My daughter to her teacher...They couldn't envision 300 horsepower in your pickup truck either...
Have your daughter ask her teacher if she knows what a Puckle Gun was.
A pre-Gatling revolving design, the Puckle gun was a British flintlock machine gun invented by James Puckle in 1718. It took a nine-round revolving block, was mounted on a tripod and was designed to be portable and especially to prevent an enemy boarding a ship. An unusual feature was that it fired square bullets against Moslem Turks, but conventional round ones for use against fellow Christian opponents. In those days, British law required that patents be submitted in rhyme, which gave a nice human touch to the early technology's advances.
Thomas Jefferson, in particular, was fascinated by the many technological offerings of his century, and his collection included many British patent drawings and models. It's certainly not inconceivable that he or others of the Revolutionary period [amateur artillerist Henry Knox, in particular] could very well have had their hands on a Puckle.
