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Happy Birthday, Hiram Maxim.

Slightly late birthday wishes (5 February) to the late Sir Hiram Maxim, inventor of an early lightbulb, the standard moustrap and - among many other inventions of varied success - the first automatic machine-gun. Maxim's invention rendered obsolete the manually-operated rapid-fire weapons hitherto available overnight. It also produced the remarkable effect that, through various licensing arrangements and through his Maxim-Vickers Company in the UK (he was US-born, but a naturalised British citizen), he was responsible for the machine-guns used by both German and British forces in WW1. His death late in 1916 has a grim approptiateness about it, coming in the wake of the Battles of Verdun and of the Somme, in which his most famous invention played such prominent parts. Designs based mainly on Maxim's work soldiered on into WW2, notably in the continued of Maxims by the Finns in the Winter and Continuation Wars, by the Soviets in WW2, by the Germans in secondary capacities in WW2, and by the British in the form of the classic Vickers water-cooled machine-gun. More generally, the whole phenomenon of the fully automatic machine gun, submachine-gun and machine pistol owes its origin to Sir Hiram. Maxim devoted a lot of his creative energy to the machine-gun in the latter part of his life - to the extent that he ended up profoundly deaf owing to prolonged exposure to the noise involved in machine-gun trials and promotions. Oh well. To him, and to the many victims of his ground-breaking invention, we may wish Good Repose in the bosom of the Gods. Best regards, JR.