Volley gun
Two notable artillery-sized volley guns were developed in the mid-19th century, although neither was particularly successful in practice. Developed in the 1860s and based on an 1850s design by a captain Fafschamps, the French mitrailleuse is an example of a multi-barreled volley gun that could fire all of its barrels simultaneously or sequentially over a short period of time. Also developed in the 1860s, General Origen Vandenburgh of the New York State Militia designed a weapon that had eighty five parallel .50 caliber rifle barrels. After failing to sell the weapon to the United Kingdom, he reportedly sold a small number to the Confederate States of America, although there is no record that they were actually used. One Vandenburgh gun was located at Fort Fisher, North Carolina, and another reportedly at Salisbury, NC.
History of the firearm
Self-loaders are firearms that use some of the discharge energy to reload the firearm. These are also called semi or full-automatics. These are typically fed from a tube or detachable "magazine", sometimes referred to as a "clip" (which denotes a magazine reloading device used in certain rifles, or a retainer for flangeless bullets used in certain revolvers). The world's first self-loading firearm is the Maxim gun, developed by British inventor Sir Hiram Maxim in 1884, capable of firing 600 rounds per minute but requires a team of men to maintain and is not portable by one man. The Maxim gun has been used in a vast number of conflicts.