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

Question

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

Answer 1

Lack of precision manufacturing at scale basically. A common blacksmith couldn’t make one but a watchmaker probably could. But those are highly specialized and would have to produce both the firearms and the ammunition. Cased ammunition alone took a long time (relative to firearms) to be developed and it would be a requirement for pretty much any autoloading design. If your ammo is out of spec the gun is either ineffective, jams, or blows up so the man hours to produce actually useable ammo would be insane.