HIRAM MAXIM.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 348, 27 November 1915, Page 3

HIRAM MAXIM.

FATHEIi OF THE . MACHINE-GUN. KEVOLUTIOINSED WAS. INVENTION AS A HOBBY. "I plead guilty to being- a chronic inventor. I commenced while I was very woung, and have kept it up ever since." Thus Sir Hiram Maxim stands self-confessed in his characteristic autibiography, writes John Leader in Everyman. This interesting record of an exceedingly strenuous life bears out in many respects Edison's contention that it takes a great deal of perspiration and only a spark of inspiration to make up an inventive genius. >sir Hiram Maxim from his childhood aws gifted with a very active mind in a very active body. Physical energy was a sort of family heirloom among his people, and from his boyhood's days he amazed his friends and fellow-workmen by his feats of strength. "My Life'' teems with instances of weight-lifting and boxing exploits and all kinds of tours-de-force. Nor were his powers

of endurance any loss extraordinary. Once when his men in New York went on strike for an eight-hours' day, he told them that the eight-honr-day was nothing new to him: in his youth he used to work eight hours in the forenoon and eight in the afternoon. A FINE OLD MAN. His mental energy was in keeping with his great bodily strength. His perseverance and pluck matched his endurance. When eight years of age. armed with a butcher's knife, he set out to feli a fir tree in his native State of Maine. After hacking at it for eight or nine hours a day for nearly a fortnight, he lied the satisfaction of laying it low— a satisfaction that was somewhat damped by the appearance of the indignant owner. The same determination young Hiram brought to bear on all lie took in hand. "A!! my waking hours was given to hard work and study. I left I'm stone unturned to become expert at everything I had to do." And

expert he became. As one of his employees in Inter years remarked, oil seeing his master doing- a bit of glassblowing: "There's nothing; that the old man can't do." COCKS FEE.

Only by moderation in living ecuir so intense a life be sustained to such an age as .Sir Hiram Maxim has reached. In his autobiography he continually animadverts on the drinking habits of the workmen lie lias had to deal with. In Constantinople, he tells us. lie surprised the people he met by the number of things he did not do, and was dubbed accordingly "the State of Maine Yankee with no civilised vice." French by ancestry, American by birth, British by naturalisation, Hiram Maxim all his life has shown remarkable adaptability and versatility, In whatever he undertook he proceeded to. excel —whether in the domain of mechanics, chemistry, electricity. or gunnery. As a young man, the

output and finish of his woodwork, brasswork, etc., are said to have' set up new standards in the district where he was employed. He could paint a carriage rs well as he could make one. As a mechanic he would tackle any job. THE DEOP OF GENIUS.

But making yourself an all-round expert as a mechanic and cramming scientific text-books does not constitute you an inventor. Something else is needed —genius, inspiration, call it what you will{ Sir Hiram's name for it is "Imagination." With Lord Wolseley, "one of the cleverest men I have ever met," Sir Hiram sympathised deeply, because "he seemed to be afflicted with a very active imagination, a trouble that I had suffered from for many years." When Lord Wolseley first saw the Maxim gun fired at Pirbright, he was amazed at the cloud of smoke that it produced, and told Sir Hiram he ought certainly to find a smokeless powder for his cartridges. ' "Others said the same thing," writes Sir Hiram, "and when I was called away to Vienna one of our directors who saw me- to the station said: "Now, you will be on the train several days: you will have plenty of time to think, and when you arrive in Vienna sit down and write to mo telling me exactly how to make a smokeless powder.' I did as I was requested. The first evening I was at my hotel I sat down and wrdte v very long description of how ::

smokeless powder could be made.

BEAT EDISON

Verily, imagination goes a longway. This inventive imagination came into play at a very early date. When scarcely into his 'teens. Hiram Maxim, wishing to go to sea and be a ship's captain, constructed a chronometer. At 17 he invented a most efficient mousetrap. Then he made - silicatccl blackboard; "the first valuable invention that I made." Next we hear of a wonderful fire-extin-guisher, and in due course the young

inventor turned his attention to the "burning" question, of oleetirk' light

iwo years before Edison took u,» the subject, he was appointed chief engineer to the first Electric Oorapany ever formed in the United States. "It seems that Edison anc" myself were working on similar lines, although I was ahead of him, because I made a platinum lamp before he did, and beat him in the Patent Office. "THAT IS THE GUN." In the history of war, Sir Hiram Maxim's name wul be handed down as that of the man who was the firs' to patent an automatic gun ( a' gun with a single barrel that would- load and fire itself over 600 times a minute), the first to combine nitro-gly-cerine and gun-cotton in a smokeless powder, the first to design and patent a delayed-action fuse, large guns for throwing aerial torpedoes, and many another engine for destruction. After the battle of Omdurman Sir Edward Arnold wroee: "-Jn-rnost of our wars it has been the dash, the skill and the bravery of our. officer' and men that have won the day. but in this case the battle was won by •- quiet, scientific gent'Jeman . living down in Kent." , - ~.,..•

When the Kaiser was first shown the maxim-gun, at the suggestion of Edward VII. (then Prince of Wales), he declared (Sir Hiram tells us) "that is the gun—there is no other"; and the inventor adds, "since which time vast numbers of maxim-guns have been acquired by the German military and naval services.'' How much happier would Europe be to-day had his Teutonic Majesty remarked like Li Hung Chang on the pom-pom: "This gun fires altogether too fast for China"; or like the King of Denmark, who, on hearing that it fired £l3O worth of cartridges (over 400) minute, exclaimed: "That gun would bankrupt my little kingdom in aboul two hours."