THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL INVENTORS OF ALL TIME

7 The 100 Most Influential Inventors of All Time 7

clipped together to provide continuous fire, and overheating
was solved by surrounding the barrel in a metal jacket in
which water was circulated from a separate container. To
improve the efficiency of his gun, Maxim developed his
own smokeless powder, cordite.
Maxim’s salesmen provided armies with guns in any
calibre, usually matching their current rifle cartridge,
and within a few years every army was equipped with
Maxim guns or adaptations. The light weight of the
guns, made possible because the cartridge was the sole
source of power, allowed them to be operated by special
infantry units. In warfare, machine guns of the Maxim
type had a destructive power never seen before. In the
1890s, British infantry units used Maxim guns, fabricated
under contract by Vickers Sons, to cut down hordes of
poorly armed rebels in Africa and Afghanistan. In World
War I, a few of them could cause thousands of casualties.
Their defensive fire so limited the offensive power of
infantry that the entire Western Front, from the Swiss
border to the English Channel, became one vast siege
operation.
In the 1890s Maxim experimented with airplanes,
producing one powered by a light steam engine that
successfully rose from the ground; he recognized that the
real solution to flight was the internal-combustion engine
but did not attempt to develop it. His hundreds of pat-
ents in the United States and Great Britain included a
mousetrap, an automatic sprinkling system, an automatic
steam-powered water pump, vacuum pumps, engine
governors, and gas motors.
His Maxim Gun Company, founded in 1884, was later
absorbed into Vickers, Ltd., of which he became a director.
In 1900 he became a naturalized British subject, and in
1901 he was knighted by Queen Victoria.