Leonardo da Vinci sketched an organ gun, a multi-barrel weapon intended to fire volleys.
The design is associated with Leonardo’s military engineering work in the late fifteenth century. It arranged many small cannons in rows or on a frame, allowing a group of barrels to be loaded and discharged in sequence or together. The name comes from the resemblance between the aligned gun barrels and the pipes of a musical organ.
A multi-barrel arrangement could increase the volume of fire compared with a single cannon, but it also created practical problems. Reloading, moving the heavy frame, controlling recoil, and keeping the barrels supplied with powder would have been difficult. Leonardo’s drawing therefore represents an engineering proposal, not proof of a battlefield weapon that he successfully manufactured.
Organ guns existed in various forms before and after Leonardo. They should not be confused with the modern automatic machine gun, which uses a different mechanism for repeated fire. Leonardo’s version is notable for combining artillery with a volley-firing layout.