<P> True repeating long arms were difficult to manufacture prior to the development of the unitary firearm cartridge; nevertheless, lever - action repeating rifles such as the Kalthoff repeater and Cookson repeater were made in small quantities in the 17th century . </P> <P> Perhaps the earliest examples of predecessors to the modern machine gun are to be found in China . According to the Wu - Pei - Chih, a booklet examining Chinese military equipment produced during the first quarter of the 17th century, the Chinese army had in its arsenal the' Po - Tzu Lien - Chu - P'ao' or' string - of - 100 - bullets cannon' . This was a repeating cannon fed by a hopper which fired its charges sequentially . Another repeating gun was produced by a Chinese commmoner in the late 17th century . This weapon was also hopper - fed and never went into mass production . </P> <P> Another early revolving gun was created by James Puckle, a London lawyer, who patented what he called "The Puckle Gun" on May 15, 1718 . It was a design for a manually operated 1.25 in . (32 mm) caliber, flintlock cannon with a revolver cylinder able to fire 6 - 11 rounds before reloading by swapping out the cylinder, intended for use on ships . It was one of the earliest weapons to be referred to as a machine gun, being called such in 1722, though its operation does not match the modern usage of the term . According to Puckle, it was able to fire round bullets at Christians and square bullets at Turks . However, it was a commercial failure and was not adopted or produced in any meaningful quantity . </P> <P> In 1777, Philadelphia gunsmith Joseph Belton offered the Continental Congress a "new improved gun", which was capable of firing up to twenty shots in five seconds; unlike older repeaters using complex lever - action mechanisms, it used a simpler system of superposed loads, and was loaded with a single large paper cartridge . Congress requested that Belton modify 100 flintlock muskets to fire eight shots in this manner, but rescinded the order when Belton's price proved too high . </P>

When was the first handheld machine gun made