MAXIM, SIR Hiram Stevens, Anglo American inventor: b. Sangerville, Me., 5 Feb. 1840; d. London, England, 24 Nov. 1916. As a boy he received his early education in the country schools of Maine. What little spare time he had after attending to his work on the farm and in his father's workshop was spent in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. When he was 14 years old he was sent as an appren tice to a carriage builder at East Corinth, Me. Later, while employed in a laboratory in Bos ton, he perfected his first invention, a method of carbureting air and gas for lighting pur poses. His invention was used in many New York hotels. Others of his inventions included electrical devices, improvements on incandescent lamps, self-registering current machines and other similar contrivances. When he was 28 years old he was employed as a draughtsman in a shipbuilding firm in New York City. While there he invented a locomotive head light, which was used generally. In 1884 Maxim perfected the automatic rifle, or machine gun, in which the recoil due to the explosion of one cartridge was utilized to eject the empty shell and at the same time reload the weapon. The inventor was then in England. The gov ernment, interested at once in the possibilities presented by the rifle, adopted it. It was the Maxim gun that was an important factor in winning the Egyptian campaign for the Eng lish. It is now used by the armies throughout
the world. Closely following came the °dis appearing gun?) cordite and other smokeless powders, a gun for hurling aerial torpedoes and the °delayed action" fuse. For many years Sir Hiram experii.iented with aeronautics. In 1894 he succeeded in building a heavier-than-air machine. At that time when aeroplanes were only thought possible, Sir Hiram Maxim criti cised the British nation for lack of interest in aeronautics and predicted that a bombardment of the island from airships was possible. Sir Hiram held membership in the American So ciety of Civil Engineers, the Royal .Society of Arts, the British Association for the Advance ment of Science and many other bodies. He became a naturalized citizen of Great Britain because. of alleged unfair treatment of his in ventions by the American government. Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim will he remembered as one of the foremost inventors of his day. In 1:•:1 President of France made him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. This deco ration was followed in 1901 by recognition by the British government, Queen Victoria elevat ing him to the knighthood.