MACHINE GUN (Fr. machine, from Lat. machina, from Gk. meclW, device). A gun in which the operations of loading, extrac tion, and firing are wholly or partly performed by mechanism. The early history of machine guns is involved in the same mystery that sur rounds the development of guns and gunpowder. The breech-loader and the revolver are found al most as far back as we can trace the portable gun; even farther back there is evidence of at tempts to produce multiple-firing guns. At the Boston Navy Yard there is a double-barreled bronze gun of Chinese manufacture which was captured in Korea in 1870. According to the Chinese inscription upon it, it was made in 1607. It is about IS inches long and weighs 14 pounds. It has three reenforcing bands about the breech end of each barrel, and each hand has a vent in it. It was therefore arranged to fire in suc cession three shots from each barrel, the spaces between the vents being ample for the powder, ball, and wads. Pepys in his diary. date of July 3. 1662, says: "After dinner was brought to Sir W. Compton a gun to discharge seven times. the best of all devices that ever I saw, and very serviceable, and not a bauble. for it is much approved of and many thereof made." From 1662 to 1861 there are found frequent ref erences to guns designed for multiple loading, but none seemed to give sufficient satisfaction to gain a permanent place in armaments. The success of the machine gun awaited the development of metal-eased fixed ammunition which appeared (as a military store) (luring the Civil War and was immediately followed by magazine and re peating small arms and numerous kinds of ma chine guns. Of these early pieces the best was undoubtedly the Gatling, though the No•denfeldt gun gave good satisfaction as a ship's gun. The French mitraillense never was very successful; it appeared after the.Gatling was practically per fected. but was much inferior to it and owes its reputation to fanciful descriptions of some news paper correspondents who were ignorant of its actual performance. The first machine gun of a calibre larger than that of small arms was the Hotchkiss revolving cannon. This was invented by Mr. B. B. Hotchkiss, an American residing in France, in 1887, in response to the call of the French naval officers, who wanted a rapid-firing weapon of larger calibre as n defense tor pedo boats. These guns were at first I-pounders, as under the rules of war this is the lightest explosive shell; they were afterward: male to fire 6-pound shells. but were very cumbersome
and were replaced five years later by rapid-tiring single-shot weapons. The Maxim-Nordenfeldt automatic 1-pounder was first used in the Span ish-American War, but it was brought out a year or two earlier; it is a development of Sir Hiram Maxim's smalle• automatic gun brought out ten years or more before.
Machine guns may he divided into two classes: (a) those operated by hand-power or exterior force; and (b) those operated by the force of the powder gases acting directly upon a piston or through the recoil of the barrel. Representative of the first class are the Getting and Gardner guns, and Hotchkiss revolving cannon, which are not very different in general character, and the No•denfeldt, which more closely resembles the early forms of ntitrailleuse. In the latter the barrels, three or more in number, have their axes in the same horizontal plane, and are fired by a horizontal lever, one after the other. but so rapidly that the piece is included among the so-called volley-firing guns.
A description of the Gatling will serve as an illustration of the principle upon which most of the guns of Class A were designed. It was invented by Dr. R. J. Gatling, of Indianapolis. Ind., in ISO], and in 1862 he had a battery con structed and in working order, an accomplish ment which certainly preceded the appearance of the French mnitrailleuse. The gun consists of a series of parallel barrels, usually ten, in common with a grooved carrier and lock cylinder, the whole rigidly secured upon a main shaft. It has as many grooves in the carrier and as ninny holes in the lock cylinder as there are barrels. Each barrel has one lock, so that a gun with ten bar rels has ten locks. The operation of the gun is very simple; one man places one end of a feed case filled with cartridges into the hopper. while a second man turns the crank which by the agency of the gearing revolves the main shaft. As the gun is revolved. the separate cartridges drop into the grooves of the carrier from the feed eases and are pressed home ready for discharge. When first invented, the Gatling gun differed radically both in principle and action from any form of gun previously in use. and admitted of faster discharges and heavier projectiles, besides which, its method of fire prevented the of recoil. Improvements and alterations in the gun have been largely in the direction of an improved feed case.