Hiram Maxim
lightbulb | |
---|---|
Spouse(s) | Jane Budden (1867–1881?) Sarah Haynes (1881–1916, his death) |
Children | Hiram Percy Maxim Florence Maxim Cutter Adelaide Maxim Joubert |
Relatives | Hudson Maxim (brother) |
Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim (5 February 1840 – 24 November 1916) was an
Maxim experimented with
Maxim moved from the United States to the United Kingdom at the age of 41, and remained an American citizen until he became a
Birth and early life
Maxim was born in
Inventions
Maxim, a longtime sufferer of
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.[13]
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.[14]
Maxim developed and installed the first electric lights in a New York City building (the
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.'"[12]
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
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.[16]
Flying machines
Maxim's father had earlier conceived of a helicopter powered by two counter-rotating rotors, but was unable to find a powerful enough engine to build it. Hiram first sketched out plans for a helicopter in 1872, but when he built his first "flying machine" he chose to use wings. Before starting design work, he carried out a series of experiments on aerofoil sections and propeller design, at first using a
Conceived of as a test rig, the machine ran on an 1,800-foot (550 m) length of rail track which Maxim laid down for the purpose at his home, Baldwyn's Park Mansion, Baldwyn's Park in Bexley.[19] The initial intention was to prevent the machine from lifting off by using heavy cast-iron wheels, but after initial trials, Maxim concluded that this would not suffice, and so the machine was fitted with four wheeled outriggers which were restrained by wooden rails 13 feet (4.0 m) outside the central track.[20] In trials in 1894, the machine lifted and was prevented from rising by the outriggers.[21] During its test run, all the outriggers were engaged, showing that it had developed enough lift to take off, but in so doing, it pulled up the track; the tethered "flight" was aborted in time to prevent disaster.[22] Maxim subsequently abandoned work on it but put his experience to work on fairground rides.[23] He subsequently noted that a feasible flying machine would need better power-to-weight engines, such as a petrol combustion engine.[24]
Captive Flying Machines
To both fund his research into flight and to bring attention to the notion of flight, Maxim designed and built an amusement ride for the Earl's Court exhibition of 1904. The ride was based on a test-rig he had devised for his research, and consisted of a large spinning frame from which cars hung captive. As the machine spun, the cars would be swung outward through the air, simulating flight. The ride was similar to the later Circle Swing ride, made popular in the US by renowned roller-coaster designer Harry Traver.
Maxim originally intended to use primitive aerofoils and wings to allow riders to control their flight, but this was outlawed as unsafe. As a result, Maxim quickly lost interest in the project, declaring the adapted ride as "Simply a glorified merry-go-round". Nevertheless, his company built several more rides of various sizes at The Crystal Palace and various seaside resorts including Southport, New Brighton, and Blackpool, all of which opened in 1904. Originally, Maxim had intended to build only two, but a lengthy breakdown on the original Earl's Court ride forced him to build more to make the venture profitable. He had plans for further variations of the ride but his disillusionment with the amusement business meant that they were never realised.
Although he expressed regrets about the whole project, the rides were held in high regard within the amusement industry and the Blackpool ride still operates to this day as part of what is now the
In 2001,
Grahame-White, Blériot, and Maxim Company
In 1911, Maxim headed the newly formed Grahame-White, Blériot, and Maxim Company, founded with the two aviators and two hundred thousand pounds of capital.[25] He had hoped to produce military aircraft capable of scouting or dropping a 500-pound (230 kg) bomb, but his failing health and financial difficulties with his other enterprises restricted his ability to develop this enterprise before his death.[26]
Philosophy
In addition to his engineering endeavors, Maxim, a lifelong
This book was addressed to Li Hung Chang (also spelled Li Hongzhang and Li Hung-chang) and endeavored to address a belief that "The Chinese were generally puzzled as to how it was possible for people who are able to build locomotives and steamships to have a religion based on a belief in devils, ghosts, impossible miracles, and all the other absurdities and impossibilities peculiar to the religion taught by the missionaries."[30]Maxim held European missionaries in China in low esteem, for reasons described in the scrapbook. He stated "...it was my aim, in compiling for His Excellency a scrap-book with explanatory notes, to put the Chinaman right in this respect. I wished to show that we were not all fools."[30] His scrapbook comprised some 400 pages with 42 illustrations, presenting his views on The Nature of Christianity; Christianity in China; and his conclusions on subjects including Miracles, Spirituality, Faith; and the influence of the Bible on the civilization of Europe and America. He concluded his scrapbook with an appeal to the Missionaries and his thoughts on the reason for the failure of what he described as "Missionary Propaganda" in China.
