Gatling - Richard
Dr. Richard Jordan Gatling (September 12, 1818 - February 26, 1903) was an American inventor best known for his invention of the Gatling gun, the first successful machine gun.
The son of a farmer and inventor Jordan Gatling, Gatling was born in Hertford County, North Carolina and by the age of 21 had invented the screw propeller for steamboats, only to discover it had recently and independently been patented by John Ericsson. He worked as a fisherman, court clerk, teacher, and storekeeper. While running his own store, he invented a "wheat drill", a planting device, and manufactured these for sale. By 1845 he was earning enough from this device to devote himself to selling and marketing it full-time.
Gatling graduated from Ohio Medical College in 1850 but was more interested in continuing his career as an inventor than in practicing medicine. By the early 1850s he was successful enough in business to offer marriage to Jemima Sanders, 19 years his junior and the daughter of a prominent Indianapolis physician. They married on 24 October 1854. Her younger sister Zerelda was married to David Wallace the governor of Indiana, whose sons from a previous marriage included General Lew Wallace who would later find fame as the author of Ben Hur, and was also Governor of New Mexico.
He invented the Gatling gun after he noticed the majority of dead
from the American Civil War died of illness, rather than gunshots.
Gatling was for the south. In 1877, he wrote: "It occurred to me that if
I could invent a machine - a gun - which could by its rapidity of fire,
enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would,
to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies, and
consequently, exposure to battle and disease [would] be greatly
diminished."
After developing and demonstrating a working prototype, in 1862 he
founded the Gatling Gun Company in Indianapolis, Indiana to market the
gun. The first 6 production guns were destroyed during a fire in
December 1862 at the factory where they had been manufactured at
Gatling's expense. Undaunted Gatling arranged for another 13 to be
manufactured at the Cincinnati Type Factory. While General Benjamin F.
Butler bought 12 and Admiral David Dixon Porter bought one it wasn‘t
until 1866 that the US Government officially purchased Gatling guns. In
1870 he sold his patents for the Gatling gun to Colt. Gatling remained
president of the Gatling Gun Company until it was fully absorbed by Colt
in 1897. The hand-cranked Gatling gun was declared obsolete by the
United States Army in 1911.
In his later years, Gatling patented inventions to improve toilets,
bicycles, steam-cleaning of raw wool, pneumatic power, and many other
fields. World-famous, he was elected as the first president of the
American Association of Inventors and Manufacturers in 1891, serving for
six years. Although still quite wealthy at the time of his death, he
had made and lost several fortunes in bad investments.
In his last years, Gatling moved to St. Louis, Missouri to form a new
company for manufacturing his "steam plows," or tractors (as we would
call them today). While in New York City to visit his daughter and to
talk with his patent agency, Dr. Richard Jordan Gatling died at his
daughter's home on February 26, 1903. He is interred at the Crown Hill
National Cemetery in Indianapolis, Indiana.)
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