-------------------------+----------+----------+-----------+---------- | | Quantity | Quantity | Item. | Quantity | accepted | accepted | Floated | ordered. | Nov. 11, | Jan. 31, | to Nov. | | 1918. | 1919.[23] | 11, 1918. -------------------------+----------+----------+-----------+---------- Tanks: | | | | 6-ton | 4,440 | 64 | 291 | 6 Mark I | 1,000 | | | 3-ton | 15,015 | 15 | | 10 Mark 8 A. A. components | 1,500 | [24]1 | 1 | Mark 8 U. S. complete | 1,450 | | | -------------------------+----------+----------+-----------+---------- [23] Immediately upon signing of the armistice, production was slowed down as rapidly and as much as possible. [24] Approximately 50 per cent of the production work on components for these 1,500 tanks had been completed by Nov. 11. CHAPTER IX. MACHINE GUNS. The machine gun is typically and historically an American device. An American invented the first real machine gun ever produced. Another American, who had taken British citizenship, produced the first weapon of this type that could be called a success in war. Still a third American gave to the allies at the beginning of the great war a machine gun which revolutionized the world's conception of what that weapon might be; while a fourth American inventor, backed by our Ordnance Department, enabled the American forces to take into the field in France what is probably the most efficient machine gun ever put into action. The machine gun as an idea is not modern at all. The thought has been engaging the attention of inventors for several centuries. The idea was inherent in guns which existed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but they should be called rapid-fire guns rather than machine guns, since no machine principle entered into their construction. They usually consisted of several gun barrels bound together and fired simultaneously. The first true machine gun was the invention of Richard Jordon Gatling, an American, who in 1861 brought out what might be termed a revolving rifle. The barrels, from 4 to 10 in number, were placed parallel to each other and arranged on a common axis about which they revolved in such a manner that each barrel was brought in succession into the firing position. This gun was used to some extent in our Civil War and later in the Franco-Prussian War.