What type of cannon did Leonardo da Vinci design with several barrels to fire repeated volleys?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a multi-barreled cannon intended to fire repeated volleys.

The concept arranged several small guns in a row or grouped formation. After one set of barrels fired, the weapon could be reloaded while another set was brought into action. This addressed a major weakness of Renaissance artillery: the long delay between shots while crews prepared a cannon again.

Leonardo’s military notebooks contain many ideas for improving firepower, mobility, and the organization of weapons. His multi-barreled design was not the same as a modern machine gun. Each barrel still required its own loading and firing process, and the practical handling of a large grouped weapon would have been difficult.

The design is often connected with the later “organ gun” family of weapons, which used multiple barrels to produce concentrated fire. Leonardo’s importance here is as a designer who recognized that several barrels could increase battlefield fire rate before modern automatic mechanisms existed.