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The first successful self-loader was the Gatling gun, a hand-cranked revolver. It was invented by Richard Jordan Gatling and fielded by the Union forces during the American Civil War. Self-loaders use energy to reload. The world's first machine gun was the Maxim gun, developed by British inventor Sir Hiram Maxim in 1884.
The Gatling gun is a rapid-firing multiple-barrel firearm invented in 1861 by Richard Jordan Gatling. It is an early machine gun and a forerunner of the modern electric motor-driven rotary cannon. The Gatling gun's operation centered on a cyclic multi-barrel design which facilitated cooling and synchronized the firing-reloading sequence.
The world's first submachine gun (a fully automatic firearm which fires pistol cartridges) able to be maneuvered by a single soldier is the MP 18.1, invented by Theodor Bergmann. It was introduced into service in 1918 by the German Army during World War I as the primary weapon of the Stosstruppen (assault groups specialized in trench combat).
Gatling invented the Gatling gun after he noticed that a majority of the soldiers fighting in the Civil War were lost to disease rather than gunshots. In 1877, he wrote, "It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine gun which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies, and ...
The Maxim gun is a recoil-operated machine gun invented in 1884 by Hiram Stevens Maxim.It was the first fully automatic machine gun in the world. [15]The Maxim gun has been called "the weapon most associated with imperial conquest" by historian Martin Gilbert, [16] and was heavily used by colonial powers during the "Scramble for Africa".
The Thompson submachine gun (also known as the "Tommy gun", "Chicago typewriter", or "trench broom") is a blowback-operated, selective-fire submachine gun, invented and developed by Brigadier General John T. Thompson, a United States Army officer, in 1918.
The Lewis gun was invented by U.S. Army colonel Isaac Newton Lewis in 1911, based on initial work by Samuel Maclean. [6] Despite its origins, the Lewis gun was not initially adopted by the U.S. military, most likely because of political differences between Lewis and General William Crozier, the chief of the Ordnance Department. [7]
Patent No. 418, for James Puckle's 1718 revolving firearm, showing various cylinders for use with round and square bullets. The Puckle gun (also known as the defence gun) was a primitive crew-served, manually-operated flintlock [1] revolver patented in 1718 by James Puckle (1667–1724), a British inventor, lawyer and writer.