Smith & Wesson is the largest manufacturer of handguns in the United States. The corporate headquarters is in Springfield, Massachusetts. Founded in 1852, Smith & Wesson's pistols and revolvers have become standard issue to police and armed forces throughout the world. Consequently they have been used by sport shooters and have been featured in numerous Hollywood movies, particularly Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry. Smith & Wesson has been known for the many types of ammunition it has introduced over the years, and many cartridges bear the company's name. Smith & Wesson factory in Springfield, Massachusetts, circa 1908. In 1852 partners Horace Smith and Daniel B. Wesson formed a company to produce a lever-action pistol nicknamed the Volcanic pistol. The company became known as the "Volcanic Repeating Arms Company"; financial difficulties caused it to come into the majority ownership of investor Oliver Winchester. Previously, in the late 1840s, Daniel Wesson's brother Edwin, of Hartford, Massachusetts, had manufactured revolvers under the name of Wesson & Leavitt. After Edwin Wesson's death, that firm continued under the supervision of Thomas Warner. In 1856 the partners left the Volcanic Company to begin a new company and to manufacture a newly-designed revolver-and-cartridge combination which would become known as the Smith & Wesson Model 1. The success of Model 1 was due to a combination of new innovations, the bored through cylinder and the self-contained metallic <b>...</b>