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The first machine gun was the Defense Gun, invented by James Puckle in England in 1718. It was a single barrel flintlock gun with multiple revolving chambers. It was operated by a hand crank. The intended use was repelling boarders on ships. The Puckle gun was not used very widely and failed commercially.

An American inventor, Dr. Richard J. Gatling, invented in 1861 and patented in 1862 the hand-cranked multibarrel gun that can be considered the first cartridge machine gun. It was used in the American Civil War.

The first commercially successful self-operating machine gun was invented by another American, who later emigrated to England, Hiram Stevens Maxim. Maxim formed a company to produce his gun in 1896. This company later became Vickers.

Maxim's design was highly successful and found many buyers. The Maxim gun (Vickers gun in England) saw service on all sides of WWI and many conflicts around the world afterwards.

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Although there were earlier rapid-fire weapons, they all used multiple barrels and a hand crank. The first true machine gun which used the recoil from one shot to chamber and fire the next was the Maxim gun invented by the British inventor Sir Hiram Maxim in 1884.

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The first self-powered machine gun the Maxim gun was invented by Sir Hiram Maxim in 1884.

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13y ago
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Hiram Maxim invented the self-powered machine gun in 1886. This was the first weapon to qualify in modern terms as a machine gun.

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Dylan

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Q: Who created the machine gun?
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