Mitrailleuse
The first "mitrailleuse" was a manually fired 50-barrel volley gun originally developed in Belgium in 1851 by the Belgian Army Captain Fafschamps, who made a rough prototype and drawings of his invention. The system was improved during the 1850s by Louis Christophe and the Belgian engineer Joseph Montigny, with the completion of the 37-barrel Montigny mitrailleuse in 1863. From 1859, Joseph Montigny proposed his design to Napoleon III, which led to the development of the French Reffye mitrailleuse, designed by Jean-Baptiste Verchère de Reffye with the collaboration of Montigny, and which was adopted by the French Army in 1865. Initially kept under wraps as a secret weapon, it was widely used in battle by French artillery during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). Smaller numbers of other designs, including the Gatling gun, were also purchased by the French government during the latter part of that conflict. The Reffye model had initially been built in small numbers and in secrecy: only about 200 were available at the beginning of the conflict. This also kept regular French field artillery in a neglected position in the eyes of French emperor Napoleon III, with dire consequences during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71.
Cornelis Drebbel
One of the optical devices some historians believe Drebbel invented when he was working for the Duke of Buckingham was the compound microscope. The device appeared in Europe around 1620 with the earliest account being Dutch Ambassador Willem Boreel's 1619 visit to London where he saw a compound microscope in Drebbel's possession, described as an instrument about eighteen inches long, two inches in diameter, and supported on 3 brass dolphins. In 1621 Drebbel had a compound microscope with two convex lenses. Several of his contemporaries, including Christiaan Huygens, credited the invention of the compound microscope to Drebbel. The invention has many counter claims including Dutch spectacle-maker Johannes Zachariassen's claim that Drebbel stole the idea from him and his father, Zacharias Jansen, and claims that Galileo Galilei used his telescope after 1610 as a type of compound microscope. In 1624 Galileo saw Drebbel's design for a microscope in Rome and created an improved version of it to send to Federico Cesi, founder of the Accademia dei Lincei, who used it to illustrate "Apiarum", his book about bees.