samuel Colt was in London, he met a gentleman named William T. Eley, who was in the business of making cartridges in England. William T. Eley was the son of William Eley and nephew of Charles Eley, who had founded the Eley Brothers cartridge manufacturing company in London in 1828 (Eley Brothers later became the largest ammunition manufacturer in the world and the brand name is still used for cartridges today). Together, they developed a new tinfoil cartridge that was granted British patent #1324 in 1855.

The powder container was made of tinfoil and the lap joint sealed with waterproof cement. The case was then filled with powder and the bullet was inserted to the top and then the end of the tinfoil case was crimped into the base groove of the bullet and then greased, to produce a waterproof cartridge. The cartridge was then enclosed in a paper wrapper, from which it could be easily removed before loading. Due to the shape of the bore of the nipple in Colt's revolvers, the flame from a percussion cap would pierce the foil and ignite the powder, without the need to tear open the foil.

In the above image, the cartridge on the right is of .31 caliber. The one on the left is also a .31 caliber cartridge, but it is enclosed in an additional protective paper case. The one in the middle, is a .28 caliber cartridge in a sectioned case. The case has a tape to pull the cartridge out, which was later copied by other ammunition makers. The side of the case visible to us says "COLT'S" and has a picture of a colt in the bottom, the other side has the word "PATENT".

Another image of a Colt tinfoil cartridge is shown below:

To manufacture these cartridges in the US, Colt set up a separate building, situated about a half mile away from his other factory in Hartford. In this cartridge manufacturing factory, no fire was allowed anywhere near it and the factory was heated by piping in steam, which was generated in a different building outside.

Women doing the dangerous work of assembling Colt's gunpowder cartridges at the Cartridge Works. From United States Magazine, 1857

Click on the image to enlarge. Public domain image.

Most of the labor in this factory was performed by women, with the only men around being a foreman, an engineer and a charger.

In our next post, we will study more cartridges made of other materials.

Revolvers: Colt Paterson

After our discussions about early proto-revolvers such as pepper-boxes, it is time to start talking about true revolvers. In fact, we will start off with a discussion on the weapon that was the first to be described with the term "revolver". This honor belongs to the Colt Paterson revolver invented by Samuel Colt in 1836. The name "Paterson" comes from the fact that the factory that produced this weapon was located in Paterson, New Jersey.

Company lore has it that Samuel Colt originally got the idea for its mechanism during a sailing trip between Boston and Calcutta aboard the brig Corvo in 1830. He observed the ratchet-and-pawl mechanism used by the ship's steering wheel and noted how each spoke in the steering wheel came in contact with a clutch that could hold it in place if needed. He was inspired enough to carve a wooden model of a revolver on this voyage. A few years later, he applied for patents in the US, England and France and received his patents in 1836. He then built the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company in Paterson, New Jersey, to manufacture this weapon.

The Paterson revolver was the first repeating firearm that consisted of a revolving cylinder with multiple chambers that aligned to a stationary barrel. Until then, repeating firearms had multiple barrels. This revolver was a 5-shot model with a single action mechanism using percussion cap technology. A single-action mechanism means the user has to manually pull back the hammer to cock it. The act of pulling the hammer back also rotates the cylinder to bring the next chamber in line with the barrel and also locks it in place. When the user pulls the trigger, the hammer is released and strikes the percussion cap of the chamber that happens to be on top of the weapon, thereby discharging it.

Public domain image from wikipedia.com (click to enlarge)

The above picture contains two models of Paterson Colts. The smaller model is an original model from 1836 and the two crossed revolvers are the 1839 models. The astute reader might note that the triggers appear to be missing on the two crossed revolvers and that none of the revolvers have a trigger guard. This is in fact a feature of the Paterson Colt models. The trigger is actually a folding one. When the user pulls the hammer back, not only does the cylinder rotate, but the trigger also drops out of the frame in firing position. This is why there is no trigger guard.

The astute reader may also have noted that the 1839 models have a lever under the barrel that the 1836 model doesn't have. We will study what that lever does in a little bit. First, let us understand how to reload the 1836 model revolver which will go into explaining the strange lever. The 1836 model revolver had a somewhat cumbersome reloading procedure that required the user to disassemble the gun. The procedure went as follows:

1. Put the hammer at half-cock. This frees up the cylinder and allows it to be removed.
2. Push the barrel wedge which is under the barrel and holding it in place.
3. Now pull the barrel and cylinder from the revolver's frame.
4. Load each of the chambers of the cylinder with enough gunpowder, leaving enough room to seat a lead ball into each chamber
5. Push a lead ball into each chamber with a special ramrod tool. This took a bit of effort in the early models.
6. Push the cylinder and barrel back into the revolver's frame and push the barrel wedge back into place.
7. Place percussion caps on each of the nipples around the cylinder using the special Colt capping tool that comes with the revolver.

Since Colt often supplied spare cylinders with the revolver, many people would walk around carrying loaded and capped spare cylinders in their pockets for faster reloading. That way they could quickly pull out the barrel and cylinder, pull a fully loaded new cylinder from their pocket and put the revolver back together and ready to go. This practice was not very safe in case the loaded cylinders were accidentally dropped.

With a view to improving the loading time, Colt improved the model and the 1839 models featured an integrated loading lever and capping window. As the reader may have noted in the picture above, the 1839 models have a feature that the 1836 model doesn't have. Under the barrel is a hinged ramrod lever that is missing in the 1836 model. This way, the user could not lose the ramrod and ramming the lead balls into the chamber also became easier. Therefore, the 1839 model did not require the user to disassemble the weapon for reloading. This hinged loading rod feature was an innovation that was widely copied in future revolvers as well.

The Paterson revolver was sold with different barrel lengths from 2.5 inches to 12 inches long, with 7.5 and 9 inch barrels being the most common. The barrels were all rifled, so as to improve accuracy. Calibers varied from the original .28 caliber to the .31, .34 and the very popular .36 caliber. The barrels have a small projecting blade sight in front and the rear sight is a notch cut into the hammer lever, which aligns with the front sight when the hammer is cocked.

Despite being an innovative weapon, the Paterson revolver was not a success. It was expensive for its time, costing around $40-50 per piece. Colt managed to sell a few to the United States Army and they saw limited use, but the US Army considered them too fragile and prone to malfunctioning. However, the Republic of Texas (which was still not a part of the United States then) bought a number of them for their army and navy. The Texas Rangers found these weapons especially useful against the Comanche tribes and some of their key commanders such as Colonel Jack Hayes and Captain Samuel Walker began to push for military contracts to acquire more of them, especially in .36 caliber. This associated the name "Texas Paterson" to the .36 caliber model of these revolvers.

Due to the commercial failure of the Paterson revolver, the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company was forced to stop manufacturing in 1842. A creditor named John Ehler then acquired the factory and continued manufacture until 1847, when he was forced to close it down as well. However, the design was influential and innovative enough that its ideas were used in future models as well. Captain Walker, in particular, thought that the Paterson could be improved and therefore submitted several design improvement ideas to Colt. Therefore, when Colt opened a new factory in 1846, the new model was called the Walker Colt revolver. We will study the Walker Colt in the next post.