page_title: Hiram Maxim
section_title: Maxim gun
hierarchical_section_title: Hiram Maxim / Inventions / Maxim gun
caption_attribution_description: English: Cassier's Magazine of April 1895 had an article on page 435-456, written by J. Bucknall Smith and titled Some Features of the Inventive Career of Hiram S. Maxim. It was accompanied by a number of illustrations, including this photo of a Hiram Maxim, Louis Cassier and J. Bucknall Smith with a machine gun for Germany, on page 439.
context_page_description: Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim was an American-born British inventor best known as the creator of the first portable fully automatic machine gun, the Maxim gun. Maxim held patents on numerous mechanical devices such as hair-curling irons, a mousetrap, and steam pumps. Maxim laid claim to inventing the lightbulb.
  Maxim experimented with powered flight; his large aircraft designs were never successful. He designed a highly successful amusement ride called the "Captive Flying Machine" to fund his research while generating public interest in flight.
  Maxim moved from the United States to the United Kingdom at the age of 41, and remained an American citizen until he became a naturalised British subject in 1899, and received a knighthood in 1901.
context_section_description: Maxim was reported to have said: "In 1882 I was in Vienna, where I met an American whom I had known in the States. He said: 'Hang your chemistry and electricity! If you want to make a pile of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each others' throats with greater facility.'"
  As a child, Maxim had been knocked over by a rifle's recoil, and this inspired him to use that recoil force to automatically operate a gun. Between 1883 and 1885 Maxim patented gas, recoil and blowback methods of operation. After moving to England, he settled in a large house formerly owned by Lord Thurlow in West Norwood where he developed his design for an automatic weapon, using an action that would close the breech and compress a spring, by storing the recoil energy released by a shot to prepare the gun for its next shot. He thoughtfully ran announcements in the local press warning that he would be experimenting with the gun in his garden and that neighbours should keep their windows open to avoid the danger of broken glass.
  Maxim founded an arms company with financial backing from Edward Vickers to produce his machine gun in Crayford, Kent, which later merged with Nordenfelt. Subsequently, part of the Barrow Shipbuilding Company purchase by Vickers Corporation in 1897, formed 'Vickers, Son & Maxim'. Their improved development of the Maxim gun design, the Vickers machine gun, after Maxim's resignation from the board in 1911 on his 71st birthday, was the standard British machine gun for many years. With arms sales led by Basil Zaharoff, variants of the Maxim gun were bought and used extensively by both sides during World War I.
  In his later years Maxim became profoundly deaf, as his hearing had been damaged by years of exposure to the noise of his guns.
caption: Image from the April 1895 edition Cassier's Magazine, showing Hiram Maxim and the Maxim gun, along with Louis Cassier and J. Bucknall Smith
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