In 1852, a guy named Horace Smith teamed up with his buddy Daniel Baird Wesson and they set out to make a name for themselves in the firearms business. Like many businesses, it was bumpy in the beginning. The two Yankees didn’t know the meaning of quit. Both had families to support and employees to pay. True enough, they were forced to temporarily close the Smith & Wesson doors, but they came back in 1857 with a radical new product based on the established principles of the revolver.

Whatever happened to the Smith & Wesson Company since that first partnership is well chronicled. Their first gun is not widely appreciated. It needs to be because that first product is a firearm of far reaching implications. That’s not just for Smith and Wesson, but also for the entire American arms industry.