The Puckle Gun

I've mentioned in the past the Puckle gun, an early 18th century patent for a repeating firearm something rather like a Gatling gun. I've also written that it was never actually made, because the machining technology didn't yet exist.

To my surprise, I have been pointed to a number of sources that indicate that Puckle actually had a couple of prototypes made, and that they worked. Harold Leslie Peterson's The Treasury of the Gun (1962), p. 205, indicates that 1722 London Journal accounts indicated that one fired 63 rounds in seven minutes in the rain. Okay, that's not a machine gun, but nine rounds a minute is a major technological breakthrough compared to muskets that fired three rounds a minute, and not at all if it was raining. Anthony Smith, Machine Gun: The Story of the Men and the Weapon that Changed the Face of War (St. Martins Press, 2003), 18, tells the same story, and identifies the date of the article in the London Journal as March 31, 1722.

According to Great Britain Patent Office, Patents for Inventions: Abridgements of Specifications (1859), p. 26, Puckle received patent number 418 on May 15, 1717 for his design.

UPDATE: I made reference to a 1722 patent to James Kerr. That was actually the patent number, not the date.