Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Here we have a clever patent circumvention. Patents in the firearm industry in the mid-1800s really shook things up and forced inventors to try new things and the results are typically either clever, wacky, unusable, or all of the above. This is a Whitney Arms Ring Trigger revolver. The patent that this revolver was trying to avoid was Colt’s patent on the hammer being cocked rotating the cylinder simultaneously. In order to circumvent that very important detail, Whitney Arms and their ring trigger revolver needed to find a way to rotate a cylinder in an efficient and marketable way without stepping on any patents. The result was after the hammer is cocked the ring trigger not only drops the hammer but also rotates the cylinder. Think of a double-action revolver except when you cock the hammer nothing happens until you pull the trigger.
“Manufactured from 1854 to the late 1860s.
Manufacturer: Whitney Arms Company
Model: Ring Trigger
Type: Revolver
Gauge: 31 percussion
Barrel: 4 inch octagon
Finish: blue
Grip: rosewood”
Lot 4192: Whitney Arms Company Ring Trigger Revolver 31 percussion Scarce Whitney Arms Company Beals Patent Ring Trigger Single Action Percussion Revolver. (n.d.). Rock Island Auction Company. photograph. Retrieved June 29, 2022, from https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/1028/4192/whitney-arms-company-ring-trigger-revolver-31-percussion.
