Context Matters

In 1842, Sam Colt’s firearm factory had just entered bankruptcy.

The firearm produced by this now bankrupt factory was unlike any weapon before it. While typical weaponry of the mid 19th century required reloading after each discharge, Sam Colt’s weapon allowed for the successive firing of six rounds with no reloading necessary until all six rounds had been expended. This was made possible by an octagonal chamber that rotated ⅙ of its circumference after each bullet was fired, placing the next bullet in ready position immediately after the discharge of the preceding round.

The significance of this innovation is probably obvious to you. The ability to rapidly fire multiple rounds is valuable in the field of battle where time is of the essence, technological advantage over the enemy is desired, and the ability to inflict injury upon your foe as quickly as possible is of the utmost importance. 

The reduction in time spent reloading also meant that soldiers would become less vulnerable as they were no longer helpless from enemy gunfire while priming their rifles for the next shot. It also meant that soldiers could become particularly effective in close quarters as this new gun was light and easy to wield compared to a long barreled rifle.

But shockingly, the reception of Colt’s gun by the East Coast military establishment was lukewarm. 

After growing accustomed to the musket and rifle arms of the day, army quartermasters did not immediately grasp the implications of Colt’s invention on modern warfare. There wasn’t a glaring need for a weapon with its functionality and it was viewed by some to be downright ungentlemanly. 

John Quincy Adams, then a congressman from Massachusetts, stated that Colt’s invention would produce “not fair and honest warfare”. Furthermore, he condemned the gun as an “unchristian contraption”. S.C. Gwynne wrote in his book, Empire of the Summer Moon, “The weapon had the feel of a cavalry sidearm, but just then the U.S. Army did not have a cavalry. Nor did the new pistol seem to interest private citizens. It was a nifty, if somewhat impractical, product.”

Colt was to spend five years in abject poverty after the poor reception of his invention and bankruptcy of his first firearms plant.

While John Quincy Adams claimed that the colt had no place in “Christian” warfare, a rouged group of warriors from Texas called the “Rangers” felt that the Colt was the perfect weapon for their style of combat against the Comanche tribes of the American west.

For two centuries the Comanche had dominated Comancheria, a piece of land that included parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. The Comanche repelled all encroachers of this vast land empire including the Spanish, Mexicans, Texans, and Apache.

The Comanches' dominance was rooted in two things: their superior horsemanship and their superior weaponry. While the early Texas settlers relied on sturdy horses that acted more as “beast of burden” farm animals, the Comanches bred gallant mustangs capable of racing incredibly long distances over the plains of Comancheria at top speeds. This meant that Comanches could overtake their enemies with ease and exploit the element of surprise. But they were also capable of outrunning their enemies in rare instances of retreat with an assured confidence that no Spaniard, Mexican, Texan, or Apache could overtake them. 

Additionally, the entire Comanche society was predicated on war, and status was conferred based on prowess in battle. So young Comanche warriors began training with bows, lances, and shields by the time they could walk and once they reached adolescence they were frighteningly proficient.

Colonel Richard Dodge said of the Comanche in 1834, “they will grasp five to ten arrows in their left hand and discharge them so rapidly that the last will be on its flight before the first has touched the ground.” Not only were they impressively accurate and quick with their bows, they could use these weapons with equal ability while mounted as they could on the ground. Their ability to successfully hit targets from a moving horse made the Comanche especially deadly against their Texan enemies who often had to be stationary and grounded to effectively fire their long barrel guns.

In contrast to the Comanche, most Texans utilized the Kentucky rifle, a weapon with a long bore, that could be deadly accurate from a distance but which could only fire one round before a necessary reload. While the weapon was accurate from a stationary, grounded position, it lost this crucial advantage whenever its wielder was mounted. 

