I enjoy shooting. I guess you could say I like guns. But I’ve always found there to be something kind of cold-blooded about the development of the first machine guns.
And this is arguably the very first one…
This “Prototype” has a feature you’ve never seen before: A hydraulic buffer that can take the cyclic rate as low as 1 RPM. Apparently Maxim theorized that armies would want a set-and-forget machine for harassing fire. As big as a small cannon and not really practical until the introduction of smokeless powder, this mechanical monstrosity was the great-granddaddy of them all.
I’m sure 30 years later many men in many trenches lay awake night after night, just blessing Hiram Maxim’s name.
