Hiram Stevens Maxim
Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim (February 5, 1840 – November 24, 1916) was an American-born inventor who emigrated to the United Kingdom at the age of forty-one, although he remained an American citizen until he became a naturalized British subject in 1900. He was the inventor of the Maxim Gun – the first portable, fully automatic machine gun – and an elaborate mousetrap. He laid a claim to inventing the lightbulb, and even experimented with powered flight, but his large aircraft designs were never successful. However, his "Captive Flying Machine" amusement ride, designed as a means by which to fund his research while generating public interest in flight, was highly successful.
Read more about Hiram Stevens Maxim: Birth, Family, Emigration and Knighthood, Profession, The Maxim Machine Gun, Inventions, Flying Machines, Philosophy and Religion, Death, Books, Patents
Famous quotes containing the words stevens and/or maxim:
“If in a shimmering room the babies came,
Drawn close by dreams of fledgling wing,
It was because night nursed them in its fold.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)