Читать книгу Inventions of the Great War - A. Russell Bond - Страница 20

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But Maxim's was by no means the first machine-gun. During the Civil War a Chicago physician brought out a very ingenious ten-barreled gun, the barrels of which were fired one after the other by the turning of a hand-crank. Although Dr. Gatling was a graduate of a medical school, he was far more fond of tinkering with machinery than of doling out pills. He invented a number of clever mechanisms, but the one that made him really famous was that machine-gun. At first our government did not take the invention seriously. The gun was tried out in the war, but whenever it went into battle it was fired not by soldiers but by a representative of Dr. Gatling's company, who went into the army to demonstrate the worth of the invention. Not until long after was the Gatling gun officially adopted by our army. Then it was taken up by many of the European armies as well.

Although many other machine-guns were invented, the Gatling was easily the best and most serviceable, until the Maxim invention made its appearance, and even then it held its own for many years; but eventually it had to succumb. The Maxim did not have to be cranked: it fired itself, which was a distinct advantage; and then, instead of being a bundle of guns all bound up into a single machine, Maxim's was a single-barreled gun and hence was much lighter and could be handled much more easily.