Aitken in 1780. American inventor Joseph Belton combined the earlier superposed load concepts into the Belton flintlock, which used a sliding lock with multiple touchholes to ignite separated sets of fused charges, allowing multiple shots per pull of the trigger and multiple shots to be fired by repositioning and recharging the lock. Belton attempted to license his invention to the Continental Congress in 1777, and to the British Army and the East India Company in 1784. An American gunsmith, Isaiah Jennings, produced a superposed load gun mentioned in a New York Evening Post article on April 10, 1822. The article claims the gun consists of a single barrel and lock, which may fire fifteen to twenty charges, which can be fired in the space of two seconds per charge. Jennings' gun adds, in addition to the sliding lock and multiple touchholes of earlier designs, a mechanism for automatically priming the pan of the lock, meaning each shot can be fired by simply cocking the lock and pulling the trigger. A 12-shot, breech-loading flintlock version of Jennings rifle, serial number 1, sold for US$34,000 at auction in 2006. The Metal Storm design attempted to solve these problems, but was a commercial failure. See also Belton flintlock, a system using a fused set of superposed loads for rapid fire Metal Storm Limited, a modern, electronically controlled superposed load system Walch Revolvers, Civil War era 12-shot .36" caliber and .30" caliber 10-shot cap-and-ball revolvers employing superimposed loads and sequentially triggered double hammers. References Early firearms