Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim

Sir Hiram Stevens MaximSir Hiram Stevens Maxim
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Birth Date:
05.02.1840
Death date:
24.11.1916
Length of life:
76
Days since birth:
67288
Years since birth:
184
Days since death:
39236
Years since death:
107
Extra names:
Хайрем Стивенс Максим
Cemetery:
London, West Norwood Cemetery

    Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim (5 February 1840 – 24 November 1916) was an American-born inventor who moved from the United States to the United Kingdom at the age of 41.

    He remained an American citizen until he became a naturalised British subjectin 1899. 

    He was the inventor of the Maxim Gun – the first portable, fully automatic machine gun – and held patents on mechanical devices such as a mousetrap, hair-curling irons, and steam pumps. He laid claim to inventing the lightbulb, and even experimented with powered flight, but his large aircraft designs were never successful. However, his "Captive Flying Machine" amusement ride, designed as a means by which to fund his research while generating public interest in flight, was highly successful.

    Birth and early life

    Maxim was born in Sangerville, Maine on 5 February 1840. He became an apprentice coachbuilder at the age of 14 and ten years later, took up a job at the machine works of his uncle, Levi Stephens, at Fitchburg, Massachusetts. He subsequently worked as an instrument-maker and as a draughtsman. (His early jobs in these arenas led him to be often disappointed with workers when he ran his own companies later on in life.)

    Family

    His brother, Hudson Maxim, was also a military inventor, specialising in explosives. They worked quite closely together until later in life, when there was a disagreement on a patent for smokeless powder. The patent, Hiram claimed, had been issued under the name 'H. Maxim,' and that because of this, his brother was able to stake a claim as the powder being his own. Hudson was a skilled and knowledgeable man, and sold arms in the US, while Hiram worked mainly in Europe. Hudson had success in the States, which caused jealousy from Hiram (he lamented having a "double" of himself running around in the States). The jealousy and disagreements caused a rift between the brothers that would last the rest of their lives.

    Hiram Maxim married his first wife, the English-born Jane Budden, on 11 May 1867 in Boston, Massachusetts. Their children were: Hiram Percy Maxim; Florence Maxim, who married George Albert Cutter, and Adelaide Maxim, who married Eldon Joubert, Ignacy Jan Paderewski's piano tuner.

    Hiram Percy Maxim followed in his father's and uncle's footsteps and became a mechanical engineer and weapons designer as well, but he is perhaps best known for his early amateur radioexperiments and for founding the American Radio Relay League. His invention of the "Maxim Silencer" for noise suppression came too late to save his father's hearing. Hiram Percy later wrote a biography of his father entitled A Genius in the Family, containing about 60 anecdotes of Hiram Percy's experiences with his father throughout his early life (until about 12). Most of these short stories are entertaining; they give a reader an insider's (and child's) view of the man's personal and family life. A film, based on his son's book, was released in 1946, called So Goes My Love, starring Don Ameche and Myrna Loy.

    He married his secretary and mistress, Sarah, daughter of Charles Haynes of Boston, in 1881. It is not clear if he was legally divorced from his first wife at this time. The marriage was registered again in Westminster, London in 1890.

    A woman called Helen Leighton brought a case against Maxim, claiming that he had married her in 1878 and that "he was knowingly committing bigamy" against his current wife, Jane Budden. She claimed further that Maxim had fathered a child named Romaine by her. The case was eventually dropped, settled for under $1,000 (the original amount asked for was $25,000), and Maxim put the near public humiliation the case caused behind him. Later in life, he left 4,000 pounds sterling to a Romaine Dennison, perhaps the child Leighton claimed he had fathered.

    Emigration and knighthood

    In 1881, Maxim arrived in England to reorganise the London offices of the United States Electric Lighting Company. His visits back to the United States became increasingly infrequent and, on 16 September 1899, Maxim became a naturalised British subject. In the following year, Queen Victoria bestowed a knighthood upon him. However Victoria died on 22 January 1901, shortly before Maxim's investiture, and so the honour was conferred by Maxim's "friend and new king, Edward VII" at Marlborough House on 9 February 1901.

    Profession

    Maxim was a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour; a Civil, Mechanical and Electrical Engineer; Member of the London Chamber of Commerce; Member of the Royal Institution; Member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; Member of the British Empire League; and Member of the Royal Society of Arts.

    Inventions

    Maxim, a longtime sufferer of bronchitis, patented and manufactured a pocket menthol inhaler and a larger "Pipe of Peace", a steam inhaler using pine vapour, that he claimed could relieve asthma, tinnitus, hay fever and catarrh. After being criticised for applying his talents to quackery, he protested that "it will be seen that it is a very creditable thing to invent a killing machine, and nothing less than a disgrace to invent an apparatus to prevent human suffering".

    He also invented a curling iron, an apparatus for demagnetising watches, magno-electric machines, devices to prevent the rolling of ships, eyelet and riveting machines, aircraft artillery, an aerial torpedo gun, coffee substitutes, and various oil, steam, and gas engines.

    A large furniture factory had repeatedly burned down, and Maxim was consulted on how to prevent a recurrence. As a result, Maxim invented the first automatic fire sprinkler. It would douse the areas that were on fire, and it would report the fire to the fire station. Maxim was unable to sell the idea elsewhere, but when the patent expired the idea was used.

    Maxim developed and installed the first electric lights in a New York City building (the Equitable Life Building (New York City) at 120 Broadway) in the late 1870s. However, he was involved in several lengthy patent disputes with Thomas Edison over his claims to the lightbulb. One of these actions regarded the incandescent bulb, for which Maxim claimed that Edison was credited by means of his better understanding of patenting law. Maxim claimed that an employee of his had falsely patented the invention under his own name, and that Edison proved the employee's claim to be false, knowing that patent law would mean the invention would become public property, allowing Edison to manufacture the lightbulb without crediting Maxim as the true inventor.

    Maxim gun

    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 Nordenfeldt. 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.

    Death

    Maxim died at his home in Streatham, London on 24 November 1916 at the age of 76. He is buried in West Norwood Cemetery with his wife and his grandson, Lt. Colonel Maxim Joubert.

    Books

    • Artificial and Natural Flight
    • Li Hung Chang's Scrapbook
    • A New System of Preventing Collisions at Sea
    • My Life. With 11 Text Illustrations and 10 Plates.
    • Monte Carlo facts and fallacies

    Patents

    Source: wikipedia.org

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