Remington Rider Single Shot Parlor Pistol

About the Remington Rider Single Shot Parlor Pistol

The Remington Rider Single Shot Parlor Pistol is a diminutive all-brass single-shot cap pistol made by E. Remington & Sons between 1860 and 1863. Designed by Joseph Rider, whose September 1859 patent (No. 25,470) covered the design, it is the smallest handgun Remington ever produced. Rather than a defensive arm, it was a parlor pistol intended for indoor target practice: it fires a roughly 4.3 mm (.17 caliber) lead ball propelled by a percussion cap alone, with no gunpowder charge. Fewer than a couple hundred were made, and it bears no serial numbers or barrel markings.

Parlor pistols like the Remington Rider were a genteel 19th-century amusement, letting owners plink at targets inside the home using only the mild report of a percussion cap. Its patentee, Joseph Rider, went on to co-design far more consequential Remington arms, including the Remington-Rider magazine pistol and mechanisms behind the rolling-block action.

Remington Rider Single Shot Parlor Pistol specifications

A percussion-cap-only parlor pistol, not a cartridge or defensive firearm. Extremely rare today, with fewer than about 40 original examples known to survive, including two prototypes. Overall dimensions and weight are not well documented; the three-inch (approx. 76 mm) brass barrel is the most commonly cited measurement.