So the primary weapon of the common Texan in early prairie combat was a gun that could not be accurately fired from a horse, required reloading after each shot, and took nearly a minute to load each round. This weapon may have been well-suited for the “Christian” combat of which John Quincy Adams was accustomed, the type where opposing armies stood opposite one another and “respectfully” took turns firing, but it was a terrible weapon for combat against a guerilla army that moved quickly, shot rapidly, and possessed no word for “surrender” in its native tongue. This was not “Christian” combat and therefore it required an “unchristian contraption”.

The Texas Rangers were early adopters of Colt’s new pistol, entirely changing the combat dynamic between them and the Comanches. With pistols that fired rapidly, were usable on horseback, and effective in close quarters, the Texans evened the playing field and soon shattered the Comanche’s grip over Comancheria and the American West.

Later on during the Mexican-American War, regular U.S. soldiers watched in awe as the Texas Ranger enlistees commanded their horses with nimble dexterity and wielded their Colt pistols with unbelievable proficiency. The equipment and methods of warfare the Rangers had developed while fighting the ruthless Comanche were deadly effective against the Mexican army. So the legend of the Rangers and their strange new pistols spread through the American ranks and soon U.S. quartermasters wished to equip the rest of the army with Colt pistols, placing an order for 1,000 guns at $25 a piece. 

The popularity of the Colt pistol only grew as the weapon yielded great success during the Mexican-War and was a staple of the American Civil War that soon followed. So widespread was the eventual popularity of the Colt pistol that the word ‘Colt’ soon became synonymous with the word ‘revolver’ and Sam Colt amassed a fortune worth over $470M in today’s dollars.

There is a common saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. But so much of the world is complex and full of variables that are outside of our control. In many ways, the context in which you apply your effort matters just as much as the amount of effort you apply.

Sam Colt’s invention was a complete failure in the context of traditional American warfare but a resounding success in the context of the prairie warfare of the Rangers and Comanches. The weapon was the same, but the results deferred completely, all because of context!

There are so many examples of this throughout history.

“Pets.com” was ridiculed as the epitome of “.com bubble hysteria” - a ridiculous idea that never should have reached the valuations it achieved during the early 2000s. Yet today the company Chewy has practically the same business model (e-commerce for pet products), boasts a $14B market capitalization, and is adored by customers and investors alike. The concepts were the same but the economic contexts in which they were launched were different, ultimately determining their respective outcomes.

The social media platform, X (formerly known as Twitter), has had endless copycats spring up to compete with it: Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky, and more. The competitor products are the exact same as X - users can post thoughts of their owns and read the thoughts of fellow users. Yet X routs its competitors in terms of user count because it was launched earlier and therefore able to accrue users faster, creating a network effect and impenetrable moat. The products are the same, but the contexts in which they were launched differ.

The Great Gatsby was a financial failure when it was first published in 1925. Its author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, passed away in 1940 believing himself to be a failed writer and a commercial bust. But soon after his death, the reputation of the novel grew in the American author community. And in the Spring of 1942 the Council on Books in Wartime selected The Great Gatsby as one of the books it would distribute to allied soldiers overseas. Over the course of World War II, over 150,000 copies of the novel were distributed and today over 25 million copies have been sold. The sense of yearning spoke to the hearts of the soldiers who missed simpler times before the war and their sweethearts, the perfect conditions for a story of Gatsby’s essence to develop mass appeal. The book was the same but the contexts in which it was introduced were different.

The results of dollar cost averaging appear miniscule when you first start. But after decades of the same behavior the results are enormous. The investment returns generated by the same amount of capital deployed 40 years ago vs 10 years ago are stunningly different as the same amount of capital deployed for 40 years dwarfs the equivalent amount invested for 10. The action is the same but the context is different.

All of these instances have the same idea or action performed in different contexts. And the context makes all the difference.

When the world we live in is endlessly complex, filled with external variables that have unquantifiable impacts on the outcomes of life it’s actually quite sane to try the same thing over and over again and expect different results because the context in which an action is applied, invention is introduced, or concept is tested has almost as big an impact on the results as the action, invention, or concept themselves.