The Volcanic: Smith & Wesson’s First Pistol

Guns in this video: S&W Navy model sold for $21,850. S&W Pocket Model sold for $34,500. Volcanic Navy model sold for $20,700. New Haven pocket model sold for $8,625. The deep beginnings of the Volcanic go back to Walter Hunt’s Volitional Repeater, which became the Jennings repeating rifle, which then became the Smith-Jennings repeating rifle when Horace Smith was brought in to improve it. Smith was able to make it more commercially viable than the Jennings had been, but he recognized that the system needed significant changes to really become successful. He had met a fellow gun designer who had similar ideas, by the name of Daniel Wesson, and the two would spend a couple years developing and refining the system. In 1854 they thought it was ready for production, and formed the Smith & Wesson Company. Included in the original company was a man named Courtland Palmer, who owned the patent rights to the Jennings system...