Leonardo da Vinci proposed an organ gun with several barrels arranged in parallel rows.
The design used multiple small-caliber barrels mounted together. The arrangement was intended to allow a group of shots to be fired in sequence or in a concentrated volley, increasing battlefield firepower compared with a single-loading cannon.
The name comes from the visual resemblance between the aligned barrels and the pipes of a musical organ. Leonardo’s version belongs to a broader family of multi-barrel gun concepts that appeared in Europe during the development of early firearms.
An organ gun was not a machine gun in the modern sense. It lacked modern ammunition, automatic loading, and continuous self-powered firing. Leonardo’s contribution was a proposed arrangement of multiple barrels, not a modern automatic weapon.