It was fired by pulling a lever back and forth and ammunition was gravity fed through chutes for each barrel.

He created a mechanism to load and fire a multiple barreled gun by simply moving a single lever backwards and forwards.

A plant producing the weapon was set up in England with sales offices in London and long demonstrations were conducted at several exhibitions.

The weapon was adopted by the British Royal Navy, as an addition to their Gatling and Gardner guns.

At least one Nordenfelt was re-activated for the 1966 film Khartoum and can be seen firing in the river boat sequence.