Hiram Stevens Maxim
1840-1916
Hiram Maxim was born to a Maine farmer and received little formal education. He did, however, receive that rough engineering experience that comes from being the attentive son of a rural mechanic. At 14 Maxim would begin his career as apprentice to a coachmaker. By 1864 he had moved to Massachusetts to work for his uncle at a machine works. In 1866 he received the fist of many patents as he continued to drift from one occupation to the next. Moving to Europe in 1881, Maxim would settle in England by 1883 and spend the remainder of his life there.
An ardent self-promoter, Maxim became embroiled in numerous public disputes over claimed inventions but rarely had the grounds to bring a patent suit. Notable examples include men such as Thomas Edison and John Browning. Despite many of his ideas being contested or left undeveloped, Maxim would become a wealthy man with the majority of his efforts and patents being in the fields of electric light and aeronautics.
Maxim’s legacy, however, is that of the recoil operated machine gun. With the backing of Albert Vickers, Maxim would form an arms company to develop the worlds first commercially successful automatic machine gun. Through numerous mergers the company would come to be named Vickers Ltd. of which Maxim remained on the company board until 1911.