Sam [Colt] was not quite 15 when he made his first invention--a discovery that he could explode gunpowder with electricity. His dramatic announcement was a handbill that informed in bold type that "Samuel Colt will blow a raft sky high on Ware Pond, July 4, 1829."
A waterproofed gunpowder charge detonated by a tarred wire that led to a Leyden jar on shore was his simple machine. The inspiration had come from Grandpa Caldwell's story of "Bushnell's Marine Turtle" used in the Revolutionary War and the song his mother sang, "The Battle of the Keys."
