William McCarty patented this turret revolver design in 1909… with the idea of making a high capacity revolver. His gun held 18 rounds of .22 rimfire ammunition – double the typical .22 revolver capacity. He did that by making a vertical turret system with a large ring to hold the 18 rounds, which in turn made the gun pretty bulky.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a22772/wb-mccartys-peculiar-revolver/
Ian’s video: [8:41] https://youtu.be/EgiMaBz4nv0?si=
I’m not convinced that this isn’t just like an art thing. People are always doing dumb stuff like that.