|
About the same time, Lewis Winant wrote a book, "Firearms Curiosa", which had in the back a series of joke drawings of fictional guns done by Stephen Ickes, spoofing Colt products. One was of a pocket revolver with a huge cylinder chambered for the .99 Colt cartridge*, but also available in .357 Magnum and 5.5 Velo Dog. Playing on Colt's penchant for using snake names, it was called the Python.
The book is copyrighted 1955, just about the same time the people at Colt were working on the real revolver which was to be called that. It may be that the names of the fictional revolver and the real one were coincidence, but I wonder if someone at Colt had seen those drawings or an early copy of Winant's book, and the name was in the back of his mind. The other way seems less likely; the other names are either entirely fictional or fictionalized in some way, and Ickes did his drawings long before Colt developed the Python.
*Don't try to find ammo at your local gun shop.
Jim
|