Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that can help answer the question.
Query: Who invented the first machine gun?
The machine gun is defined as a "fully automatic" firearm, usually designed to fire rifle cartridges in quick succession from an ammunition belt or large-capacity magazine. The world's first true machine gun, the Maxim gun, was invented in 1884 by the American inventor Hiram Stevens Maxim, who devised a recoil power of the previously fired bullet to reload rather than the crude method of a manually operated, hand-cranked firearm. With the ability to fire 750 rounds per minute, Maxim's other great innovation was the use of water cooling to reduce overheating. Maxim's gun was widely adopted and derivative designs were used on all sides during World War I.
Two notable artillery-sized volley guns were developed in the mid-19th century, although neither was particularly successful in practice. Developed in the 1860s and based on an 1850s design by a captain Fafschamps, the French mitrailleuse is an example of a multi-barreled volley gun that could fire all of its barrels simultaneously or sequentially over a short period of time. Also developed in the 1860s, General Origen Vandenburgh of the New York State Militia designed a weapon that had eighty five parallel .50 caliber rifle barrels. After failing to sell the weapon to the United Kingdom, he reportedly sold a small number to the Confederate States of America, although there is no record that they were actually used. One Vandenburgh gun was located at Fort Fisher, North Carolina, and another reportedly at Salisbury, NC.
The Second Great War also saw in use machine guns that closely resemble our timeline's equipment. The Confederate machine gun described as firing so fast it sounded like "a giant tearing a sail in half", most definitely points towards the "Maschinengewehr 42". The USA appears to have been using .30 caliber air-cooled machine guns resembling the M1919 Browning machine gun. It is also stated that the USA and CSA are equipped with similar .50 caliber pieces that in our timeline can only be the Browning M2. This is odd in that this timeline's John Browning was a Mormon born in Ogden, Utah.
A few hand-held volley guns were also developed during the 18th and 19th centuries. One of the most distinctive was the ""duck's foot"" volley gun, a pistol with multiple barrels arranged in a splayed pattern, so that the firer could spray a sizable area with a single shot. The principle behind this type of pistol is one of confrontation by one person against a group; hence, it was popular among bank guards, prison wardens and sea captains in the early 19th century.
The use of rapid firing machine guns and long range breech loading artillery quickly led to camouflaging of vehicles and positions. Artillery pieces were soon painted in contrasting bold colours to obscure their outlines. Another early trend was building observation trees, made of steel with bark camouflage. Such trees became popular with the British and French armies in 1916. The observation tree was invented by French painter Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scévola, who led the French army's camouflage unit, the first of its kind in any army. He also invented painted canvas netting to hide machine gun positions, and this was quickly taken up for hiding equipment and gun positions from 1917, 7 million square yards being used by the end of the war.
The first carburetor was invented by Samuel Morey in 1826. The first person to patent a carburetor for use in a petroleum engine was Siegfried Marcus with his 6 July 1872 patent for a device which mixes fuel with air.
Other robotic arms were invented in 1961 by Unimate, evolving to the PUMA arm. In 1963, the Rancho arm was designed, along with many others in the future. Even though Joseph Engelberger marketed Unimate, George Devol invented the robotic arm. It focused on using Unimate for tasks that are harmful to humans. In 1959, a 2700 pound Unimate prototype was installed at the General Motors die-casting plant in Trenton, New Jersey. The Unimate 1900 series became the very first produced robotic arm for die-casting. During a very short period of time, it had produced at least 450 robotic arms were being used. It still remains one of the most significant contributions in the last one hundred years. As years went by, technology seemed to evolve, helping to build better robotic arms. Not only companies invented different robotic arms, but so did colleges. In 1969, Victor Scheinman from Stanford University invented the Stanford arm, where it had electronically powered arms that could move through six axes. Marvin Minsky, from MIT, built a robotic arm for the office of Naval Research, possibly for underwater explorations. This arm had twelve single degree freedom joints in this electric- hydraulic- high dexterity arm. Robots were initially created to perform a series of tasks that humans found boring, harmful, and tedious.
Gunports cut in the hull of ships had been introduced as early as 1501. According to tradition the inventor was a Breton shipwright called Descharges, but it is just as likely to have been a gradual adaptation of loading ports in the stern of merchant vessels that had already been in use for centuries. Initially, the gunports were used to mount heavy so-called stern chasers pointing aft, but soon gun ports migrated to the sides of ships. This made possible coordinated volleys from all the guns on one side of a ship, broadsides, for the first time in history, at least in theory. Guns in the 16th century were considered to be in fixed positions and were intended to be fired independently rather than in concerted volleys. It was not until the 1590s that the word "broadside" in English was commonly used to refer to gunfire from the side of a ship rather than the ship's side itself.
