SIS HIRAM MAXIM'S GUN.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 182, 8 April 1915, Page 2

SIS HIRAM MAXIM'S GUN.

A WONDERFUL STORY. New idoas have always fascinated me. As a boy my inventiveness displayed itsjelf in the designing of mechanical toys, although it was not until soma yearg after l reach 3d my majority that 1 became what 1 might term a serious inveutcr. When i was twenty-five, however, I evolved an automatic gas-machine for lighting- up isolated .country houses. Then 1 turned my attention to electricity,and made dynamos and e'ectric lamps in the States. One day, however, a friend said to me, and I quote his words as near as I can recollect them, '•Maxim, if you wish to make a fortune, leave your eleotrioal devices and invent a killing machine for the wars of the future." A DISTURBING KICK. I laughed, for my thoughts had never turned in that direction. A short time afterwards, however, I happened to be firing a military rifle and remarked the powerful kick that it gave. Thinking this ov'ar, it occurred to me that I might turn it to useful effect, for that kick, seemed to me to bs a waste of force, besides being a disturbing element in gunnery. Ultimately? I conceived the idea of utilising this force for reloading and firing I came to London, established a little workshop, and made a gun that tired and leaded itself by the energy derived "from the recoil. It wag a veritable nine-days' wonder. Everyone of note, including the late King Edward, came to see me fire my gun. On' one of the trials I fired 333 rounds in thirty-five seconds, and a belt of 2,000 cartridges in slightly over three minutes.

A startling effect cf. ...this fearful speed was that after the gun had ceased firing at 600 yards as many as forty reports could be counted. This meant that at the instant of stepping the last twenty shots were on their way to the target at varying distances, and the naports of the previous twenty similarly on their way back. BRITAIN'S ENTERPRISE. My first automatic gun was made at Hatton Garden, and the accounts of its extraordinary mechanism v,#e at first received as a Yankee "tall" story. When, however, the British Government gave m,e a big order, which enabled m e to form a company and fit up large workshops, they realized that there was something in my idea. Briefly, the maxim-gun is a compromise between a rifle and a cannon, The barrel is made to move an. inch 'cr so Backwards and forwards inside an outer case filled with water, which prevents it becoming red hot. The recoil of the barrel and the extension cf a compressed spring are made to do a number of operations, including ejecting the eld cartridge shell,extracting a fresh cartridge from the belt, placing it in the chamber, pulling the belt forward one place, cocking' the hammer, and firing the cartridge. The operator has only to keep a button pressed with his thumbs, and the gun will spit out bullets at the maximum rate of ten per second as long as it is fed by ammunition. [ AWFUL CARNAGE. My gun wa s first used in the British Army ,in the Matabele campaign, and I remember the havoc it caused among the Zulus was such that it was seriously discussed in Parliament as to whether such a gun was not outside legitimate warfare. It is a fact, by the way, of which few people are aware, that the invention of the maxim-gun led to the inventing of smokeless powder. While I was making preliminary trials with the gun I noticed the vast cloud of smoke produced, and Lord Woleseley said to me at the time that the gun would be of little use unless I could invent a smokeless powder. This I fully realised, and after a number of experiments I produced what I might '" ■' • • : '• • ' : ' i '~ + f»"hnical de- .. is a compound cf j and guncotton in threads, which gave off practically no smoke, and patented my invention in 1887. It is a curious and interesting fact that later on the Government experts made a powder in the form of threads, which had exactly the same appearance as that which I invented, the only difference being that the Government powder contained fiv e per cent, of vaseline.