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Captive Flying Machines (100 Years): Maxim Biography
Sir Hiram Maxim may not be a name that will mean a lot to
Joe Public, but it is fair to say that as an inventor and
engineer, he was right up there with more celebrated names
of his generation. Besides being a great inventor, he was
truly a larger-than-life character, and his eccentricities
saw him become embroiled in many truly bizarre events.
Probably the most intriguing thing about the man is that
throughout his life, nature of his various projects varied
wildly. While many of his inventions brought great
benefits to people, and his rides brought joy to
thousands, his most famous invention was designed to kill
- the automatic machine gun.
Hiram
Stevens Maxim was born on February 5th 1840, in
the small town of Sangerville, Maine, USA, the son of
Isaac Weston Maxim and Harriet Boston Maxim. He had little
formal education, relying on a one-room schoolhouse in the
town, which he attended for just five years. Local legend
has it that, while attending this school, he and his
younger brother Isaac (who later changed his name to
Hudson) vowed to each other that they would both, one day,
be famous. It was a vow they would both achieve, albeit on
opposite sides of the Atlantic.
In his
early days, Hiram took a wide variety of jobs in various
towns in Maine, including a stint at a gristmill in the
town of Abbott, where a severe rodent problem inspired his
first invention - an automatically resetting mousetrap.
Such was the quality of his machine, that in his
autobiography, “My Life”, he recalls an incident many
years later, where he went into a shop to buy a mousetrap,
only for the assistant to show him a model identical to
his own design, claiming it to be the finest of its kind.
Maxim had never thought to patent his invention, and it
was the first of many instances through his life when his
ignorance of the patenting system would cause him
problems.
A
physically strong and highly competitive man, he briefly
took up boxing in his youth, until advised by his doctor
to stop. Nevertheless, throughout his life, the
combination of his great strength and immense
determination led him to involve himself in numerous
unusual escapades. On one occasion, for example, he was so
enraged to see a group of youngsters harassing an old man
that he feigned helplessness, so that when they inevitably
rounded on him, he could launch into an all-out attack on
his would-be assailants. On another occasion, he even
leapt onto a moving train in order to apprehend a man he
was convinced had stolen money from him a year earlier.
This not only demonstrates the amazing lengths to which he
would go to prove himself right and avenge what he saw as
unjust, but he very fact that he could identify the man
(rightly, it transpired) after so long demonstrates a
remarkable level of mental discipline
Professionally, Maxim’s first large project was the invention and popularisation of practical electric lighting. He was introduced to the subject by New York industrialist Spencer D. Schuyler, who had heard of French experiments into the subject, and founded the United States Electric Lighting Company to exploit its commercial possibilities. Maxim agreed with Schuyler that there was a need for a safe form of lighting, as the then-conventional gas-powered lighting systems had been known to cause many accidents, sometimes resulting in entire buildings being burnt to the ground. As this would be long-term project, Maxim also looked into a short-term solution to the fire hazard, and invented the world’s first automatic sprinkler system, which even included a mechanism that would automatically alert the police and fire brigade to the emergency.
Of course,
when it comes to electric light, the popular perception
(both then and now) is that it was the solely the work of
Thomas Edison. Maxim made no secret in his later years
that he found this frustrating, and states very firmly in
his autobiography that he began his work with Schuyler
“Two years before Edison took up the subject”. The
reason for his annoyance was simple. Maxim had discovered
a technique for creating a high-quality filament for the
electric light bulb, only for a colleague (whom Maxim
refused to name) to fraudulently patent the idea as his
own. Maxim did not challenge the patent, but Edison did,
presumably aware that the law on discredited patents meant
that the
idea would not get credited to Maxim, but would become
public property. Once the challenge had been successful,
Edison was legally free to create his own version of
Maxim’s filament without any requirement to acknowledge
his work.
While
Edison went on to take the plaudits for electric lighting,
Maxim’s autobiography leaves little doubt that the he
had no admiration for the man, whose popularity and fame
he found immensely irritating. His frustration was not
helped by the numerous incidents where he set up displays
of his arc lights, only for spectators to assume he was
merely a salesman displaying Edison’s invention. In his
own words, “I was annoyed, and told Schuyler that the
next time anyone said ‘Is it Edison’s?’ I would kill
him on the spot”. Edison would eventually come to refer
to Maxim as “The most versatile man in America”, but
if
this was an attempt to pacify Maxim, it failed, as Maxim
made it quite clear in his autobiography that he never
forgave him.
In 1881, he
represented the US Electric Company at the Paris
Exhibition, where his work earned him the Legion d'Honneur.
While in Paris, he spoke with another American, who joked
"If you want to make your everlasting fortune and
pile up gold by the ton, invent a killing machine -
something that will let these Europeans cut each other's
throats more easily - that's what they want". This
would eventually set him on the path toward his most
famous invention, the automatic machine gun.
After
the Paris Exhibition, he decided to make his home in
Europe, and moved to South Norwood, near Croydon. The move
was not, however, a simple a case of him preferring life
in England, as he left behind an extraordinary, and highly
complex marital situation in America. He had married his
first wife, Jane Budden Maxim, in Boston in 1867, and the
couple had three children, Hiram Percy Maxim in 1869,
Florence Maxim in 1873, and Adelaide Maxim in 1875. He
then married another woman, Sarah Haynes, in New York in
1880. Jane finally divorced him after the emergence of a
third woman, Helen Leighton, who claimed that she had
married Maxim in New York in 1878, and that he had
deserted her the following year. The truth of Leighton's
claim was uncertain, but the revelation that he
had been married to three women at once led to him
becoming the subject of several unflattering articles in
American newspapers, all of which no doubt made it all the
more appealing to remain the other side of the Atlantic.
Finally, he would legally (re)marry Sarah Haynes in London
in 1890, and would stay with her for life.
Once settled in England, Maxim took up the killing machine idea that had been offered to him in jest at the Paris Exhibition, and began work on what would become the automatic machine gun, or “Maxim Gun” as it was eventually called. The basic idea of Maxim's design was that the energy of the recoil would be harnessed and used to load the next cartridge. The original version of the Maxim Gun was heavy and cumbersome, and before long, he came up with a more practical design, capable of firing 600 rounds per minute. In 1884, he set up the Maxim Gun Company, and offered the invention to the U.S. War Department, who surprisingly turned it down, calling it “unworthy”. The British Army, however, was more impressed and placed a large order for the machines. In 1888, the Maxim Gun Company moved to Crayford (near Dartford), and merged with its main rival, the Nordenfeldt Company, to form the Maxim Nordenfeldt Guns and Ammunition Company Ltd. Around this time, he was also approached by Vickers Sons and Company, a steel firm that would later be famed for its involvement in the armaments industry, and he decided to buy into the concern. The following year, Thorsten Nordenfeldt resigned, and was replaced by Albert Vickers, bringing the two parties closer. It was a partnership that would prove very useful in Maxim's future projects.