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Gatling Gun. The precursor of the modern machine gun was invented in 1862 by Richard J. Gatling. Born in North Carolina, Gatling had moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he invented and manufactured agricultural machines. Previous attempts at designing an automatically reloading multishot gun were stymied by the loading and ignition techniques of the mid‐nineteenth century: bullet and gunpowder had to be loaded separately, and the powder ignited via an external percussion cap. The introduction of metal‐jacketed cartridges containing a percussive, explosive charge and a bullet in a single unit enabled Gatling to invent a self‐loading primitive machine gun.