Arms Dealing
As a salesman for the Swedish inventor Thorsten Nordenfelt, Zaharoff was known for his crafty, aggressive and corrupt business tactics. These included selling arms to both sides of conflicts, selling fake or faulty machinery to clients, and sabotaging demonstrations. Zaharoff sold munitions to many nations of his day, including Great Britain, Germany, the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, Greece, Spain, Japan, and the United States. Despite his reputation for corruption, he helped popularize a number of famous weapons and vehicles, such as the Maxim gun (one of the first fully automatic machine guns) and the first true submarine.
Read more about this topic: Basil Zaharoff
Famous quotes containing the words arms and/or dealing:
“I take your arms boldly,
each day a new excursion.
Come, my sister,
we are two virgins,
our lives once more perfected
and unused.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Always carry it in thy mind, and act upon it, as a sure maxim: “That women are timid:” And ‘tis well they are—else there would be no dealing with them.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)