The revolver is a sort of short-range weapon once being used by the Iranian police, the director of museums of the province’s Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Department has announced.

The pistol appears to have been manufactured in Britain or by the American company of Smith & Wesson, Mohammadreza Pahlavan added on Tuesday, CHTN reported.

Asking cultural heritage aficionados to donate their artifacts and historical objects to the museums of the province, he noted that all donated items will be displayed under the names of the donors.

Horace Smith and Daniel Baird Wesson formed a partnership in 1852 to manufacture a firearm that could fire a fully self-contained cartridge.

From the beginning, Smith & Wesson firearms were noted for their innovative design, high-quality production, and reliability.

Originally called the Seven Shooter, the Model 1 Revolver was introduced in 1857. This revolver was the first practical cartridge revolver and its introduction heralded the end of percussion firearms. It was the first of many Smith & Wesson revolvers that would cement the company’s position in firearms history for over a century.

Before the Model One, revolvers were loaded in much the same way as Revolutionary War muskets were. A round ball was backed by black powder and a percussion cap was inserted at the rear of the chamber. While this made for an effective weapon, it required a time-consuming loading process. It was also necessary to frequently dump unfired rounds and reload, as the loose powder was often ruined by moisture.

Smith & Wesson corrected this problem by introducing a self-contained metal cartridge, roughly equivalent to the .22 short that is still available today.

Some three million historical objects are currently being kept in Iranian museums which are affiliated with the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts.

“There are many historical relics that are owned by private collectors and entities and the government cannot act to preserve them in the museums; therefore, we made efforts that this [cultural] heritage to be conserved and showcased in [their] private museums,” according to Mohammadreza Kargar who presides over the ministry’s museums and historical properties department.

Currently, 740 museums are active across Iran, of which 285 have been established since August 2013, when President Hassan Rouhani began his first administration, Kargar said in March. Back in 2018, he publicized that some three million historical objects were being kept at museums affiliated with the Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts, and Tourism Ministry.