Posted December 22, 2019 7:00 pm by Comments

By Logan Metesh

Percussion Colt (left) next to a Colt with the Richards Conversion.

New York – -(AmmoLand.com)- On December 23, 1833, Charles Richards was born in Brooklyn, New York. He would eventually go on to spend 34 years teaching mechanical engineering at Yale, but he is more widely known in the arms industry as one of the men behind revolver cartridge conversions and the Single Action Army.

Well educated in New York and New Jersey, Richards did not initially set out on a path that would lead him to firearms development. Instead, he apprenticed at a manufacturing plant. From there, he spent three years (1855-58) working for Colt’s, but left to take a job as a foreman in another manufacturing plant. Engineering was his bailiwick, not guns.

He spent a couple years as a design engineer and helped other inventors secure patents, all while he worked to secure his own patent for an improvement on the steam engine. With the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861, he went back to Colt’s, where the arms industry was in full swing providing for the war effort. It proved to be the perfect place for Charles’ fondness for engineering and development.

The Civil War era …Read the Rest

Source:: AmmoLand

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.