The invention of Gatling gun, the
forefather of the modern day machine gun, was perhaps the greatest turning
point in the history of warfare. Ironically, the Gatling gun was invented in an
attempt to save lives, rather than take them. Dr. Richard Gatling noticed that
the reason of the death of a majority of the soldiers in the civil war was
illness, and not gunshots. So he invented a machine which could enable one man
to do as much battle as a hundred, thus reducing the number of people required
for war, in turn reducing the number of casualties. His goal wasn't completely
unsuccessful. Even through the number of lives Gatling gun took in the civil
war were aplenty, it also saved many lives owing to the lesser number of
personnel posted on the field.
Gatling, while experimenting with improving
the gun, developed an electric motor which could power the gun, which gave
birth to the mini-gun. Even though the Gatling gun was deemed obsolete way back
in the early 19th century, mini-guns went to be widely used on
airplanes and helicopters starting much later in the 1960s. Considered the
first successful rapid fire gun. The Gatling gun was the prototype that has
since evolved into various different models of the machine gun, which are still
widely in use today. For changing the face of modern warfare, the Gatling gun is
definitely one of the greatest inventions of mankind.
