Portal:American Civil War/Selected article/08

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The Gatling gun was a weapon that used multiple rotating barrels to produce continuous bursts of fire. It was the first highly successful rapid-repeating firearm by combining reliability, high firing rate and ease of loading into a single device. Earlier weapons, such as the mitrailleuse, had limited capacity and long reloading times. It was designed by the American inventor Richard J. Gatling, in 1861 and patented on May 9, 1862. In modern usage it typically refers to guns with a similar rotating barrel design.

The Gatling gun may have been the first "machine gun", depending on the definition. It was capable of firing long, continuous bursts of repeating fire, but unlike designs like the Maxim gun, which operate the mechanism with a fraction of the power of the fired cartridge, it relies on external power (hand crank, or motor). Some later Gatling-type weapons diverted gas from the barrels to spin them.