The machine gun's history can be traced back as far as the Civil War with the creation of the Gatling Gun. This gun used multiple rotating barrels to repeatedly fire .58-caliber rounds and capable at fireing 600 rounds per minute. The guns were rotated by a soldier using a hand crank, the faster they turned, the more rounds the gun could fire. However, this lead to problems with jamming, caused when the guns were rotated too quickly, leaving rounds stuck partway in the barrel. Due to this and problems with cost and accuracy, the gun never meet much use on the battlefield.
Though the Gatling Gun never saw much success in the battlefield, it paved the way for other inventors to attempt to create automatic guns.
The next major step in current machine gun design was the Gardner Gun, created in 1879. This gun had a single barrel design and was able to fire about 370 rounds per minute. Impressed, the British bought the gun to outfit it's military with them.
1885 Maxim Gun
In 1885, Hariam Maxim unvieled the Maxim Machine Gun, the first fully automatic gun, meaning it used the remaining force from the first shot to power the gun to fire the next shot. It was capable of fireing 500 rounds per minute, compaired to the repeat rifle's speed of about 5-6 rounds per minute.
The Maxim Gun would be the last universal machine gun used before WWI, as many strong nations would create thier own machine gun styles, some based off of the Maxim's design like the German Maschinengewehr and Russian Pulemyot Maxima, while others would go on to create thier own, independent designs like the British Vickers Gun. Yet, some of the minor European powers still used the Maxim Gun during WWI.
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