Richard Gatling: Born Here, Changed Warfare Forever
North Carolina
About two-tenths of a mile north of this marker stands the site of the birthplace of Richard Jordan Gatling, born September twelfth, eighteen eighteen, on a plantation in Hertford County. As a young man he invented agricultural machinery, including a rice-seed planter that would later inspire a far more destructive device. Living in Indianapolis during the Civil War, Gatling patented his rapid-firing gun in eighteen sixty-two, a six-barreled weapon capable of firing two hundred rounds per minute.
He believed, naively, that a gun so lethal would shorten wars and reduce casualties. Before selling his patent to the Colt Firearms Company in eighteen seventy, he had developed versions firing far faster. The weapon he imagined as a tool of mercy became the model for the machine gun.
