Leonardo da Vinci designed a 33-barrel weapon known as an organ gun as an early rapid-fire gun concept.
The weapon arranged many small cannon barrels in a row or grouped formation. Its nickname comes from the resemblance between the parallel barrels and the pipes of a church organ. The design was intended to fire a volley of projectiles more quickly than a single cannon could be reloaded.
This was not a modern machine gun: each barrel still required separate loading, and the design depended on gunpowder artillery technology of the Renaissance. Leonardo’s sketch belongs to his wider work on military engineering, which included fortified vehicles, bridges, and siege weapons.
The organ gun should not be confused with Leonardo’s giant crossbow or his multi-barrel mortar concepts. Its defining feature is the group of many parallel barrels designed for concentrated fire.