Smith & Wesson would sell off the company in 1855 to a group led by Oliver Winchester before going on to found the legendary revolver company that endures today. But the Volcanic’s rocket ball, which evolved from Hunt’s initial ammunition, proved to be the gun’s Achilles heel, undermining the Volcanic rifle’s promising design. The Volcanic was offered as both a pistol and a rifle and enjoyed some limited commercial success. This time the rifle took on the iconic appearance of the Winchester, dispensing with the Jennings’ trigger ring and introducing the instantly recognizable lever. But two new investors you may have heard of, Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson, saw promise in the rifle and formed the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company in 1854. Patent OfficeĮven so, the gun didn’t sell, in part because it was underpowered and expensive to manufacture. Loading, priming, and firing were accomplished with just one trigger pull-a revolutionary improvement over earlier rifles. Only when the trigger ring was pulled fully would the rifle fire. He had a magazine of caps built into its receiver, and as the weapons action cycled, a round loaded into the chamber and a percussion cap went into position automatically. But here the Jennings rifle took a leap forward. Like most rifles of the period, Hunt’s and Jenning’s guns needed percussion caps to ignite the ammunition. These new bullets were fed from a tube magazine under the barrel. His gun could hold an impressive 24 rounds, though these were small and underpowered.īoth rifles used an ingenious form of ammunition called the Volition or rocket ball, which had a propellant charge in its base. Jennings patented numerous improvements and sold thousands of rifles by 1851. Hunt’s original Volition Rifle was ingenious but cumbersome, so he sold the design to a businessman who hired gunsmith Lewis Jennings to improve it. Hunt’s rifle incorporated the two key features that would define the Winchester: a tube magazine under the barrel and a lever action that loaded rounds into the chamber.
The Winchester rifle’s technological family tree runs through the Henry rifle, used during the Civil War, and on back to 1849, when inventor Walter Hunt patented the Volition Repeating Rifle. Theodore Roosevelt in his hunting suit, with a carved Tiffany hunting knife and Winchester rifle.
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