The Gatling gun is one of the best-known early rapid-fire weapons and a forerunner of the modern machine gun named after its inventor Richard Gatling. The Gatling gun's operation centered on a cyclic multi-barrel design which facilitated cooling and synchronized the firing/reloading sequence. Each barrel fired a single shot when it reached a certain point in the cycle, after which it ejected the spent cartridge, loaded a new round, and allowed the barrel to cool allowing higher rates of fire without the barrel overheating.
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This is an etymology page: a page detailing the origins of terminology used in the series in regards to real world culture and history.
