• Type: Experimental Double 6-pdr. Gun
• Year of Manufacture: 1862
• Tube Composition: Cast Iron
• Bore Diameter: 3.67 inches each
• Projectiles: Two 6 lb. balls connected by a chain
• Tube Length: 4 feet, 8 1/2 inches
• Tube Weight: 1,300 lbs.
• Cost: $350
• Invented By: John Gilleland
• Casting Foundry: Athens Steam Co., Georgia
• Current Disposition: Mounted at the corner of College and Hancock Aves, Athens, Georgia
• Special Notes: The only known full size double-barrel cannon of its kind in the United States.

In 1862, a man named John Gilleland, from the little Georgia town of Athens, came up with this inventive, some would say crazy, idea for a double-barrel cannon. Gilleland, a local house builder and mechanic, a Jackson County dentist, a private in Mitchell’s Thunderbolts and an employee of Cook’s Armory, thought that a cannon such as this would serve the defences of his community, and the needs of the Confederate Army, very well.

Gilleland's idea was to connect two cannon balls with a long chain, and fire them simultaniously from this new double-barrel cannon, mowing down enemy lines with this wicked weapon like a scythe cutting wheat. The town took up Gilleland's outlandish idea, and the cannon was financed by a $350 subscription raised by 36 interested citizens.

The cannon was cast at the Athens Steam Company in 1862, it's a double six-pounder, cast in one piece, with a three degree divergence from the parallel between the barrels. Each barrel has its own touch hole so it can be fired independent of the other and a common touch hole in the center is designed to fire both barrels simultaneously.

Upon completion, the cannon was taken out on the Newton Bridge Road in April 1862, for a test firing. The test was, to say the least, spectacular if unsuccessful.