Leonardo da Vinci’s organ gun design used a row of barrels to fire several shots in succession. The weapon is associated with his late-15th-century studies of artillery and battlefield engineering.
The name comes from the resemblance between the parallel barrels and the pipes of a musical organ. Leonardo’s arrangement aimed to increase the number of projectiles released in a short period. Some versions of the concept placed many small barrels on a frame, allowing them to be loaded and fired in an organized sequence.
An organ gun is not the same as a modern machine gun. Leonardo’s design still depended on gunpowder ignition, manual handling, and the limitations of Renaissance metallurgy. It also should not be confused with a single large cannon or an arquebus, which was a handheld firearm. As with many of Leonardo’s military sketches, the surviving evidence mainly documents a design concept rather than a weapon he personally manufactured and deployed.