When Sam Colt introduced the Paterson, most firearms were single shot muzzle loaders—and flintlocks at that.  It was in the 1830’s that the percussion cap became prevalent.  It was this innovation that made guns like the Paterson possible.

The Paterson is a five-shot revolver that was made in .28 and .36 calibers. They had a variety of barrel lengths and were single action.  The Paterson design did not have a trigger guard, and instead used a folding trigger.  And the early models had to be broken down to load and then loaded with a tool.

The Colt Paterson 1836 was the first revolver to incorporate Samuel Colt's patented revolver mechanism, and thus the first weapon that could be called a revolver in the modern sense. While hand-advanced flintlock revolvers date back hundreds of years earlier and Colt is believed to have been inspired by the flintlock revolver designs of Elisha Collier, Colt's was the first to connect the actions of advancing and locking the cylinder to cocking the hammer, and also incorporated percussion cap ignition, the most advanced method of the day.

It was far better than the cheap revolver "Pepperbox" derringers of the time, which Mark Twain famously remarked were safer to stand in front of than anywhere else. The gun's full potential was realized when Texas Rangers on horseback used them to effectively dispatch renegade Indians with them and soon the pistol was a hit. Once the loading lever was added to the design, the gun became much easier to load and even more popular before being phased out by better Colt designs such as the Colt Dragoon series.