The Gardner 5 Barrel Machine Gun,First designed in 1881, the Gardner 5 barrel machine was the invent

The Gardner 5 Barrel Machine Gun,First designed in 1881, the Gardner 5 barrel machine was the invention of William Gardner of Toledo, Ohio.  Early Gardner was famous for inventing a two barrel machine gun that found a home with the British Army.  Gardner designed a five barrel gun with the intent of increasing the firepower of his earlier design.  Like most machine guns of the day the Gardner gun was crank driven.  One hundred .45 caliber in a vertical cartridge feeder which had 5 banks of 20.  When the crank was turned the cartridges would drop into the breech five at a time.  When fired each barrel would discharge in succession allowing for quick five shot bursts with each turn of the crank. Empty cartridges dropped out of the bottom of the receiver. In standard setup the Gardner gun would fire the five barrels in a sequence of  3 - 2 - 4 - 1 - 5, counting from left to right when viewed from the rear.  However, this could be easily modified to allow the barrels to fire in whatever sequence the user wanted.  Incredibly, the Gardner gun could be set on “volley fire” where all five barrels fired simultaneously with each turn of the crank (this feature was discontinued in later models).Once again the US Army was uninterested in the Gardner gun, but the new design attracted the attention of the British Army.  At British testing trials the Gardner gun was shown to have a peak firing rate of over 800 rounds per minute.  A more practical firing rate was determined to be around 300 - 350 rounds per minute.  Also during the trials, the gun fired 16,754 rounds before a failure occurred.  As part of the testing, the gun was left uncleaned and left out in the weather for a week before testing resumed.  Despite the punishment the Gardner gun continued to work reliably.A fast shooting and reliable machine gun, the only flaw in the Gardner design was its five barrel configuration, which limited accuracy.  Because it used five barrels which fired successively, it was difficult to zero in the gun, especially at longer ranges.   Regardless of its drawbacks the British accepted the design in 1882, and both the British Army and British Navy would receive a number of pieces. -- source link

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