Leonardo da Vinci designed an organ gun that combined several gun barrels on one rotating platform.
The organ gun, also called a volley gun, used rows of small barrels arranged together. The arrangement allowed multiple shots to be fired in succession or as a concentrated volley. Leonardo’s drawings show how a carriage could support and aim the weapon while making reloading more manageable than with a single large cannon.
The name comes from the resemblance between grouped barrels and the pipes of a musical organ. It does not mean the weapon used musical technology. The design belonged to a broader Renaissance effort to improve battlefield firepower through repeated firing and coordinated barrels.
Leonardo’s version was a proposal rather than a confirmed mass-produced weapon. It should also be distinguished from the later nineteenth-century Gatling gun, whose barrels rotate continuously around a central axis. Leonardo’s organ gun relied on grouped barrels and volley fire, not the same operating system.