11 Facts About Machine gun

Machine gun is a fully automatic, rifled autoloading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges.

Unlike semi-automatic firearms, which require one trigger pull per round fired, a machine gun is designed to continue firing for as long as the trigger is held down.

The Russian PK machine gun is a more modern example.

In 1828, a swivel Machine gun that did not need cleaning or muzzle-loading and was capable of being made to any dimensions and used as an ordinary cannon at a moment's notice and firing 40 shots a minute was invented by a native of Ireland.

The Machine gun was reportedly breech-loading, fed by cartridges from some kind of hopper and could fire 34 barrels of one-inch calibre 4 or 6 times for a total of 136 or 204 shots a minute.

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The Machine gun could be fired by percussion or electricity, according to the author.

Gatling Machine gun, patented in 1861 by Richard Jordan Gatling, was the first to offer controlled, sequential fire with mechanical loading.

The Gatling Machine gun was used most successfully to expand European colonial empires, since against poorly equipped indigenous armies it did not face such threats.

In 1864, in the aftermath of the Second Schleswig War, Denmark started a program intended to develop a Machine gun that used the recoil of a fired shot to reload the firearm though a working model would not be produced until 1888.

The Maxim machine gun used the recoil power of the previously fired bullet to reload rather than being hand-powered, enabling a much higher rate of fire than was possible using earlier designs such as the Nordenfelt and Gatling weapons.

Maxim's Machine gun was widely adopted, and derivative designs were used on all sides during the First World War.