The first " rapid firing " firearms were usually similar to the 19th century Gatling gun, which would fire cartridges from a magazine as fast as and as long as the operator turned a crank.

The Gatling gun may have been the first automatic weapon, though the modern trigger-actuated machine gun was not widely introduced until the First World War with the German " Spandau " and British Lewis Gun.

The first weapon generally considered in this category is the Gatling gun, originally a carriage-mounted, crank-operated firearm with multiple rotating barrels that was fielded in the American Civil War.

The Gatling gun is one of the best known early rapid-fire weapons and a forerunner of the modern machine gun.

The Gatling gun was designed by the American inventor Dr. Richard J. Gatling in 1861 and patented November 4, 1862.

Although the first Gatling gun was capable of firing continuously, it required a person to crank it ; therefore it was not a true automatic weapon.

Nonetheless, the Gatling gun represented a huge leap in firearm technology.

Prior to the Gatling gun, the only weapons available to militaries capable of firing many projectiles in a short space of time were mass-firing volley weapons like the French Reffye mitrailleuse in 1870 – 71, or field cannons firing canister, much like a very large shotgun.

In comparison, the Gatling gun offered a rapid and continuous rate of fire without having to manually reload by opening the breech.

The original Gatling gun was a field weapon which used multiple rotating barrels turned by a hand crank, and firing loose ( no links or belt ) metal cartridge ammunition using a gravity feed system from a hopper.

The Gatling gun's innovation lay neither in the rotating mechanism ( featured by many revolvers of the day ) nor in the use of multiple barrels to limit overheating ( used by the mitrailleuse gun ); rather, the innovation was the gravity feed reloading mechanism, which allowed unskilled operators to achieve a relatively high rate of fire of 200 rounds per minute.

Howard of the Connecticut National Guard had an interest in the company manufacturing Gatling guns, and took a personally-owned Gatling gun to Saskatchewan in Canada in 1885 for use with the Canadian military against the Métis during Louis Riel's North-West Rebellion.

Compared with earlier weapons such as the Mitrailleuse, which required manual reloading, the Gatling gun was more reliable and easier to operate, and had a lower but continuous rate of fire.

The Gatling gun was used most successfully to expand European colonial empires by killing warriors of non-industrialized societies mounting massed attacks, including the Matabele, the Zulu, the Bedouins, and the Mahdists.

A British 1865 Gatling gun at Firepower-The Royal Artillery Museum

The Gatling gun was hand-crank operated with six barrels revolving around a central shaft, although some models had as many as ten.

The initial Gatling gun design used self-contained, reloadable steel cylinders with a chamber holding a ball and black-powder charge, and a percussion cap on one end.

The innovative features of the Gatling gun were its independent firing mechanism for each barrel and the simultaneous action of the locks, barrels, carrier and breech.

After the Gatling gun was replaced in service by newer recoil-or gas-operated non-rotating machine guns and automatic cannons, the approach of using multiple rotating barrels fell into disuse for many decades, reappearing after World War II with the development of the M61 Vulcan.

* -- Gatling gun

Invented by Richard Gatling, it is known for its use by the Union forces during the American Civil War in the 1860s, which was the first time it was employed in combat.

A four-gun battery of Model 1895 ten-barrel Gatling Guns in. 30 Army made by Colt's Arms Company was formed into a separate detachment led by Lt. John " Gatling Gun " Parker.

In 2011, the asking / selling price of a near-impeccable ten-barrel Model 1883 Colt Gatling Gun in perfect working order, with carriage and 105 round cartridge, was over $ 300, 000 USD.

By 1893, the Gatling was adapted to take the new. 30 Army smokeless cartridge.

For example, four miles past the Ineyzane River, after the British had comfortably crossed, and after they had spent a day consolidating their advance, the Zulu finally launched a typical " buffalo horn " encirclement attack that was seen off with withering fire from not only breach-loading Martini-Henry rifles, but 7-pounder artillery and Gatling guns.

The key characteristic of modern machine guns, their relatively high rate of fire and more importantly machine ( automatic ) loading, came with the Model 1862 Gatling gun, which was adopted by the United States Navy.

The Gatling gun, patented in 1861 by Richard Jordan Gatling, was the first to offer controlled, sequential fire with automatic loading.

The Gatling gun was used most successfully to expand European colonial empires by killing warriors of non-industrialized societies.

The " Maxim gun " used the recoil power of the previously fired bullet to reload rather than being hand-powered, enabling a much higher rate of fire than was possible using earlier designs such as the Nordenfelt and Gatling weapons.

