It is sometimes claimed (i.e. in George Morgan Chinn's 'the Machine Gun') that in 1663 the first mention of the automatic principle of machine guns was in a paper presented to the Royal Society of England by an Englishman by the name of Palmer who described a volley gun capable of being operated by either recoil or gas. However, no one has been able to find this paper in recent times and all references to a multi-shot weapon by a Palmer during this period appear to be referring to a somewhat more common Kalthoff repeater or Lorenzoni-system gun. Despite this, there is a reference in 1663 to at least the concept of a genuine automatic gun that was presented to Prince Rupert, though its type and method of operation are unknown.