The problem kept tantalizing inventors for years, and some of them came up with ingenious-but not very practicable-solutions for it. But since PuckleвЂ™s patent drawing shows that his gun was supposed to fire round bullets against Christians and square ones against infidels, there is some doubt about his seriousness. But inventors kept working on the problem which had fascinated mechanically minded men ever since Leonardo da Vinci had made a sketch for a multi-barreled вЂњorgan gun.вЂќ In 1718 an Englishman named James Puckle was granted a patent for what, on paper, looks like a workable machine gun. After the failure of the coffee-mill gun Lincoln stopped backing machine guns and concentrated on repeating rifles. LincolnвЂ™s efforts to persuade his slow-thinking, slow-moving Army Ordnance Department to adopt more modern weapons have been described by Robert V. A few weeks later an army officer, speaking in New York at Cooper Union, said: вЂњOne of these guns was brought to bear on a squadron of cavalry at 800 yards, and it cut them to pieces terribly, forcing them to fly.вЂќ But Geary was not satisfied with the new gunsвЂ™ performance, finding them вЂњinefficient and unsafe to the operators,вЂќ so he returned them to the Washington Arsenal, where they were later disposed of as old metal for eight dollars each. GearyвЂ™s machine guns were first fired in actual battle in the Shenandoah Valley at Middleburg, Virginia, on March 29. The new weapon, whose inventor is now unknown, was officially named the Union Repeating Gun but everyone, including President Lincoln, who had urged the Army to adopt it, called it the вЂњcoffee-millвЂќ gun because it looked like an old-fashioned coffee grinder. GearyвЂ™s regiment had two strange-looking new weapons into which cylindrical steel containers loaded with MiniГ© balls, powder charges, and primed with percussion caps, were fed through a hopper while the single-barreled gun was operated by a hand crank. On February 7, Geary shelled Harpers Ferry, and a few weeks later marched in and recaptured the town from the Confederates.ДЄt some time between January 2 and February 24, 1862, somewhere along the shores of the Potomac, one of the unknown Confederate soldiers who was killed in these minor skirmishes may have been the worldвЂ™s first victim of machine-gun fire. Geary of Kansas fame, was guarding a 24-mile stretch of the river, and there were occasional skirmishes between the opposing armies. The 28th Pennsylvania Volunteer Regiment, under command of Colonel John W. All was not quiet along the Potomac early in 1862.

Gatling gun used in civil war