"Mary, if you were a four legged animal and you were pregnant for two years, what would you give birth to?"
"I don't know," said Mary, "but whatever it is, it would never be afraid of the dark."
Richard Jordan GatlingDied 26 Feb 1903 at age 84 (born 12 Sep 1818). U.S. inventor, whose Gatling gun (1861) was first successful machine gun, a crank-operated, rapid-fire multibarrel design combining reliability, high firing rate and ease of loading into a single device. His father was also an inventor, and while young, Richard helped him create machines for sowing cotton seeds and thinning cotton plants. In 1839, he designed a screw propeller for steamboats, but found a similar one had been previously patented. From 1844, he continued to invent improved agricultural machines, including one to plant grains, like rice and wheat (adapted from the cotton-sowing machine); a hemp-breaking machine (1850); and a steam plow (1857). The outbreak of the American Civil War spurred him to design firearms (1861).« |
