Leonardo da Vinci designed an organ gun with multiple barrels arranged on a rotating platform.
The weapon is commonly called a 33-barrel organ, because Leonardo’s design shows three rows of eleven small cannons. The barrels were mounted on a broad frame that could be angled, and the arrangement was intended to fire a concentrated volley. A wheel-like system could help move the platform and bring successive rows into position.
The design addressed a practical problem in early firearms: individual guns were slow to reload. By preparing many barrels, an operator might deliver repeated or massed fire before reloading the whole weapon. However, there is no reliable evidence that Leonardo’s exact organ gun was built and successfully used in battle.
An organ gun is not the same as a modern machine gun. It lacks automatic loading and firing, and its barrels would still require separate preparation. The name comes from the visual similarity between grouped gun barrels and the pipes of a musical organ. Leonardo’s design reflects Renaissance experimentation with volley fire and mechanical aiming.