Early repeating firearms technology utilized a range of different designs to fire multiple rounds before having to fully reload. The simplest and earliest method of producing arms capable of firing more than one round at a time was to fit a firearm with more than one barrel. However, due to weight limitations, gunmakers began experimenting with other means of producing repeating arms during the 16th century.
One of the first methods attempted involved superimposed or superposed loads, which were successive charges of powder and ball on top of each other that were separated by wadding or the projectile itself in one barrel. They were fitted with locks that either had multiple cocks and pans or a single lock that could slide upon a rail. These designs, however, required some level of manual manipulation to fire each round.
But in the 1790s, Joseph Gaston Chambers developed a series of superimposed muskets, rifles, pistols, and seven-barreled swivel guns. One of the biggest differences in this design centered around the ammunition. Chambers devised a bullet with a hollow tip that would allow the burning powder to automatically ignite each subsequent bullet, so a user would only need to press the trigger once. His firearms ranged from the ability to fire seven rounds to 224 rounds with one trigger press.
To see an example of this early firearm, check out this post from Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons, who has graciously permitted us to repost his historical content. Ian McCollum is the founder, editor, and presenter of Forgotten Weapons, a decade-old online web site and video archive dedicated to preserving firearms history.
Joseph Chambers invented a repeating flintlock weapon in the 1790s, and I think it is appropriate to consider it a “machine gun”. The design used a series of superposed charges in one or more barrels, with specially designed bullets that has hollow central tubes through them. This would allow the fire form a detonation charge to transit through a bullet at the rear and set off a subsequent charge. The result was a single trigger pull to use a flintlock action to start an unstoppable series of shots. Chambers made pistol and musket versions, as well as a full-on mounted machine gun.
He submitted his design to the fledgling US War Department in 1792, but it was not accepted. He brought the guns back to their attention when the War of 1812 was declared, and this time he found an eager client in the United States Navy. More than 50 of the machine guns were built and purchased to use on Navy warships. This version had 7 barrels, each loaded with 32 rounds, for a total of 224 shots, at (apparently) about a 120 round/minute rate of fire. The British found out about the guns and made some effort to reverse engineer them, and there was also interest in France, the Netherlands, and Spain. Ultimately, the potential unreliability of the system prevented more widespread adoption, but the gun is a fascinating example of early automatic firearms.
For more information, see Andrew Fagal’s article “The Promise of American Repeating Weapons, 1791-1821”.
Thanks to the Liege Arms Museum for access to film this for you! If you are in Belgium, definitely plan to stop into the museum, part of the Grand Curtius. They have a very good selection of interesting and unusual arms on display.
[This article was originally posted on November 8, 2019 at Forgotten Weapons.]