Leonardo da Vinci sketched an organ gun, a multi-barrel weapon designed to fire repeated volleys.
The concept arranged many small gun barrels in rows or on a frame. The name comes from the visual resemblance to the pipes of a musical organ. By preparing several barrels together, soldiers could fire a concentrated burst and then reposition or reload the weapon.
Leonardo’s organ gun belongs to a wider Renaissance tradition of volley guns and multi-barrel artillery. It was a design study rather than a documented battlefield success, and the firing system would have presented serious problems involving recoil, ignition, loading, and coordination. It should not be confused with a modern machine gun, which uses a continuous repeating mechanism and became practical much later.