The Gardner gun was an early type of machine gun. It had one or two barrels, was fed from a vertical magazine or hopper and was operated by a crank. When the crank was turned, a feed arm positioned a cartridge in the breech, the bolt closed and the weapon fired. Turning the crank further opened the breechblock and extracted the spent round. Public trials were made in 1879 where it was able to fire 10 000 rounds in 27 minutes, which impressed British military leaders who purchased it the next year.

Early machine guns