Colt's Plastics history

Founded in 1836, Colt's is one of the oldest companies in Connecticut.

Sales remained slow for several years, and Patent Arms Manufacturing Company was out of business by 1842.

When United States Dragoon forces and Texas Rangers began battling Indians in Texas in 1845, the Colt company was given its second chance at success.

The new plant was completed in 1855, the same year the company was incorporated as Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company.

Samuel Colt died suddenly in 1862, but the company he founded continued to surge.

In 1891, Colt's relationship with inventor John Browning began.

Browning developed the Colt 45 automatic pistol in 1911.

Like many manufacturing companies, Colt's was devastated by the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression that followed.

By the mid 1930’s Colt’s Plastics Division focused on the needs of the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries with the development of a line of “featherlite” jars used to package powders, creams, lipsticks and travel beauty kits.

The 1941 unionization of Colt's employees had dramatically increased the company payroll.

In 1955, the company was sold by Colt but retained the Colt identity in its new name: Colt’s Plastics Company, Inc.

The M-16 rifle, developed by Colt in 1959, soon became the standard issue for United States armed forces.

The first big government order for M-16s came in 1963, when the Air Force agreed to purchase 25,000 of the rifles.

The company began to focus more attention on sporting guns, and in 1970, rifles and revolvers for sport generated $17 million in revenue.

In 1986 workers represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW) began a strike that eventually became the longest in Connecticut history.

CF Holding Corporation, a group of private investors led by Shared Technologies Inc. chairman Anthony Autorino, purchased the Firearms Division in 1989 for about $100 million.