7 Hiram Maxim 7German infantrymen operating a Maxim machine gun during World War I.
Imperial War Museum
Maxim’s interest in the problem of automatic weapons
led him to settle in London. In 1884 he produced the fi rst
satisfactory fully automatic machine gun , employing the
recoil energy of the bullet to unlock the breechblock from
the barrel, extract and eject the fi red case from the gun,
and store suffi cient energy in a main spring to push the
bolt forward, pick up a fresh round, load the chamber, and
lock the piece. Both barrel and breechblock, locked
together, recoiled a short distance to the rear; then the
barrel was stopped and the block continued back alone. If
the trigger was held in fi ring position, the weapon would
continue to fi re until it expended all of its ammunition.
Rounds were fed to the gun on belts, which could be