The Gatling Gun

Meet the Gatling Gun, a machine gun firing by an astounding 200 bullets per minute. It was created during the Civil War by Dr. Richard Gatling who purposely created the gun in hopes of ending the war because of the horror slaughter of people his weapons did according to inventors.about.com. According to Wikipedia, the Gatling Gun was the first successful machine gun used in combat. Although the Maxim gun, which was invented in 1884, beat the Gatling Gun due to the weapon being the first automatic machine gun, nonetheless, the Gatling Gun represented a giant step to firearm technology according to Wikipedia. The Gatling Gun was the skeleton makeup for the string of machine guns to come such as the M61 Vulcan (basically a multi-barrel Gattling Gun) that was created in World War 2.

This is a picture of the Gatling Gun that was used during the Civil War. It was also used around
Europe, Canada and Asia too. It was soon replaced by the Maxim gun.