Old News: Indy inventor patents namesake weapon amid war

• Born in North Carolina, Gatling moved to Indianapolis in 1854 and was living in the Circle City when the Civil War began.
• Despite his southern roots, he supported the Union and began pondering ideas for a more efficient weapon after seeing wounds and disease claim the lives of so many Union soldiers.
• With the help of Indiana Gov. Oliver Morton, Gatling obtained a government contract and set up his factory to develop the weapon in Indianapolis.

Yes, but: While the early trials were successful, the U.S. Army Ordnance Department refused to adopt the weapon during the war and only a single Union general purchased them.

• The Army adopted the Gatling gun in 1866, and it would go on to become a powerful and devastating weapon that would lend inspiration to even deadlier, automatic successors.

The intrigue: In a letter Gatling penned to a friend in 1877, he explained that his motivation was preserving life, not taking it.

• "It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine — a gun — which could by rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a great extent, supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease be greatly diminished," he wrote.