Customer Reviews

The Colt Armory: A History of Colt's Manufacturing Company, Inc.

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The Colt .45 was perhaps the best known handgun and most popular handgun of its day. The Colt Armory: A History Of Colt's Manufacturing Company, Inc. is much more than a dry and obscure history Colonel Sam Colt's industrial corporation. It is a riveting story of the factories, the products, and the people that combine to offer the reader a wealth of humorous stories, exciting adventures, and a heart-warming nostalgia for an American yesteryear. Ellsworth Grant combines an historian's attention to detail with a born storyteller's knack for vivid presentation. The Colt Armory is not only informative, it is a genuine reading pleasure and highly recommended to students of the American frontier and the guns that tamed the west.

Excellent book on this extraordinary man, Samuel Colt, who gave us the ultimate revolver. A book which reads as a novel and does not just give "dry" facts. Highly recommended!

I just finished reading the Colt Armory a 232-page book by Ellsworth S. Grant.

This book features the complete manufacturing history from Samuel Colt's first attempt at starting his own firearm business under the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company in 1836 all the way through the leadership of president Ronald C. Whitaker in 1994.

This book entails quite a bit of information about how it all began when Samuel was a young man and came up with his first idea of the repeating revolver. It describes his family that was a little troubled back in that era. For example how his older brother killed a guy with a hatchet then tried to dispose of the body by stuffing it in a packing case and later tried to ship it to New Orleans.

The book paints a picture of how life was back in early Hartford, CT and how much Colt played in the economic stability and grow of the city.

It also goes through the struggling times of natural disasters (floods, hurricanes) and the battles with the manipulative and power hungry unions.

I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to gain insight of the history and survival of the Colt

Grant does not offer a single footnote throughout. His passage on Richard Jarvis is filled with lies, half-truths, innuendo and is totally unsupportable. This book should never have seen the light of day.

The book isn't about the Colt Armory at all. It's a rambling travelog of life and times in 19th-20th century Hartford, with almost no mention of Colt or the Armory. I returned it.