RICHARD

See also:

• JORDAN (the down-comer; Arab. esh-Sheri'a, the watering-place)
• JORDAN, CAMILLE (1771—1821)
• JORDAN, DOROTHEA (1762—1816)
• JORDAN, THOMAS (1612 ?–1685)
• JORDAN, WILHELM (1819–1904)

JORDAN

See also:

• RICHARD JORDAN GATLING (1818–1903)

GATLING (1818–1903)  , American inventor, was born in Hertford county, North Carolina, on the 12th of September 1818 . He was the son of a well-to-do planter and slave-owner, from whom he inherited a genius for mechanical invention and whom he assisted in the construction and perfecting of machines for sowing cotton seeds, and for thinning the plants . He was well educated and was successively a school teacher and a merchant, spending all his spare time in developing new inventions . In 1839 he perfected a practical screw propeller for steam-boats, only _to find that a patent had been granted to John Ericsson for a similar invention a few months earlier . He established himself in St Louis, Missouri, and taking the cotton-sowing machine as a basis he adapted it for sowing rice, wheat and other grains, and established factories for its manufacture . The introduction of these machines did much to revolutionize the agricultural system in the country . Becoming interested in the study of medicine through an attack of smallpox, he completed a course at the Ohio Medical College, taking his M.D. degree in 185o . In the same year he invented a hemp-breaking machine, and in 1857 a steam plough . At the outbreak of the Civil War he was living in Indianapolis, and devoted himself at once to the perfecting of fire-arms . In 1861 he conceived the idea of the rapid fire machine-gun which is associated with his name . By 1862 he had succeeded in perfecting a gun that would discharge 350 shots per minute; but the war was practically over before the Federal authorities consented to its official adoption . From that time, however, the success of the invention was assured, and within ten years it had been adopted by almost every civilized nation .

Gatling died in New York City on the 26th of February 1903 .