MAXIM, SIR HIRAM STEVENS (184o- )

This article appears in Volume V17, Page 918 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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MAXIM, SIR HIRAM STEVENS (184o- ) , Anglo-American engineer and inventor, was born at Sangerville, Maine, U.S.A., on the 5th of February 1840. After serving an

apprenticeship

APPRENTICESHIP (from Fr. apprendre, to learn)

with a coachbuilder, he entered the machine works of his uncle, Levi Stevens, at Fitchburg,

Massachusetts

MASSACHUSETTS (an Indian name, originally applied to a tribe of Indians)

, in 1864, and four years later he became a draughtsman in the Novelty Iron Works and Shipbuilding Company in New

York

YORK
YORK (
HOUSE
- HOUSE
- HOUSE (O. Eng. hiss, a word common to Teutonic languages, cf. Dut. huis, Ger. Haus; in
  Gothic
  - GOTHIC
  it is only found in gudhiss, a temple; it may be ultimately connected with the root of " hide," conceal)
OF)
YORK, EDMUND OF
LANGLEY
- LANGLEY, SAMUEL PIERPONT (1834-1906)
, DUKE OF (1341-1402)
EDWARD
- EDWARD
.html">YORK,
EDWARD
- EDWARD
YORK, FREDERICK
AUGUSTUS
- AUGUSTUS (a name 1 derived from Lat. augeo, increase, i.e. venerable, majestic, Gr. Ee0avr6s)
, DUKE OF (1763-1827)
YORK, RICHARD, DUKE

City. About this period he produced several inventions connected with

illumination

ILLUMINATION

by gas; and from 1877 he was one of the numerous inventors who were trying to solve the problem of making an efficient and durable incandescent electric lamp, in this connexion introducing the widely-used process of treating the carbon filaments by heating them in an atmosphere of hydrocarbon vapour. In 188o he came to Europe, and soon began to devote himself to the construction of a machine-gun which should be automatically loaded and fired by the energy of the recoil (see MACHINE-GUN): In order to realize the full usefulness of the weapon, which was first exhibited in an underground range at Hatton Garden, London, in 1884, he felt the necessity of employing a smokeless powder, and accordingly he devised maximite, a mixture of trinitrocellulose, nitroglycerine and castor oil, which was patented in 1889. He also undertook to make a flying machine, and afternumerous preliminary experiments constructed an apparatus which was tried at Bexley Heath, Kent, in 1894. (See FLIGHT.) Having been naturalized as a British subject, he was knighted in 1901. His younger brother, Hudson

Maxim

MAXIM, SIR HIRAM STEVENS (184o- )

(b. 1853), took out numerous patents in connexion with explosives.

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