Leonardo da Vinci designed a 33-barrel organ, a multiple-cannon arrangement mounted on a rotating frame.
The weapon used three rows of eleven small guns. The barrels were arranged like the pipes of an organ, which explains the unusual name. Leonardo’s proposal aimed to increase the rate of fire by allowing one row to fire while another was being loaded or repositioned.
The frame was designed to be tilted and moved on wheels. By spreading the barrels across a broad structure, the machine could deliver a concentrated volley rather than relying on a single cannon. The design belongs to Leonardo’s broader work on military machines in the late fifteenth century.
It was not a machine gun in the modern sense. The barrels still required individual loading, and the design did not provide continuous automatic fire. Modern reconstructions and popular illustrations sometimes exaggerate its battlefield practicality, but the concept clearly shows Leonardo applying coordinated firing and reload cycles to artillery.