The modern form of the guillotine was invented shortly before the French Revolution with the aim of creating a quick and painless method of execution requiring little skill on the part of the operator. Decapitation by guillotine became a common mechanically assisted form of execution.
Machine guns diverged into heavier and lighter designs. The later model water-cooled Maxim guns and its derivatives the MG 08 and the Vickers, as well as the American M1917 Browning machine gun, were all substantial weapons. The .303 Vickers, for example, weighed 33 lb (15 kg) and was mounted on a tripod that brought the total weight to 50 lb (23 kg). The heavier designs could, and in some cases did, fire for days on end, mainly in fixed defensive positions to repel infantry attacks. These machine guns were typically mounted on tripods and were water-cooled, and a well-trained crew could fire nonstop for hours, given sufficient ammunition, replacement barrels and cooling water. Carefully positioned heavy machine guns could stop an attacking force before they reached their objectives.
While light gun shooters often have a first-person perspective, they are distinct from first-person shooters, which use conventional input devices for movement. It is not clear exactly when the earliest such first-person shooter video game was created. There are two claimants, "Spasim" and "Maze War". The uncertainty about which was first stems from the lack of any accurate dates for the development of "Maze War"—even its developer cannot remember exactly. In contrast, the development of "Spasim" is much better documented and the dates more certain. The initial development of "Maze War" probably occurred in the summer of 1973. A single player made their way through a simple maze of corridors rendered using fixed perspective. Multiplayer capabilities, with players attempting to shoot each other, were probably added later in 1973 (two machines linked via a serial connection) and in the summer of 1974 (fully networked).
The machinery factories came into existence in the course of the Industrial Revolution. Late 18th century most production machines, were still made of wood and manufactured in local workshops. The first industrial factories, such as cotton mills and cotton weavers, started their own workshops, where clockmakers, instrument makers, joiners and cabinet makers were employed to build and maintain the production machines.
In 1769 the first steam-powered automobile capable of human transportation was built by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot.
American mechanic Walter Hunt is regarded as the inventor of the safety pin that bears resemblance to those used today. The safety pin included a clasp that covered the point and kept it from opening, and a circular twist at the bend to act as a spring and hold it in place. Charles Rowley (Birmingham, England) independently patented a similar safety pin in October 1849, although the company no longer makes these.
To the extent that cultural contributions comprise invention, innovation, and progress, Springfield has been, historically, one of the nation's most innovative cities. In 1819, inventor Thomas Blanchard invented the lathe in Springfield, which would catalyze manufacturing developments now known the world over as interchangeable parts and the assembly line. In 1825, Blanchard also built the first American car, a "horseless carriage," which was powered by steam. In 1844, inventor Charles Goodyear perfected and patented his process for making vulcanized rubber in Springfield - as of 2011, as it has been for many years previous, Goodyear's name is known the world over for rubber production. In 1868, inventor Margaret E. Knight invented a machine for folding and gluing flat-bottomed paper bags.
Joseph Montigny further improved the weapon, completing the transportable 37-barrels Montigny mitrailleuse (also known as the "Fafschamps-Montigny mitrailleuse") in 1863. From 1859, Joseph Montigny proposed his design to Napoleon III, which led to the development of the French Reffye mitrailleuse, designed by Jean-Baptiste Verchère de Reffye with the collaboration of Montigny, and which was adopted by the French Army in 1865. The invention of Fafschamps thus became the basis of the "mitrailleuse", which was used by the French in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Initially kept under wraps as a secret weapon, it became widely used in battle by French artillery during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71).
In 1654, Otto von Guericke invented the first vacuum pump and conducted his famous Magdeburg hemispheres experiment, showing that teams of horses could not separate two hemispheres from which the air had been partially evacuated. Robert Boyle improved Guericke's design and with the help of Robert Hooke further developed vacuum pump technology. Thereafter, research into the partial vacuum lapsed until 1850 when August Toepler invented the Toepler Pump and Heinrich Geissler invented the mercury displacement pump in 1855, achieving a partial vacuum of about 10 Pa (0.1 Torr). A number of electrical properties become observable at this vacuum level, which renewed interest in further research.
The first microphone that enabled proper voice telephony was the (loose-contact) carbon microphone (then called transmitter). This was independently developed around 1878 by David Edward Hughes in England and Emile Berliner and Thomas Edison in the US. Although Edison was awarded the first patent in mid-1877, Hughes had demonstrated his working device in front of many witnesses some years earlier, and most historians credit him with its invention.
