Leonardo da Vinci sketched an organ gun with 33 gun barrels.
The organ gun was a multi-barrelled firearm concept arranged in three rows of 11 barrels. The name comes from the visual resemblance to the pipes of a musical organ. Leonardo’s design was intended to fire a broad volley of small cannon or firearm projectiles, giving it a greater rate of fire than a single-barrel weapon.
The barrels were mounted on a wheeled carriage, and the arrangement was designed for battlefield use. The concept belongs to the family of volley guns, which concentrate several barrels in one weapon rather than creating a continuous automatic firing cycle.
Leonardo did not invent the modern machine gun. The organ gun required manual loading and firing, and its practical operation would have been slow and difficult. Its significance is as an early attempt to solve the problem of delivering repeated fire with a mechanically organized cluster of barrels.