The Rotovolver of Noël and Gouery

On March 6^th, 1865, Noël and Gouery had Lavialle, their patent agent in Paris, file a new model of revolver with the Ministry of Agriculture, Trade and Public Works. This patent, taken for fifteen years, under No. 66493 protects the manufacture of an amazing weapon which we know today under the name of Rotovolver.

A flat revolver

The inventor of the Rotovolver is Sébastien Amédée Noël. Captain of armament, gunsmith and inventor in his spare time, Noël modeled from this weapon the best of the works of the Americans Cochran and Porter, but he achieved with his weapon a particularly compact model for the time and of a relatively easy use.

The weapon certainly suffers from a lack of power due to its core design, but its large capacity, increased to ten shots, quickly seduced a clientele fond of novelty.

The Rotovolver is a revolver, but an original revolver with a flat cylinder, of a turret type, which has the particularity of rotating around an axis perpendicular to the barrel and not parallel to it which was then uncommon. In this case, the cylinder rotates from top to bottom.

This originality allows a simplified construction and a reduced bulk if we compare it to the revolvers produced at the time.