The Gatling Gun was one of the precursors to the modern machine gun, and the first support weapon to possess a mechanical cycle of function; while previous rapid-fire guns had required multiple barrels to fire multiple shots, Gatling's gun instead used a mechanism resembling a rack of bolt-action rifles with their bolts interfacing with cams to operate them as the barrel group was rotated by a hand crank, using a single common feed source. The gun was initially used with paper cartridges in metal chamber sleeves, but switched to brass metallic cartridges with their invention.
In the strictest sense Gatling's invention was not a machine gun since it was still completely manually operated, with the Maxim being the first true machine gun; it is often categorised as one because the effect of the weapon was the same. Gatling also experimented with rigging one of his guns to an early electric motor, experiments that would be revitalised during the 1950s with the development of the M61 Vulcan aircraft cannon.
When Gatling guns were ordered by Tsarist Russia their production was overseen by General Aleksandr Gorloff, the military attaché to the Russian embassy in Washington DC. Gorloff slyly had his own name stamped on the weapons in Cyrillic before they were shipped, leading to some confusion in Russia with nationalists crediting Gorloff as the inventor and referring to the weapons as "Gorloff Guns."
Gatling Guns of multiple manufacturers have been used in the following films:
Note: This page is reserved for the 19th century models of Gatling Guns build by manufacturers such as Colt. Modern electric driven Gatling-type weapons don't belong here nor should they be linked here.
