Founding Fathers Never Thought of... (need help)

[Country Boy]

I know that somewhere in the Archives, there was a thread debunking the myth that the founding fathers could have never thought of certain items. For example, it has been said that the Founding Fathers could have never imagined a machine gun. However, sometime in the early 1700's, there actually was a repeating "machinegun-like" firearm. I tried searching the archives for 45 minutes, and the web for about the same amount of time, but no luck. Does anybody know the gun of which I am speaking, or the thread where it might be found?

[Kirk Keller]

Many gun inventors dreamed of making a gun, which could fire at a constant rate that showered the enemy with bullets during the early 1800s. In 1718, James Puckle invented the Defense Gun. It was placed on a tripod and looked like a large revolver with a cylinder behind its single barrel. Although the cylinder had to be turned manually it could fire 63 shots in seven minutes. The American Civil War provided an incentive to inventors, which allowed Wilson Agar to sell 54 of his Coffee Mills guns to the Union Army. Union forces in the Civil War also used the Billinghurst-Raqua. The gun comprised a wheeled frame carrying 24 rifle barrels. Once the gun was loaded a single percussion cap was placed on a nipple on the iron frame and fired by a hammer, the flash passing through the frame to ignite all 24 cartridges. In 1861 Richard Jordan Gatling, a dentist from North Carolina, produced an effective mechanical gun. It was consisted of six barrels mounted in a revolving frame, which fired at a fully automatic rate with the six barrels rotating to keep the barrels cool after each shot. The U.S. Army purchased these guns in 1865 and over the next few years most major armies in Europe purchased the gun. The British Army tested it at Woolwich in 1870, and found that the 0.42 Gatling Gun fired 616 shots in two minutes. Of these, 369 hit their intended targets. This was a new age of full assault weaponry which was emerging. In 1879 the Gardener Machine Gun was demonstrated for the first time. The gun fired 10,000 rounds in 27 minutes. This impressed military leaders from Britain and the following year the British Army purchased the gun. It also adopted the ten-barrel Nordenfelt Machine Gun. In 1881 the American inventor, Hiram Maxim, visited the Paris Electrical Exhibition. While he was at the exhibition he met a man who told him: "If you wanted to make a lot of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each other's throats with greater facility." Maxim moved to London and over the next few years worked on producing an effective machinegun. In 1885 he demonstrated the world's first automatic portable machine-gun to the British Army. Maxim used the energy of each bullet's recoil force to eject the spent cartridge and insert the next bullet. The Maxim Machine Gun would fire until the entire belt of bullets was used up. Many trials showed that the machine-gun could fire 500 rounds per minute and match the power of over 100 rifles. The British adopted the Maxim Machine-Gun in 1889 and the following year the Austrian, German, Italian, Swiss and Russian armies also purchased Maxim's gun. The gun was first used by Britain’s colonial forces in the Matabele war in 1893-94. In one engagement, fifty soldiers fought off 5,000 Matabele warriors with just four Maxim guns. The success of the Maxim Machine-Gun inspired other inventors. The German Army's Maschinengewehr and the Russian Pulemyot Maxima were both based on Maxim's invention. John Moses Browning produced his first machine-gun in 1890 and five years it was adopted by the US Navy. An Austrian, Count Odkolec, worked with the French company, Hotchkiss, to produce an effective gun that was adopted by the French Army in 1897.

[labgrade]

Try a search for the "puckle gun."

Google's "puckle gun" search turned up this:

Puckle Gun (1718)
James Puckle of London, England, demonstrated his new invention, the "Puckle Gun," a tripod-mounted, single-barreled flintlock gun fitted with a multishot revolving cylinder. This weapon fired nine shots per minute at a time when the standard soldier's musket could be loaded and fired but three times per minute. Puckle demonstrated two versions of the basic design. One weapon, intended for use against Christian enemies, fired conventional round bullets, while the second variant, designed to be used against the Muslim Turks, fired square bullets, which were believed to cause more severe and painful wounds than spherical projectiles. The "Puckle Gun" failed to attract investors and never achieved mass production or sales to the British armed forces. One newspaper of the period observed following the business venture's failure that "those are only wounded who hold shares therein." Source Raymond W. Bliss Army Health Center

As a side note on Puckle's patent - According to the Patent Office of the United Kingdom, " In the reign of Queen Anne, the law officers of the Crown established as a condition of grant [patent] that the patentee [inventor] must by an instrument in writing describe and ascertain the nature of the invention and the manner in which it is to be performed. James Puckle's 1718 patent for a machine gun was one of the first to be required to provide a specification [description of what the invention did], as this instrument became known." Source U.K. Patent History

[Kirk Keller]

Check this link for all the info you'll ever want, including patent info.
Puckle Gun - Inventors link

[Country Boy]

Puckle Gun - I didn't know the name. Thanks.