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Military History – South Africa – Europe – England 19th Century
.Article – Online Historic Information | Military
.Page 176
genius, taking out a patent, for example, on the carbon filament for the electric light in 1880. He
was sent to Europe as Chief Engineer for the US Electric Lighting Company in 1881. In Vienna a
friend advised the American that, if he wanted to become rich, he should “invent something that will
enable these Europeans to cut each other’s throat with greater facility”. Maxim set up offices and
works at 57D Hatton Garden, London, and by July 1883 had registered his second patent on a gun, the
first true machine-gun. The next year, he set up the Maxim Gun Company with a steel-maker, Albert
Vickers and they supplied the first reliable guns to the British army in March 1887. These were 0.45inch calibre, water-cooled weapons, weighing some 60lb (27.25kg).
In July 1888 he amalgamated with the firm of Thorsten Nordenfelt, a Swede, who was building a
handcranked gun designed by Helge Palmcrantz in works on the Thames at Erith, east of Greenwich.
It was not a happy relationship and Nordenfelt resigned from the Maxim Nordenfelt Guns &
Ammunition Company in 1890, but the acquisition of manufacturing capacity continued and by 1893
the company had works at Erith, Crayford, Dartford and Birmingham in England as well as in
Stockholm in Sweden and Placentia in Spain. The firm changed its name to Vickers, Sons and Maxim
Limited on 1 October 1897, but guns were still being stamped Maxim-Nordenfeltlater that year and
possibly into the next. Maxim became a British citizen in 1900 and was knighted in 1901. He became
more interested in his heavier-than-air, steam-powered flying machine, which flew earlier than that of
the Wright brothers, and eventually retired in 1911, upon which the company name was changed to
Vickers Limited. Sir Hiram Maxim died in Streatham, London on 24 November 1916.
See also:
Maxim-Nordenfelt Pom-Pom; Maxim-Vickers Machine-gun.
Reference:
Goldsmith, Dolf L., ed. R. Blake Stevens, The Devil’s Paintbrush: Sir Hiram Maxim’s Gun
(Toronto, Collector Grade Publications, 1989).
Maxim-Nordenfelt Pom-Pom
The 1-pounder (1.457-inch/3.7cm) gun that became known, because of the noise of its steady rate of
fire, as the Pom-Pom was descended from the hand-cranked guns principally intended for use by the
navy. The British soldier was to regret his own army’s lack of interest when he encountered the
weapon in the hands of the Boers. They recognised its handiness and mobility in difficult country and
used it, after the British had discovered the wisdom of taking cover, less to inflict damage than to
restrict movement and prevent the return of fire.
The guns manufactured by the French factory of the American designer Hotchkiss and by the
British factory of the Swedish inventor Nordenfelt were turned by hand and thus were vulnerable to,
at best, jamming or, at worst, exploding should a round fail to go off promptly. The guns were,
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