eli5 Why weren’t machine guns possible to make in the past?

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What stopped 18-19th century armies with guns from being able to create automatic weapons like AK-47s and Uzis?
Since they don’t use electricity I feel like they’re made with materials and technology that was already available in the 1750s, surely they could’ve put their heads together to create a machine gun and just annihilate any ops…

Thanks

In: Engineering

35 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The 1700s didn’t even have cased cartridges in widespread use. How can you have a machine gun that has to have the powder, wadding, bullet, and cap loaded separately like a musket?

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