* The first 20 mm M61 Vulcan Gatling gun prototypes are completed.

Dr. Richard Jordan Gatling ( September 12, 1818 – February 26, 1903 ) was an American inventor best known for his invention of the Gatling gun, the first successful machine gun.

During the 2 July assault, V Corps ' newly-formed Gatling Gun Detachment participated in the first use by the U. S. Army of machine gun fire for mobile fire support in offensive combat.

The first " mitrailleuse " was a manually fired 50-barrel volley gun originally developed in Belgium in 1851, 10 years before the advent of the Gatling gun, by the Belgian Army Captain Fafschamps, who made a rough prototype and drawings of his invention.

The first, the HWF-91 Gundam F91 Heavy Weapons Type or Powered Weapon Type, replaces the VSBRs with a pair of 4-barrel beam Gatling guns and 2-tube anti-ship missile pods.

The Gatling gun was a field weapon, first used in warfare during the American Civil War and subsequently by European and Russian armies.

In 1949 General Electric began testing the first model of its modified Gatling design, now called the Vulcan Gun.

The first proposed replacement for the Duster was the Sperry Vigilante, which referred to the six-barreled 37 mm Gatling gun proposed as the basis for a new SPAAG.

Gatling guns were used by the Peruvian navy and army, especially in the Battle of Tacna ( May 1880 ) and the " Battle of San Juan " ( January 1881 ) against the Chilean army invaders.

Imperial Russia purchased 400 Gatling guns and used them against Turkmen cavalry and other nomads of central Asia.

The Royal Navy used Gatling guns against the Egyptians at Alexandria in 1882.

Because of infighting within Army Ordnance, Gatling guns were again used by the U. S. Army during the Spanish-American War.

Dr. Gatling later used examples of the M1893 powered by electric motor and belt to drive the crank.

The GAU-8 / A Avenger 30 mm Gatling gun, as used by the A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft, was selected for the system.

This Gatling was used to eliminate Spanish sniper fire against the American defensive positions on Kettle Hill.

Their engineers are used to explain Skaven warmachines: the Ratling Gun ( a warpstone-based Gatling gun with an obvious pun on rat ), the Warpfire thrower ( a warpstone-based flamethrower ), the Jezzail ( an extremely long-ranged warpstone rifle which is so large that it has to be carried by two Skaven ), the Poisoned Wind Mortar ( a device that fires delicate spheres filled with poison gas upon the enemy ) and the fearsome Warp-Lightning Cannon.

* M61 Vulcan, a Gatling gun used by the United States Armed Forces

Under a contract with the U. S. Army, Colt Arms built the Model 1895 ten-barrel variant of the Gatling Gun, capable of firing 800-900. 30 Army rounds per minute, and used with great effect at the Battle of San Juan Hill.

* Gatling guns, multiple barrel designs, often used with external power supplies to generate rates of fire higher than automatic firearms.

The Gryazev-Shipunov GSh-6-23 () ( GRAU designation: 9A-620 for GSh-6-23, 9A-768 for GSh-6-23M modernized variant ) is a powerful, fast-firing six-barreled 23 mm Gatling gun used by some modern Soviet / Russian military aircraft.

There his Gatling gun was used to good effect, providing covering fire for the withdrawal of cannon that had come under sniper fire and dispersing an attempt by Gabriel Dumont to capture the guns.

Various forms of the weapon have been designed, including aircraft-mounted guns firing downward, man-portable artillery packs and defensive applications, such as ship-based anti-missile defense systems ( for which Gatling guns are currently used ).

; Gatling Guns: ( Again, used in conjunction with attack mode ): two gatling-style guns that are retracted from the hood.

Standard Tachikoma equipment includes a 7. 62x51mm light machine gun mounted in the right arm, a secondary weapon hardpoint in the " snout " ( a 50 mm grenade launcher, capable of launching both explosive and gas grenades which can be replaced by a six-barrelled 12. 7x99mm Gatling gun ), a universal cybernetic connector on an extensible, prehensile cable in the left arm, liquid wires that can be used for grappling, rappelling or for restraining purposes and a built-in thermoptic camouflage system.

* The Gatling guns used in the game feature not an arrangement of multiple barrels around a central axis, but one singular barrel in a tubular jacket typical for water-cooled machine guns ( in fact, they look much like M1917 Browning machine guns ), and a side-mounted ammunition box for belt-feeding ( in mechanical Gatlings gravity-feeding systems like hopper were used ).