The Mass Production of Death: Richard Jordan Gatling Invents the Gatling Gun and Sir Hiram Maxim Invents the Maxim Machine Gun
Overview
At the end of the nineteenth century, a new military technology appeared on the scene that would fundamentally change the way warfare was conducted, and which would lead to some of the most tremendous slaughters of human beings ever witnessed. That technology was the machine gun, and it changed warfare by making it possible for a handful of men to kill thousands in only minutes.
Background
For centuries, battles had been conducted between two massed armies, with the goal of the attacking army being to break the defensive line of the other. While bows and arrows, cavalry, and even artillery could be used to weaken the line of the massed units, warfare was still a matter of those two lines moving ever closer to one another until the moment of the charge, when the attackers would rush forward to try and overwhelm the weakened defensive positions.
Even with the development of infantry troops carrying rifles and muskets, the deciding factor in any battle was that moment when the combatants would close for hand-to-hand combat. With the development of the machine gun, all basic strategies and tactics of warfare had to be changed fundamentally, because now that moment of massed attack could only amount to foolishly heroic suicide.
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