Leonardo da Vinci designed an organ gun, a rotating platform carrying multiple small cannons arranged in rows.
The device is associated with Leonardo’s late-15th-century military studies and is sometimes called a 33-barrel organ because one famous design contains three rows of eleven guns. The nickname refers to the visual resemblance between the barrels and the pipes of a musical organ.
The guns were intended to fire in sequence. While one row was being fired, another could cool or be reloaded, offering a possible advantage over a single cannon. The platform could also be turned to aim the weapon across a broader arc.
The design was never a modern machine gun: it required separate loading, ignition, and human operation for each barrel. Nor is it the same as an organ musical instrument. Leonardo’s concept reflects a Renaissance effort to increase the rate of artillery fire through organization and mechanical arrangement rather than through automatic ammunition systems.