What 1480s Leonardo da Vinci design used 33 small cannons in one firing platform?

Leonardo da Vinci’s 1480s multi-barrel weapon design used 33 small cannons arranged in a single firing platform.

The design is commonly known as Leonardo’s organ gun because its rows of barrels resemble the pipes of a musical organ. Leonardo proposed mounting the barrels on a broad frame so that many shots could be fired in succession or together. The arrangement was intended to increase the rate of fire compared with a single cannon.

The weapon appears in Leonardo’s military engineering studies, made during his service to Ludovico Sforza in Milan. As with many of his military concepts, the drawing is evidence of design work rather than proof of completed construction or battlefield use.

The organ-gun idea is sometimes described as an early machine gun, but that label can mislead. It had multiple separate barrels and did not have the automatic loading and firing mechanism of a modern machine gun. Its tactical value would also have depended on reloading time and the technology of Renaissance gunpowder weapons.