Who invented the shotgun?

Question

I can't seem to find anything on the internet about the inventor of the shot gun, only inventors that made a improvement to the shotgun. Who invented the first shotgun?

Answer 1

Take a look at the earliest black powder firearms. The "blunderbuss" comes to mind pretty quickly. That weapon's design just begged for multiple projectiles to be stuffed down the barrel.

Answer 2

copied from link below;

"Smoothbore shoulder firearm designed to fire a number of pellets, or shot, that cover a large target area after they leave the muzzle. It is used mainly against small game such as birds. The earliest examples were the fowling pieces that appeared in 16th-century Europe. Repeating shotguns, in which several cartridges could be loaded at once, became available in the 1880s. The range of a modern shotgun is about 50 yards (45 m)."

http://www.answers.com/topic/shotgun

Answer 3

Some guy that decided to stick a bunch of small pellets in his musket rather than one large ball.  It was hundreds of years ago and a few people probably discovered it independently.

Answer 4

Actually, It was an applied concept from way back when cannons were used in ships. May cannoniers loaded small ping-pong sized balls in every other canon in sequence. this was used as the first attack when the feuding ships crew were all out on the decks and still at a short distance away.

And sooooo....It was eventually used in black-powder shoulder fired muskets then eventually the shotgun was made to better accommodate.

Answer 5

The first guy to answer your question is probably correct.  Many items are actually not invented by one person, but are independently developed by different individuals.

Answer 6

A guy that was tired of missing....