The polybolos was an advanced ancient Greek repeating ballista, often described as a "machine gun of antiquity," invented in the 3rd century BC by Dionysius of Alexandria. It used a unique chain-drive and gravity-fed system to fire bolts in rapid succession
I've heard of this, but what's the advantage? They still need to recharge the torsion the same way, which must've taken longer than someone manually feeding the next bolt.
Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybolos, at least some of these used a windlass to rearm. That may explain part of the speed difference over one using a separate lever or one that’s rearmed purely by hand.
These weapons also may have given up on some firing power for firing frequency.
I'm not even considering the magazine reload time, just the time between shots assuming a full mag. That's 10 recharges either way, as shown in the videos. It's not like a machine gun where the energy is in the powder.
Apparently it was on MythBusters, but I don't remember that one.
These weapons also may have given up on some firing power for firing frequency.
With the chu ko nu I get it, you only have two hands, so the auto reload was faster.