Billinghurst-Requa Battery Gun: The First Machine Gun

By T. Logan Metesh

The Billinghurst-Requa battery gun is an unusual piece of armament that resulted from an equally unusual partnership between two men from New York: William Billinghurst, a gunsmith, and Josephus Requa, a dentist.

At the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, soldiers marched off to battle with single-shot, muzzle-loading rifles. Multiple designs of shoulder-fired repeating arms would be invented and pressed into service before the war’s conclusion in 1865, eventually replacing muzzleloaders altogether in the coming decades.

Applying the same advancements in repeating firepower to larger gun batteries was next in line for development. Richard …Read the Rest

Source:: Tactical Life