Rollin White
Who he was, and why we should know him
Most people are familiar with Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson, the well-known founders of the Smith & Wesson corporation. Far fewer, however, know the name Rollin White—despite his close association with Smith & Wesson’s success.
Rollin White was born on June 6, 1817, in Williamstown, Vermont, and learned the gunsmith’s trade in his brother’s workshop. In 1849, the White brothers became subcontractors for Colt’s Firearms Manufacturing Company, producing percussion revolver cylinders.
At that time, all revolvers were still percussion arms, and the loading process remained slow and cumbersome. Paper cartridges offered a modest improvement, but each chamber still had to be loaded individually—a process involving inserting the cartridge, pressing the bullet with the lever, and then capping each nipple with a percussion cap.
It is little wonder, then, that many inventors sought ways to improve this system—and Rollin White was among them. His idea was to mechanize the loading of paper cartridges. In his design, a magazine was positioned at the rear of the revolver, aligned with the cylinder. For this to work, the cylinder had to be bored completely through from front to back, allowing cartridges to be loaded from the rear. A loading arm, connected to the hammer by a gear mechanism, advanced each time the hammer was cocked, pushing a cartridge from the magazine directly into the cylinder.
It soon became evident that White’s design had several serious flaws. The rear of the cylinder could not be properly sealed, raising the likelihood that the flash from a fired chamber would spread to adjacent chambers. Equally problematic was the ignition system: White’s design relied on a single fixed percussion nipple mounted on the frame, which required a new percussion cap to be fitted for each shot. This made the mechanism far slower than conventional percussion revolvers of the period.
White patented this invention on April 3, 1855, under US Patent 12,648. He also registered a variant (US Patent 12,649), in which the cartridge magazine was positioned in front of the cylinder.
When White presented his design to Colt, it was little surprise that the company rejected it as overly complex and entirely impractical.
Around the same time, Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson were developing a revolutionary design for a vest pocket revolver—destined to become the very first revolver to fire a metallic cartridge. When they moved to patent their invention, however, they encountered an unexpected obstacle: Rollin White already held a patent on the fully bored-through cylinder. This feature was essential to Smith & Wesson’s design, as it needs cartridges to be loaded from the rear of the cylinder.
Recognizing the importance of White’s patent, Smith & Wesson—ever shrewd businessmen—approached Rollin White with a proposal on November 17, 1856. White, eager to profit from a design that Colt had dismissed as ‘worthless,’ granted Smith & Wesson exclusive rights to the portion of Patent 12,648 covering the bored-through cylinder. In return, he received a one-time payment of $500 along with a royalty of 25 cents for every revolver Smith & Wesson produced.
Daniel Wesson, well aware of the challenges of enforcing a patent, made a shrewd addition to the agreement: Rollin White himself would be responsible for defending the patent against infringement. As it turned out, White was forced to spend a large portion of his royalties on costly lawsuits. To make matters worse, he was also prohibited from using his own patent to manufacture revolvers.
With this agreement, Smith & Wesson had secured an exceptionally favorable deal: for the next twelve years, they held a complete monopoly on cartridge revolvers.
The outbreak of the American Civil War created enormous demand for both vest and belt revolvers. Smith & Wesson prospered but struggled to keep pace with orders. In 1861, they allowed Rollin White to launch his own venture, the ‘Rollin White Arms Company,’. Rollin White operating out of a factory in Lowell, Massachusetts and manufactured around 4,300 revolvers under licence that where all delivered to Smith & Wesson to help meet wartime demand.
In 1864, White liquidated the company and sold its tooling to the newly established Lowell Arms Company. The firm quickly began producing revolvers that infringed on White’s patent. Although White eventually filed suit, by the time the case was heard Lowell had already manufactured around 7,500 revolvers.
White pursued patent infringement cases against numerous manufacturers, including Allen & Wheelock, the Manhattan Firearms Company, Merwin & Bray, and the National Arms Company. While the courts generally ruled in his favor, they often permitted continued production in exchange for the payment of royalties. In some instances, the infringing revolvers were acquired by Smith & Wesson, stamped with the patent date ‘APRIL 3, 1855,’ and then sold through distributors.
In the case of Allen & Wheelock, the judge decided in November 1863, after a lengthy lawsuit, that Ethan Allen had to cease all production of cartridge revolvers, both rimfire and lipfire.
In 1867, just a few years before the patent was set to expire, White and Smith & Wesson attempted to sell the rights to Colt for $1 million. Although Colt was eager to begin manufacturing cartridge revolvers, he declined the offer, choosing instead to wait until the patent’s expiration.
Rollin White sought to extend his patent, and when that effort failed, he petitioned Congress for compensation, arguing that Smith & Wesson had not fairly rewarded him for his invention. His appeal was filed under Relief Act Bill 273. By that time, White had received just over $71,000 in royalties, while Smith & Wesson had profited more than $1 million from the patent. President Ulysses S. Grant ultimately rejected White’s request, relying on testimony from Chief of Ordnance Alexander Brydie Dyer, who argued that White’s patent enforcement during the Civil War had placed the Union at a serious disadvantage, since no other manufacturers were able to supply the army with cartridge revolvers.
Rollin White died on March 22, 1892 in Lowell, Massachusetts.
