Page 1 Advertisements Column 2

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 83, 24 August 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEW TYPES OF WARSHIPS REMARKABLE INVENTIONS. New York, July 28. Mr. Hudson Maxim, the well-known inventor, lias designed a warship in which some remarkable features are embodied. The vessel is a cruiser, of high speed, and heavily armed, which sinks lieneath the waves until the only part that remains visible is the platform on which the ibig guns are mounted. Mr. Maxim 'has just patented a design for a new torpedo-boat, which is capable of being submerged, and of taking, on water, a momentum like that of a locomotive on land. He lias also discovered a new method of discharging torpedoes, which are semipropelled, and which have a much greater speed and range than tho3e at present in use. A mechanical engineer by profession, Mr. Maxim began devoting himself to •the business of ordnance and explosives about 24 years ago. He was the first to make smokeless powder in the United States. In 1891 he sold to the Government the formula of "Maxiraite," the first high explosive to be fired through heavy armor plate. He invented the Hudson Maxim automobile torpedo, and a torpedo-ram, having the form of a nearly submerged torpedo-boat, so designed that the explosion of the warliead on ramming a sliip does not imperil the lives of its own occupants.