Honors
Maxim was a
Emigration and knighthood
In 1881, Maxim arrived in Britain to reorganise the London offices of the United States Electric Lighting Company.
Death
Maxim died at his home in
Family
His brother,
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.[38] In 1875, the family moved to Fanwood, New Jersey, with Hiram joining the family on weekends.[39]
His son 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
Hiram Maxim 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.[42][43]
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, being settled for under $1,000 (the original amount asked for was $25,000), and Maxim put behind him the near public humiliation the case caused. In October 1898, Helen Leighton again brought charges against Maxim for bigamy and abandonment in Poughkeepsie, New York.[44] Later in life, he left 4,000 pounds sterling to a Romaine Dennison, perhaps the child Leighton claimed he had fathered.[45]
Books
- Artificial and Natural Flight. Whittaker. 1908.
- Artificial and Natural Flight (2nd ed. with supplement ed.). Whittaker. 1909.
- Li Hung Chang's Scrapbook[29]
- A New System of Preventing Collisions at Sea. Schwarz Press. 2009. ISBN 978-1-4446-0553-2. Archived from the originalon 24 July 2012. Retrieved 20 September 2009.
- My Life. Methuen & Co., Ltd. 1915. ISBN 9781408609675.
- Monte Carlo facts and fallacies. Grant Richards. 1904.
Patents
- U.S. patent 208,252 – Electric lamp
- U.S. patent 230,310 – Electric lamp
- U.S. patent 230,953 – Electric lamps
- U.S. patent 230,954 – Process for removing air from globes of electric lamps
- U.S. patent 230,309 – Electric lamp
- U.S. patent 234,835 – Electrical lamp
- U.S. patent 237,198 – Process of manufacturing carbon conductors
- U.S. patent 244,277 – Electric Lamp
- U.S. patent 247,083 – Process of Manufacturing Carbons
- U.S. patent 247,084 – Incandescent Electric Lamp
- U.S. patent 247,085 – Process of Manufacturing Carbon Conductors
- U.S. patent 247,380 – Electric Lamp
- U.S. patent 255,308 – Electrical meter
- U.S. patent 277,846 – Process of Manufacturing Carbons for Incandescent Lamps
- U.S. patent 283,629 – Electric Lamp
- U.S. patent 321,513 – Machine Gun
- U.S. patent 405,239 – Apparatus for the Manufacture of Filaments for Incandescent Lamps
- U.S. patent 405,170 – Manufacture of Filaments for Electric Lamps
- U.S. patent 430,212 – Manufacture of explosive
- U.S. patent 618,703 – Apparatus for Manufacturing Filaments for Electric Lamps
- U.S. patent 618,704 – Method of Manufacturing Filaments for Electric Lamps
- GB 189700207, Maxim, Hiram Stevens & Silverman, Louis, "Improvements in the Firing Mechanism of Automatic Guns", issued 30 October 1897
- GB 189607468, Maxim, Hiram Stevens, "Improvements in Automatic Guns", issued 27 February 1897, gas action for machine guns
- GB 189607045, Maxim, Hiram Stevens, "Improvements in Automatic Machine Guns", issued 13 March 1897, breech mechanism of machine gun
See also
- William Cantelo, an early machine gun inventor who disappeared in the 1880s but whose family believed he had reemerged as Hiram Maxim.
References
- ISBN 9780486297842.
- ISBN 9780060924157.
Hiram Maxim and light bulb.
- ISBN 9781573565578.
- ISBN 9780809323715.
- ISBN 9780231127240.
Captive Flying Machine.
- ^ Sir Hiram Maxim. Encyclopædia Britannica.
- ISBN 9780203438817.
- ^ "The Life and Work of Sir Hiram Maxim: Knight, Chevalier De La Legion D'honneur, Etc". Forgotten Books.
- ^ "Hiram Stevens Maxim". Grace's Guide. Retrieved 6 December 2013.
- ISBN 978-0-19-518951-3.
- ^ "Sir Hiram Maxim's great Invention", The Times, 19 July 1910.
- ^ a b c Malcolm Brown 100 years of 'Maxim's Killing Machine' New York Times, 26 November 1985.
- ^ "Hiram's inventions". Archived from the original on 28 December 2011. Retrieved 12 November 2003.
- ^ Chinn, George M. (1951), The Machine Gun, vol. I, Bureau of Ordnance, p. 127.
- ISBN 0-333-57688-8Serbia House
- ^ Action By Sir Hiram Maxim, The Times, 16 January 1915.
- ^ Penrose, Harald (1967). British Aviation: The Pioneer Years. London: Putnam. pp. 22–23.
