The Perino Model 1908 was an early machine gun of Italian origin designed earlier in 1901 by Giuseppe Perino, an engineer (Tecnico dell'Artiglieria).
Perino's design apparently was the first Italian-designed machine gun, and in its original configuration weighed in at a heavy 27 kilograms (60 lb), which made it largely unsuitable to field utilization and apt only for fortifications; a lightened 1910 version brought the weight down to 15 kilograms (33 lb).
It had a unique feed mechanism, with a hopper on the side of the gun filled with up to five twenty-round clips rather than being belt fed.
This allowed the loader to constantly keep the gun at maximum capacity, meaning the gun crew never had to stop to reload.
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