Leonardo da Vinci designed an early organ gun as a wagon carrying multiple small cannons.
The weapon is often called a 33-barrel organ because its barrels were arranged in rows on a wheeled platform. The layout resembled the pipes of a musical organ, which explains the name. Unlike a single cannon, the design could fire a volley of projectiles and then be repositioned.
Leonardo’s version belongs to a broader family of volley guns and organ guns used in Europe. Its practical advantage was concentrated fire, while its disadvantages included slow reloading, smoke, recoil, and the difficulty of aiming many barrels accurately. The system was therefore more a massed-fire concept than a modern rapid-fire weapon.
This design should not be confused with Leonardo’s armored fighting vehicle, which placed cannon around a protective conical shell. It also differs from a machine gun: the organ gun used separate gun barrels and was not an automatic repeating firearm. Leonardo’s drawing survives as a military-engineering proposal rather than evidence of a successful battlefield deployment.