A machine gun is still referred to as a "mitrailleuse" in French, following the pattern set by the adoption of the "Mitrailleuse Hotchkiss" in 1897. The FN 5.56 mm NATO machine gun, the Minimi, derives its name from the term "Mini-Mitrailleuse", "small machine gun". Submachine guns may be called "mitraillettes", the diminutive of "mitrailleuse", although they are also called "pistolets mitrailleurs" ("mitrailleuse pistols").
It is generally acknowledged that the first really practical automobiles with petrol/gasoline-powered internal combustion engines were completed almost simultaneously by several German inventors working independently: Karl Benz built his first automobile in 1885 in Mannheim. Benz was granted a patent for his automobile on 29 January 1886, and began the first production of automobiles in 1888, after Bertha Benz, his wife, had proved – with the first long-distance trip in August 1888, from Mannheim to Pforzheim and back – that the horseless coach was absolutely suitable for daily use. Since 2008 a Bertha Benz Memorial Route commemorates this event.
Eventually communication reached an electronic state, and the telegraph was invented. Harrison Dyar, who sent electrical sparks through chemically treated paper tape to burn dots and dashes, invented the first telegraph in the USA. The telegraph was the first piece of equipment that allowed users to send electronic messages. A more developed version came from Samuel Morse, whose telegraph printed code on tape and was operated using a keypad and an earpiece. The pattern of communication soon became known as Morse code.
Under a contract with the U.S. Army, Colt Arms built the Model 1895 ten-barrel variant of the Gatling Gun, capable of firing 800–900 .30 Army rounds per minute, and used with great effect at the Battle of San Juan Hill. The M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun or "Potato Digger" was built by Colt. The Colt–Browning was one of the first gas-operated machine guns, originally invented by John Browning. It became the first automatic machine gun adopted by the United States and saw limited use by the U.S. Marine Corps at the invasion of Guantánamo Bay and by the 1st Volunteer Infantry in the Santiago campaign during the Spanish–American War. In 1901, Elizabeth Jarvis Colt sold the company to a group of outside investors based in New York and Boston.
"The Gun" is a basketball shooting machine that was invented by John Joseph in 1998, although the first Basketball Gun was not purchased until 1999 by the University of Florida. And now almost 24,000 basketball guns are being used by high schools, colleges, and the NBA. Joseph had previously invented a non-automated rebounding device known as the “Shoot-A-Way,” for which he filed a patent for in 1984. Like the Shoot-A-Way, the Gun has a “collection net [that] can be adjusted from 11 feet to 14 feet to force players to shoot with the right amount of arch depending on where they are shooting from.” Although unlike the Shoot-A-Way, which used tracks to return the ball to the player, the Gun returns the ball by shooting the ball back to the player at a previously set speed and time, this function allows for the player to take up to 1800 shots every hour. This function also allows for a ball to be passed every two seconds, which allows a player to take 200 shots in 10 minutes. Currently there are two models of the basketball Gun invented by John Joseph; the Gun 6000 and the Gun 8000.
He first developed his passion for guns when he received his own rifle from his father at the age of 12. As a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he converted an empty room into a machine shop and, in 1938 came up with initial designs for what eventually became the experimental T10/T23E1 light machine gun for the United States Army, executing the drawings on his in-laws’ dining room table. U.S. Army Ordnance officials liked the gun design so much they launched Ruger into becoming a full-time gun designer. Over a 53-year career, Ruger helped invent and patent dozens of models of sporting firearms, which were instant and enduring successes. From the start, his company stressed mechanical innovation and safety.
In 1868, the first version of his machine-gun was finished and a demonstration of its capacity was held on Ladugårdsgärdet, Stockholm in front of the Swedish Defense Minister; G.R. Abel. After a couple of modifications and improvements, he patented the multi-barrel, lever-actuated, machine gun and it was bought into the Swedish army as Kulspruta m/1873. Same year, the machine-gun was shown on the 1873 Vienna World's Fair. To reach international success, Palmcrantz met Nordenfelt in 1875 and the latter's company became his British agent. They agreed to market the machine-gun under the then well known Nordenfelt brand and his second model kulspruta m/1875 would later be known as the "Nordenfelt machine-gun" after his financial backer, Thorsten Nordenfelt. . It was Nordenfelt who convinced Palmcrantz to increase the caliber of his gun to one inch, making it a suitable weapon for use against the growing threat of torpedo boats.