February 26

Today, in 1903, American inventor Dr. Richard J. Gatling passed away at the age of 84 while visiting his daughter in New York City. Over the course of his life, he had been a county clerk, schoolmaster and dry goods merchant before entering Indiana Medical College in 1846.

But it was for his prolific capacity as an inventor that he would be most widely remembered, both inside and outside of his native United States. Over the course of a career spanning decades, he laboured to develop equipment and machines, from wheat drills to steam-powered tractors, that would go on to revolutionize agriculture in the postwar United States. But, with a last name like Gatling, does one really need to guess what it was he was most famous for?

We didn't think so.
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