Leonardo da Vinci designed an organ gun with a long row of firing barrels.
The weapon is commonly known as the 33-barrel organ or organ gun. Leonardo arranged multiple small cannons in a fan-shaped or organ-like formation so that several projectiles could be fired in sequence or together. The arrangement was intended to increase the volume of fire and make reloading more efficient than handling isolated guns one at a time.
The name comes from the visual resemblance between the parallel barrels and the pipes of a musical organ, not from the use of music. It is also called a volley gun, a broader term for a weapon that fires several shots as a group. Leonardo’s design belongs to the period when artillery engineers were experimenting with ways to improve battlefield firepower.
The weapon should not be confused with a modern machine gun. It had no automatic ammunition feed or self-loading mechanism, and its barrels still required manual preparation. As with many of Leonardo’s military inventions, surviving drawings document the concept more securely than any successful construction or combat deployment.