What military device did Leonardo da Vinci design with 33 small cannons arranged like the pipes of an organ?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a 33-barrel organ gun with small cannons arranged in rows.

The weapon was called an organ gun because its grouped barrels resembled the pipes of a musical organ. Leonardo’s design arranged 33 gun barrels on a frame, allowing several to be fired together or in sequence. The layout was intended to increase the volume and speed of artillery fire compared with a single cannon.

The weapon belongs to Leonardo’s late-15th-century military studies. It reflects the period’s interest in improving gunpowder artillery, which was powerful but slow to reload and difficult to aim. A multi-barrel arrangement could provide a concentrated volley, although it also created problems involving weight, recoil, transport, and reloading.

The organ gun is not the same as Leonardo’s three-barrel cannon. The three-barrel design used three larger barrels, while the organ gun used 33 smaller ones. Neither became a standard battlefield weapon, but both demonstrate Leonardo’s systematic attempts to solve artillery’s practical limitations.