Rare Richard J. Gatling Signed 1892 Letter with Historic Gatling Gun Content

“When you have an idea, and you feel compelled, you must build it.”-Richard J. Gatling Richard Jordan Gatling, was born September 12, 1818, in Maney’s Neck, North Carolina. Gatling is an American inventor who is best known for his invention of the crank-operated, multibarrel machine gun, famously called the Gatling Gun.Gatling’s early exposure to problem solving through invention, started as a teenager helping his father work on the construction of a machine for sowing cotton seeds. His contribution to that process excited him and drove him to start on his own ideas and in 1839 he perfected a practical screw propeller for steamboats, only to find that a patent had been granted for a similar invention a few months earlier. Disappointed but not detoured he moved to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1844, and, using the cotton-sowing machine idea, he adapted it for sowing rice, wheat, and other grains. The introduction of these machines helped revolutionize the agricultural system in this country.G