Leonardo da Vinci designed an organ gun with many small cannons arranged in rows.
An organ gun, also called a ribauldequin in some historical contexts, is a weapon made from multiple gun barrels fired in sequence or together. Leonardo’s design used several rows of small barrels mounted on a frame. The arrangement resembled the pipes of a musical organ, which explains the name.
The design was intended to deliver a concentrated volley of shot. Because the barrels could be loaded in advance, the weapon might provide repeated fire more quickly than a single cannon, although reloading would still be slow and complicated.
Leonardo’s organ-gun concept belongs to the military technology of the Renaissance, when inventors were experimenting with ways to make gunpowder weapons more mobile and effective. It should not be confused with the modern machine gun, which uses a different loading and firing system.