The Puckle gun is an early crew-served rapid-fire weapon patented in 1718 by the English inventor, lawyer and writer James Puckle, built as a manually operated flintlock revolver mounted on a tripod, with a hand-cranked cylinder holding multiple pre-loaded chambers that could be fired in succession without reloading each shot individually. Its inventive design earned it a description as a machine gun in a 1722 shipping manifest, nearly a century and a half before that term came into general use for automatic weapons, though the Puckle gun's mechanism remained fully manual rather than truly automatic. Despite the novelty of the concept, the weapon was never adopted for military service and saw no combat use, with historical records indicating that only around two examples were ever actually built, leaving it a curiosity in the early history of rapid-fire weapon design rather than a fielded weapon of war.
Facts
Weapon Class Introduced Year Classification
Service StatusPrototype or Experimental 1 Weapon Class
Weapon Class (category) Sources
1. Wikipedia: Puckle Gun
WikipediaLead section
The Puckle gun (also known as the defence gun) was a primitive crew-served, manually operated flintlock revolver patented in 1718 by James Puckle (1667-1724), a British inventor, lawyer and writer.
service status
Despite the novelty of the concept, the weapon was never adopted for military service and saw no combat use, with historical records indicating that only around two examples were ever actually built, leaving it a curiosity in the early history of rapid-fire weapon design rather than a fielded weapon of war
View the Source Wikidata: Puckle Gun
Wikidata Q4789703, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)View the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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