Nazarian

The Enouy revolver
was a design patented by Joseph Enouy of Middlesex, England, who received British patent #1359 in 1855.

History
On the 14th of June 1855, Enouy took out a patent for a method of reloading revolvers. The patent describes replacing one cylinder with another in quick succession via a rotating axis containing multiple cylinders.

Enouy`s patent was applied in practice several times. There exists an English transitional revolver that has a rotating wheel held on an under-barreled axis; there are eight cylinders attached to spokes on the wheel, giving a total ammunition capacity of 48 rounds. This gun was formerly part of the Vokes collection in Hampshire, England, but is now kept in the Abdeen Palace Museum in Cairo, Egypt.

It is not known whether Enouy himself made these guns, or whether they were built by a professional gunsmith using Enouy`s patent.

Design
The basic revolver was based on a transitional revolver design made by Charles Osborne in 1845. The innovative part of Enouy`s design was the compound magazine design. In this particular example, each revolver cylinder is capable of holding 6 shots and there are 8 different revolver cylinders attached to the compound magazine wheel, thereby giving this weapon a capacity of 48 shots.

this weapon is very heavy, unbalanced and unwieldy at the same time. Due to the magazine wheel in front, the user can`t carry this revolver is his pocket or in a holster either. This firearm design was not a success and Joseph Enouy didn`t seem to manufacture many of them either. In fact, most of the pictures of this firearm available on the web are from one particular revolver made by Enouy, which was once owned by a Mr. Vokes. As there are no records of this revolver being manufactured and sold commercially, it is possible that the above example is literally the only one that was ever made. It is fortunate that we have a record of Mr. Enouy`s patent application available.