BRRRRRT: MINI-GATLING GUN
American ingenuity knows no bounds. In 1861, during the Civil War and against a backdrop of muskets and the odd breech-loader or repeating rifle, physician and serial inventor Richard Gatling developed a multibarrel, rapid-fire, gravity-fed weapon. The Gatling gun spewed rounds downrange via a cluster of barrels that were loaded from a hopper or magazine and fired in sequence as they rotated around a central shaft, actuated by an operator working a hand crank. While not a true machine gun, it was the closest anyone had come to date — and anyone on the wrong side of the Gatling gun would probably beg to differ.
As the story goes, while living in Indianapolis, Indiana, Gatling was horrified by the losses and suffering of troops during the Civil War. He sought to create a weapon that he figured could reduce the manpower required to prosecute warfare and thus reduce the lives lost, enabling “one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred” due to its rate of fire — the original force multiplier.
Born in North Carolina in 1818, Gatling had a passion for inventing. In his early 20s, he designed a screw propeller for steamboats, and later invented a rice-sowing machine and a wheat drill to make planting wheat easier. Throughout his lifetime, Gatling collected over 50 patents for his
