Collier Flintlock Revolvers

Elisha Collier is probably the best-known name in flintlock revolvers - to the extent that any flintlock revolvers are well known. Because of the great cost and required skill to manufacture a functional repeating flintlock handgun without modern machine tools, these weapons were never common, but they were made by a number of gunsmiths across Europe. Collier and a fellow American gunsmith named Artemis Wheeler developed this particular type (the specific contributions of each party are not known), and Collier patented it in England in 1818. He proceeded to market the guns, which appear to have been made for him under contract by several high-end British gunsmiths (including Rigby and Nock). Collier made three different basic types of guns. They share the main feature of a revolving cylinder which must be indexed manually between shots (seeing them while traveling in India was reportedly the inspiration for Samuel Colt’s idea to connect the mechanical functions of hammer and cylinder to invent the sin