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.
Medusa Model 47 (multi caliber revolver)
The company that created the Medusa M47 is Phillips & Rodgers Inc., designed principally by Jonathan W. Philips Jr and Roger A. Hunziker, who produced a relatively small numbers of the hand gun in the late 1990s. Jonathan W. Phillips was a gunsmith and he also worked as a computer scientist for NASA. He was mainly responsible for the designing of the cylinder, extractor and ejector mechanism as well as the system that is used for positioning the cartridges. He applied for two patents on February 3, 1993 for the “Ejector and cartridge positioner for revolvers” and the "Ejector and cartridge positioner". He later filed for a patent that was called "Bore for weapons" on February 27, 1996 that online the rifling that the Medusa was going to use. Roger A. Hunziker designed the firing pin mechanism for the Medusa. He filed for a patent on August 1, 1995 for the "Firing pin mechanism". Phillips & Rodgers Inc. not only produced the Medusa M47 revolver but they also made several conversion cylinders for revolvers made by Smith and Wesson, Colt, and Ruger. Very few of the these revolvers were actually produced.