Failure™ Magazine

Richard Gatling: Shooting Star

Richard Gatling and the invention of the Machine Gun.

Written by Jason Zasky   Filed under History, Science & Technology

Most people know a man named Gatling invented the machine gun. But what did he create exactly?
He invented the first working machine gun—a battery gun, it was called—one which wouldn’t overheat or jam and could be used in battle. It wasn’t what we think of today as an automatic weapon, in which one trigger pull initiates automatic firing. It was operated with a hand crank, and utilized the same technology as his seed planter, which he patented in the 1840s. The seed planter included a round cylinder in which one would put seeds, and the hand crank would turn it and seeds would drop down into the furrow. He used the same idea, except instead of seeds he used bullets.

Why was he successful when so many other inventors before him had failed to create a reliable battery gun?
It was the technical configuration. It was so good that during the Vietnam War, when General Electric set out to create the M134—a [vehicle-mounted, six-barreled] Gatling gun, but one with an automatic trigger—they used Gatling’s 1862 patent.

The first public demonstration of the Gatling gun was in the spring of 1862. Why didn’t the North take advantage of it during the Civil War?
Throughout military history, generals have always liked the idea that a battle has a kind of romantic patina to it. It’s one-on-one, and whoever has the greater strength and whoever believes harder in the cause is going to win. Suddenly you had this change where winning a battle wasn’t a matter of who had the superior force, it was who had the best machine. This was a new idea in the history of the world and it did not sit very well with generals. It seemed like an unfair advantage, and they resisted it for decades.

How did 19th century soldiers feel about using Gatling guns?
Like the generals, they were resistant. They liked this idea of the element of struggle—the elemental battle between one soldier and another. Then came this machine, which just seemed unfair. There’s a line in the book: “It felt like hiding a rock in a snowball.” For the first time in history you were able to kill people en masse without knowing who you had killed. Before you had to load your musket and could look the enemy right in the eye. Now you could be far away, and you can imagine what kind of a moral effect that might have and how it would force us to think about the taking of human life in an entirely different way.

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