“Uncovering the Hidden Genius: The Surprising Origins of the World’s First Machine Gun!”
Puckle began selling shares of his company to the public in 1720 for about 8 pounds a piece (about £1,100 pounds or $1,600 today) to finance construction of more advanced Puckle Guns, one of which was demonstrated to the public on March 31, 1722.
During said demonstration, as described in the London Journal: “[O]ne man discharged it 63 times in seven Minutes, though all while Raining, and it throws off either one large or sixteen Musquet Balls at every discharge with great force…”
Despite the impressive and reliable display, the British military on the whole was still uninterested in the newfangled technology.
That said, there was at least one order, placed by then Master-General of Ordnance for Britain, Duke John Montagu, for two of the guns to bring along in an attempt to capture St. Vincent and St. Lucia in the Caribbean. Whether these ever ended up being used or not isn’t clear.
Summing up Puckles’ failed invention and company, one sarcastic reporter for the London Journal quipped that the gun had “only wounded [those] who have shares therein.” Burn.
In any event, it would be another century and a half before the first true rapid-fire weapon appeared on the battlefield: the French mitrailleuse. Invented in 1851 by Belgian Army Captain Toussaint Fafschamps, the mitrailleuse comprised a cluster of fifty rifled barrels mounted on a conventional wheeled artillery carriage. The ammunition, consisting of a lead bullet and paper cartridge fired by a spring-loaded needle, was held in a removable breech block which was inserted into the rear of the weapon. The operator then turned a crank on the side of the breech, which fired each barrel in quick succession. While Fafschamp’s design was adopted by the Belgian Army, it was soon improved by engineers Louis Christophe and Joseph Montigny, who in 1859 presented their 37-barrel version to French Emperor Napoleon III. Impressed, Napoleon ordered the immediate development of an improved version under the greatest of secrecy, paying for the whole project out of his personal funds. This resulted in the French Army officially adopting a 25-barrel mitrailleuse designed by Jean-Baptiste de Reffye in 1865
