State

The Inventor of the Gatling Gun Korn in llt‘rlfor«l County. Richard (iiilliup became internationally known because of his inventions, the outstanding ono being the fa¬ mous guu which bears his name. By l.Otl ICOfiliRS In American slang, "gal" is a fa¬ miliar word. All over the country men and boys call a pistol or a revolver a "gat.” For a long lime gangsters have used the word lo refer lo ihe machine guns of ihe police. Later they used "gat" in referring lo any small gun. liven before gangsters appropriated the word, the Negroes of the South coined "gal" to mean any frightful gun. The Gatling gun. first machine-gun ever made, was invented by Dr. Richard Gatling and was first used by General Butler against the Con¬ federate forces in ihe last days of the War Between the States. This weapon was so much more forceful than any¬ thing that had been used up to 1865 that its power became quickly known. Talcs of its super-power soon reached the Southern Negroes who were terri¬ fied by the rumors and magnified them many times. They even nude up doggerels about the super gun and were the first ones lo call it a "gat.” Dr. Richard Jordan Gulling who invented the famous Gatling gun grew up on a farm in Hertford County. North Carolina. His parents. Jordan and Mary Barnes Gatling, were native Tar Heels. Dick had two older brothers, three younger ones, and a sister. To a certain degree, he inherited his inventive genius from his father who was not only an industrious farm¬ er. but also a skilled woodcarver and a practical inventor. He invented the first machine ever patented in the United States for opening ridges, sow¬ ing cotton, and then covering up the seed. Dick helped his father invent this machine. James, one of Dick's brothers, became an inventor, too. Dick Gatling was born in a log house but his hard-working and thrifty father had built a large frame house for his family, before Dick was grown. Mr. Gatling gradually bought adjoin¬ ing land until he had a 1, 200-acrc farm and twenty Negro slaves to work it. By the time Dick was fifteen he had already finished Buckhorn Acudcmy and was ready for a job. For a while he worked as secretary for Lewis Cowper, a lawyer, at the nearby town of Murfreesboro. When he was only nineteen. Dick decided to teach school but this profession claimed him for only one year. He wanted his own business and he was afraid of neither work nor responsibility. Not yet old enough to vote, he set up a store at Frazier’s Cross Roads and became a merchant in his own right. In his spare time he worked on various inventions. His first invention was a screw-propeller for steamboats. He had often watched the large awk¬ ward paddle wheels by which the boats were propelled on the nearby Chowan River and had determined to make a workable screw-propeller. Much to his disappointment when he applied for a patent he found that a similar invention had just been patented by John Ericsson. However, though greatly discouraged Dick Gat¬ ling was not a quitter. He kept working on his inventions and when he was only twenty-one, was granted a patent lor a seed-sowing machine which he had devised for planting rice. The great wheal fields of the West challenged Dick and. in 1844, he went to St. Louis, Missouri where he had his wheat-sowing machines manu¬ factured. These machines were just another adaptation of his rice-sowers but the wheat-sowers or drills met a ready response. He was the first man to introduce this class of farm imple¬ ments lo the Northwest, and so suc¬ cessful were his sales that he set up his own factories at Springfield and Urbana, Ohio, and at Indianapolis. Indiana. About this time something happened to Dick Galling that caused him to detour from the main highway of his life. Dick had a severe attack of small¬ pox and during his convalescence de¬ cided to be a doctor. He studied medicine at what was then Indiana Medical College and then at Ohio Medical College, graduating in 1849 from the latter. That school of medi¬ cine issued him a medical degree in 1850. By this time, however, Mr. Gat¬ ling’s zeal for inventing had returned and he gave little time, if any. to ТИС BTATC. March 17. 1951