biography
| name: |
Gatling, Richard Jordan
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1818–1903)
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| biography:
| Inventor, born in Maney's Neck, North Carolina, USA. The son of a planter, he taught at a school and ran a country store, but he was observant of the agricultural practices all around him and spent his time inventing such devices as a rice-sewing machine (patented 1839) and a steam plough (1857). By 1862 he had received a patent for a rapid-fire multi-barrel weapon; technically speaking it was not a machine-gun because it had to be powered by a hand crank in the early models (by an electric motor in the improved model). Only a few ‘Gatling guns’ were put into use at the end of the Civil War but it was adopted by the US Army in 1866. It could fire c.600 rounds per minute and was used by the army and navy up through the Spanish-American War. Gatling worked on its improved versions and then returned to working on agricultural machinery, inventing a motor-driven plough in 1900. |
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