Whitney Beals Patent Ring Trigger Percussion Revolver

8/13/2019 Whitney Beals Patent Ring Trigger Percussion Revolver

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Whitney Beals Patent Pocket Revolver - FirstModel

by Ed Buffaloephotographs by Ed Buffaloe and Jim Stoddard

This seven-shot pocket revolver was manufactured under Fordyce Beals patentnumber 11,715 of 26 September 1854. Many such guns saw use during the

American Civil War. The design is known as the walking beam. The cylinder is rotated by pushing thering trigger forward and pulling it back, at which point it contacts the sear and releases the previously

cocked hammer. The walking beam engages a cut on the front of the cylinder, then on the rear. Thegun looks distinctly different from most other revolvers because of the cover over the left side of thecylinder, which supports thewalking beam mechanism.

The Beals Patent revolvers were successful by comparison with Whitneys previous efforts at pistolmaking, selling a total of about 3200 through the end of the Civil War. The Whitney Navy revolver of1857 (also strongly influenced by Beals, who would later design revolvers for Remington) was moresuccessful by an order of magnitude, selling approximately 33,000.

The Whitney Beals was offered in .28 and .31 caliber with six- or seven-shot cylinders. The revolvershown here has been modified to accept cartridges. It is not known whether this modification was

performed by Eli Whitney, Jr. or someone else, but Whitney did not retire until 1888 so he could wellhave done the work.
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While researching information on the Whitney Beals revolvers I came across an article on the EliWhitney Museums website regarding some archeological work done on the site of the original Whitney

Armory. From it I learned that the frames for the Whitney Beals and Whitney Navy revolvers were castfrom iron rather than forged from steel. This had been unknown prior to the archeological research atthe Armory--they found crucible fragments all out of proportion to the known amount of brass used bythe Whitney Armory, and eventually discovered they were used to cast iron rather than brass. All othe

parts (with the exception of butt plates) were made of forged steel.
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Few people today realize how important both of the Eli Whitneys (Senior and Junior) andSam Colt were in the development of precision manufacture. Eli Whitney Senior and hispartner Simeon North had proven the viability of the concept of interchangeable parts in themanufacture of muskets, achieving complete mechanization of the process by about 1830-1835.

Eli Whitney Junior introduced improvements in barrel drilling and was the first to use steel forgun barrels.1Samuel Colt learned the techniques of precision manufacture and partsinterchangeability from Eli Whitney Junior when he contracted with Whitneys firm tomanufacture the Old Model Army pistols in 1847. ...Colt had the first of the large governmentorders made at the Whitney Armory in New Haven, where he followed minutely every detailof their manufacture. ... After the failure of his first venture at Paterson, Colt had seen theadvantage of interchangeable manufacture at the Whitney shop, and determined to carry iteven further in his new plant. So thoroughly was this done that the methods crystallizedthere, and many of the tools installed have undergone little change to this day. Machine workalmost wholly superseded hand work. Modern machines were developed, andinterchangeability and standards of accuracy given an entirely new meaning.2

Knowledge of the techniques used by Colt were spread through the many able people whoworked for him, including Elisha K. Root, F.A. Pratt, Amos Whitney, A.F. Cushman, CharlesE. Billings, C.M. Spencer, George A. Fairfield, William Mason, and William Gleason, amongothers, and the technology spread quickly into the manufacture of sewing machines,typewriters, bicycles, automobiles, and machine tools, for which the U.S. was justly famouswell into the 20th Century.

1. English and American Tool Builders, by Joseph Wickham Roe, Yale University Press,New Haven: 1916. P. 160.
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2. Ibid.Pp.167-168.

Copyright 2008 by Ed Buffaloe. All rights reserved.Click on the pictures to open a larger version in a new window.

References

The Handgun, by Geoffrey Boothroyd. Bonanza, New York: 1970.Firearms in American History, Volume 2, by Charles Winthrop Sawyer. C.E. Chapel, San Leandro, CA: 1939.

Pistols: An Illustrated History of Their Impact, by Jeff Kinard. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara: 2004.http://www.eliwhitney.org/archeology.htm

http://www.eliwhitney.org/arms.htm

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Whitney Beals Patent Ring Trigger Percussion Revolver

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