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 An Inventor's Place in American History July 15, 2008
Americans have affection for the inventor, the fellow that builds a better mousetrap or even just tinkers away in the basement attempting to make cold fusion happen. But we are nowadays conflicted about armaments; whoever that guy was who invented napalm we might not hold in much esteem. What are we to make of the man who invented the machine gun? He wrote in 1877, "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." Whether he was really so naive, or whether he was deliberately trying to make his machine gun seem a tool of peace (the excuse used by every arms-maker or arms-dealer), isn't entirely clear. What is clear is that his invention made his name, a name you probably know even if you don't know the details of his life or gadget. In _Mr. Gatling's Terrible Marvel: The Gun That Changed Everything and the Misunderstood Genius Who Invented It_ (Viking), journalist and essayist Julia Keller tells all about this influential American inventor, and looks at many larger issues in American history as well. "The Gatling gun is a weapon of death," she writes, "but its story is not altogether grim. For it is also the story of a nation on the rise and of a man who, by inventing a new kind of machine, helped propel it in that upward trajectory."
Richard Jordan Gatling was born in North Carolina in 1818. He was a born tinkerer, not a farmer or store owner, occupations he had tried before his first invention came to him. He invented a seed planter that contained seeds in a hopper and dropped them one by one into just the right placement in the furrow, a great improvement over flinging seeds in all directions. Keller believes that the idea of the seed dropping into just the right place was transformed into bullets in a hopper dropping into just the right breach (of six) for Gatling's most famous invention. Gatling's machine, which looks like a small cannon on a tripod, with a circular hopper for bullets mounted above the breech and a "coffee grinder" handle to make the six barrels go around, wasn't the first attempt at a machine gun, but it was certainly the best. It worked efficiently and reliably, and should have been immediately taken up by the Union Army, but it was not. The arms-buying division of the Army was too conservative to experiment. The Gatling gun's most notable use during the years of the Civil War didn't even require it to be fired. There were bloody riots against the draft in 1863 in New York City, and the police stationed Gatling guns on rooftops. The intimidation worked and the mobs backed down. It had real use in the Spanish-American war, and Teddy Roosevelt valued it. Part of the Gatling gun's image problem is that it was bought by many foreign governments and colonial powers to suppress native populations who had no weapons to match the Gatling's efficiency.
So Richard Gatling may have hoped to bring peace, and at times his intimidating device calmed a situation by its mere appearance and not by causing rapid and multiple deaths. He would have liked those instances. His gadget, however, did bring a new industrialization to warfare. He was a decent man whose deadly gun was the making of his fortune and his fame; he went on to patent many other inventions, including a bicycle, a device to control wagon reins, and two years before he died in 1903, a new type of flush toilet. No one remembers those, of course. Keller's informative book, however, convincingly shows that like more famous figures such as Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, Gatling played an important role in changing the rural antebellum America into an industrialized nation.
 Gatling July 4, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
The book should have contained pictures of how the invention actually worked. Diagrams would have been helpful in order to understand why this gun worked and why it worked so efficiently.
"America at its muscular, can-do best..."? June 16, 2008
3 out of 9 found this review helpful
One of the merits (and there are many) of Julia Keller's Mr. Gatling's Terrible Marvel is that the book is more than a biography of Richard Jordan Gatling (1818-1903), inventor of the automatic weapon which bears his name. It's also a well-written, well-researched, and insightful reflection on American self-identity and the icons by which we define ourselves.
We think of ourselves as humanitarian, ingenious, curious, mechanically skillful, industrious, problem-solving, determined, and upwardly mobile (the rags-to-riches aspect of the Great American Dream). As Keller points out, Gatling came to symbolize all these qualities. In the last quarter-century of his life, he was frequently pointed to as a man who personified the best of American qualities. His best known invention, the Gatling gun, was enshrined as "a laudable American accomplishment, another example of native ingenuity and craftsmanship and problem-solving acumen: America at its muscular, can-do best."
But as Ms. Keller also points out, there's a certain irony to all this. Gatling invented his gun in the hopes that its incredible killing power would end the Civil War quickly. As Keller says, the gun's "brutal spit-spot efficiency would, [Gatling] hoped, persuade nations of the waste and folly of war."
In fact, however, military conservatism sidelined its use on the battlefield. The only time it was used during the conflict was against civilians in the New York Draft Riots of 1863. It would be much used--some might say over-used--in the succeeding decades in the Indian Wars and by federal troops and state militia against striking workers. Foreign governments bought thousands of the guns to acquire and hold onto colonies, and Teddy Roosevelt, hero of the Spanish-American War, claimed that the Gatling was the decisive factor (along with Teddy himself, of course) in defeating the Spanish. Much like Alfred Nobel and his dynamite, then, Richard Jordan Gatling found his "humanitarian" invention used in quite nonhumanitarian muscular ways.
There's also irony in other aspects of Gatling's life too: after he sold the Gatling patent to Colt, his financial fortunes dipped; and although he continued inventing right up to the end of his life (his patents include a flushable toilet), he would forever be remembered almost exclusively for his killing machine.
America, argues Ms. Keller, has always had an ambivalent attitude to weapons (probably because their use against other humans tends to upset part of our self-identity as humanitarian). In the earliest days of the Republic, statesmen debated about them. That debate was cast in a completely different light by Gatling's invention of his lethal gun, which not only helped change the face of warfare, but also influenced the way in which Americans and the rest of the world thought about the ethics (and aesthetics) of killing in wartime. As Keller notes, killing became more impersonal, less one-on-one. Mr. Gatling's Terrible Marvel invites readers to reflect deeply on these kinds of issues.
Highly recommended.
Fantastic Read!! June 5, 2008
3 out of 10 found this review helpful
Brilliant cultural study of the 19th century through the lens of weapons inventions and innovations. Keller places the Gatling Gun smack in the middle of Americas growth and westward expansion. She explores the contradictions of Gatling's life and the contradictions in Americas view of itself. From steam boats to small pox to agricultural inventions to the first "machine" gun we travel with Richard Gatling through the great American experience
Keller explores the importance of the American patent system and patent office, to America's rise and economic expansion. She really puts her finger on the pulse of this country in the 19th century.
Packed full of great history, well paced, and a joy to read.
great subject, disappointing treatment June 3, 2008
21 out of 26 found this review helpful
I have three problems with this book. 1) Ms Keller takes us off on a survey of 19th century America instead of concentrating on Richard Gatling. What did John Sutter have to do with the Gatling gun? Well, nothing, but she drags him in by the heels nevertheless. The entire first half of the book is given over to these digressions.
2) She doesn't like firearms--a disabling qualification in somebody who sets out to write the biography of the first successful rapid-fire gun. "The fact that arms are necessary to a nation's survival is a grubby and uncomfortable truth." Uncomfortable to Ms Keller, no doubt, but not to those of us who have used firearms for hunting, for target shooting, and during our military service.
3) She is so enthused by Richard Gatling (though not his gun as an enforcer of government policy!) that she shades the facts. To read her book, you'd conclude that the machine-gun problem was solved by Gatling in 1862 instead of by Hiram Maxim twenty years later--that the single-barrel, auto-loading, auto-firing machine guns of World War One were just minor improvements on Gatling's design. Tain't so.
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