- ^ Penrose 1967, p. 25
- ^ "Baldwyn's Park Mansion". News Shopper. 11 February 2002. Retrieved 23 February 2017.
- ^ Penrose 1967, pp. 33–4
- ^ "Death of Sir Hiram Maxim. A Famous Inventor, Automatic Guns And Aeronautics". The Times. 25 November 1916.
- ^ Wragg, D.; "Flight Before Flying", Osprey (1974).
- ^ Beril, Becker (1967). Dreams and Realities of the Conquest of the Skies. New York: Atheneum. pp. 124–125.
- ^ My Life.
- ^ "Maxim Leads Air Company. Grahame-White, Bleriot and Maxim Company with $1,000,000 Capital". New York Times. 29 March 1911. p. 1.
Sir Hiram Maxim, who has just resigned from the ordnance firm with which his name has been for so long connected, will be the Chairman of a new company to be known as the Grahame-White, Bleriot, and Maxim Company, limited, with a total authorized capital of 200,000 ($1,000,000.)
- ^ "Sir Hiram Maxim's Resignation. The Inventor And Aviation", The Times, 23 March 1911.
- ^ Joseph McCabe (1950). A Rationalist Encyclopaedia: a book of reference on religion, philosophy, ethics, and science (2 ed.). Watts. p. 384.
He was a member of the firm of Vickers' Sons and Maxim. Maxim was an aggressive Atheist (personal knowledge) and the compiler (with the present writer) of the collection of solid criticisms of religion...
- ^ The Freethinker, Volume 92. G.W. Foote. 1972. p. 45.
Now Maxim really way a militant atheist!
- ^ a b c Hiram Stevens Maxim (1913). Li Hung Chang's Scrapbook. Watts & Co.
- ^ a b Li Hung Chang's Scrapbook, Foreword, p. x.
- ^ "Who Made America". PBS.
- ^ "No. 27122". The London Gazette. 3 October 1899. p. 6011.
- ^ "The Town of Two Knights". Sangerville Public Library. Archived from the original on 28 December 2011. Retrieved 12 November 2003.
- ^ a b Hawkey, Arthur (2001). The Amazing Hiram Maxim. Staplehurst: Spellmount.
- ^ "No. 27285". The London Gazette. 15 February 1901. p. 1145.
- ^ "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 10 October 2017.
- ^ "No. 29892". The London Gazette. 5 January 1917. p. 317.
- New York Times. 23 February 1936.. As an ardent wireless amateur Mr. Maxim is remembered by veteran experimenters of pre-war days by the musical tone of his quench spark gap which spelled out the call letters of his pioneer station.
Radio amateurs, numbering more than 45,000 in the United States, are mourning the loss of a friend and faithful ally in the passing of Hiram Percy Maxim of Hartford, Connecticut
- ^ Maxim, Hiram Percy. A Genius in the Family, Lateral Science. Accessed 6 August 2019. "We moved to Fanwood, New Jersey, in the spring of 1875. My father used to come out from New York on Saturday afternoons and remain with us until Monday morning."
- ^ "Noise's Bogeyman". Time. 4 January 1932. Archived from the original on 30 September 2007. Retrieved 21 August 2007.
While mental hygienists, efficiency experts and city officials have been bewailing the maddening effects of city noise, Hiram Percy Maxim has been manufacturing noise mufflers at Hartford, Conn. Last week he announced that his Maxim Silencer Co., of which he is president and his only son Hiram Hamilton is chief engineer and whose factory is in Asylum Street, Hartford, will—besides continuing to make silencers for guns, motor exhausts, safety valves, air releases, in fact every kind of pipe which emits a gas—offer a consulting service in noise abatement.
- ^ Maxim, Hiram Percy (1936). A Genius in the Family. London: Michael Joseph Ltd.
- ^ "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 10 October 2017.
- ^ "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 10 October 2017.
- ^ The San Francisco Call (21 October 1898). "Inventor Maxim Arrested For Bigamy". Chronicling America. The San Francisco Call. Retrieved 21 July 2022.
- ISBN 1-86227-141-0.
External links
- Works by Hiram Maxim at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Hiram Maxim at Internet Archive
- A Tale of Two Knights: Sir Hiram Maxim Archived 28 December 2011 at the Wayback Machine
- H.Maxim and A.Liwentaal
- Coaster Kingdom
- Mammoth Fire Boat Designed By H. S. Maxim,. M.E. Scientific American.
- Hiram S. Maxim
- Hiram Maxim on GunsTribune
- H. S. Maxim, "Aerial Navigation: The Power Required". The Century Magazine Vol. XLII, No. 6, October 1891, pp. 829-836