Early Machine Guns

In our last post, we looked at some basics about machine guns. In today's post, we will study some early developments in machine gun history and what technologies needed to be invented along with them.

One of the early developments in weapons capable of firing multiple shots before reloading was the Puckle gun, which we already studied some time ago. This was invented in 1718 and is the precursor of the revolver.

A Puckle gun. Click on the image to enlarge. Public domain image.

There were also other multi-shot weapons invented later, such as the Mitrailleuse gun and the Belton flintlock, but the first real practical machine gun was the Gatling gun, invented by Richard Gatling in 1861.

In order to have a rapid firing weapon, it was necessary to have a way to automate/quicken the reloading process and the invention of the cartridge came in handy here. Early gatling gun models used paper cartridges and percussion caps, because these were the same technologies used by US Army infantrymen of that era -- in fact, the Gatling gun was designed to use the same caliber cartridges. However, this model was prone to jamming. The second model used the rimfire cartridge instead. Rimfire and centerfire cartridges made the Gatling more reliable. Metallic cartridges also made it possible to provide a better seal in the chamber of the firearm, because the hot gases from a fired cartridge expands the metal case and seals the back of the chamber.

Another technology that made it possible for modern machine guns was the invention of smokeless powder. Early Gatling guns used black powder cartridges. With black powder, the smoke rapidly makes it hard for the operators to see what is going on. On top of that, black powder leaves behind a lot of dirty residue and this can cause the mechanism of a machine gun to jam. Smokeless powders produce a lot less residue, therefore the gun can fire for longer periods without risk of jamming.

Improvements in metallurgical techniques also helped, because it made it possible to make gun parts which perform reliably for extended periods of time and resist heat better as well.

With that said, heat dissipation has always been a problem in machine gun design. In the case of the Gatling gun, the problem was solved by using multiple barrels. With multiple barrels, the weapon can fire at a higher rate, but each barrel is rotated after each shot and therefore has time to cool before it fires another shot. However, the presence of multiple barrels makes the overall weapon heavier. Water cooling and quick-change barrels are other techniques that were historically used by other machine guns to solve the same issue. Interestingly, the use of multiple barrels in a gun was revisited in modern times, with the invention of the minigun and the multi-shot cannon used on the A-10 Warthog aircraft.

Also, the idea of using an electric motor to power a gun is a lot older that most people realize. In fact, in 1893, Richard Gatling received a patent for a gatling gun powered by an electric motor!

The Puckle Gun

In today's post, we will study an early machine gun: the Puckle Gun. We'd first mentioned this gun many months ago, when we studied the history of revolvers. We will now study this firearm in more detail.

The Puckle gun was invented by a London based lawyer named James Puckle, who had an interest in firearm design. He received a patent for his design in 1718.

Part of the patent application for the Puckle gun. Public domain image.

This was a flintlock firearm fitted with a multishot cylinder, much like a revolver. The cylinders were designed to hold 11 shots at a time. Unlike revolvers, there was a manual crank attached to the back to bring each chamber of the cylinder to the firing position. It was mounted on a tripod and the barrel was about 3 feet (0.91 meters) long. The caliber of this weapon was 1.25 inches (32 mm.). Typical of the era, the firearm came with bullet molds to cast bullets for it (part #21 in the above patent application).

This weapon was supposed to be used as a defensive weapon. If you look at the patent flier sheet above, the weapon is advertised as "A Defence" and the tagline below the title reads: "Defending KING GEORGE your COUNTRY and LAWES / Is Defending YOUR SELVES and PROTESTANT CAUSE". Below the drawing of the gun, it says that it is intended for use in "bridges, breaches, lines and passes, ships, boats, houses and other places."

A very interesting and unusual part of this design are the parts labelled 16 and 17 in the figure above (and also 18 and 19, which show a single chamber of 16 and 17 respectively). It shows the plan of two cylinders used by this rifle. Notice that the shapes of the holes in the two cylinders are different. This is because the gun was designed to fire two different shapes of bullets and the patent document elaborates how they were to be used. The cylinder that fires round bullets was designed to be used against Christian enemies and the cylinder firing square bullets was intended to be used against the Turks, who were Muslim. Apparently the square bullets were considered to be more damaging and the patent document explains that using square bullets against the Turks would 'convince them about the benefits of Christian civilization'! These days, such views would be considered quite inappropriate and racist, but views were a bit different back in the 1700s when this firearm was invented. Incidentally, the square bullets had to be discontinued soon afterwards, because they had a tendency to fly erratically through the air.

Another general point of interest about this patent was that it was written shortly after a change in British Patent law. The new patent law stated that the inventor must describe the invention and how it works in writing, in order to be considered for a patent. This gun's patent documentation was one of the first ones to do it as per the new patent law standards.

While the Puckle gun was an interesting design, it never was a huge success. Part of the problem was that the design had many complicated components and most British gunsmiths didn't have the necessary skill-sets to easily make these parts. Even though it was a commercial failure, the gun was way ahead of its time. It was the precursor to modern machine guns as well as revolvers.