Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1888-11-07
THE MAXIM MACHINE GUN.
Shots ut the Rate of Ten Per Second
Utilizing the RccoiI.

Shots ut the Rate Of Ten Per Second.
Utilizing the Recoil.
But great as is our admiration for the
Gardner and Calling guns, it must give way
before the astonishment and wonder excited
by another American invention but very re-
Gently perfected 1t is the Maxim automatic
machine gun, invented in 1888, but only
within year past brought TO a state of won
derful and ingenious perfection 1t is with
feeling almost akin to shame that We state
that this gun is made in England, although
the inventor is American. II is, as its name
indicates, an automatic machine gun, and
only requires the pressure of the finger on the
trigger to explode the first cartridge, and the
gun, then left alone, viii load and fire itself
as long as cartridges are fed to it. The gun
proper consists of an ordinary gun barrel,
two-thirds of which are surrounded by a cas-
ing of metal in which water is automatically
injected by each discharge of the barrel By
means of this casing, or water jacket, it is
impossible to overhead the gun by firing.
The remaining third is surrounded by steel
case of rectangular shape, inside of which is
the mechanism for operating the gun. This
mechanism consists of main spring. tum-
bier, sears. and firing pin, similar to those
is the lever, which, when the gun is fired, is
thrown into action by the recoil The ar
rangement is at once set In motion-the
empty shell withdrawn new cartridge in
serted, the breech closed, cartridge fired
and a certain quantity of water admitted
into the water jacket. The cartridges are
placed in pockets on belt. Each belt con-
tains 1888 Of these pockets, and two or more
belts may be joined together. The end of the
belt is introduced in the breech casing, and
the finger pressed on the trigger TO fire the
first cartridge, after which the gun may be
left alone, and the automatic action set in
motion by the recoil fires the rest As the
recoil is but three-quarters of an inch, some
idea may be had of the wonderful ingenuity
Of the gun by considering that it will fire the
| 666 cartridges of the double belt in little
| over minute, or at the rate of ten a second;
in other words, it requires but onet tenth OF a
second to load the gun, fire a cartridge,
throw out the empty shell and put in full
| one.
| Again, the recoil of the gun does another
work. Over the casing is a small tank of
water, and at each discharge of the gun
small quantity of cool water is injected from
| the cistern into the water Jacket, and after
the heat of the gun has risen sufficiently, the
water escapes in the form of steam from two
little apertures at the front end of the Jacket.
The cartridge contains from 20 to 80 grains
of powder, and the heat evolved in the dis
charge of one cartridge is sufficient to raise
the temperature Of the water at the rate of
N dogs. Fahrenheit per pound. And Jas
much heat is required to melt four pounds of
iron as is necessary to evaporate five pounds
of water, it can be seen from this what an
effectual absorbent of heat is the water jacket
and in fact it requires the discharge of loo
cartridges before the water it heated sufi
GENTLY TO cause steam to make its appear
ance. The rate of fire is regulated by means
ofsa quadrant graduated from POD up to 100
Lieut.. William r. Hamilton in The Cen
fury.