Maxim and development
Hiram Maxim with his machine gun.
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The machine gun most commonly used throughout World War 1 was
known as the Maxim gun, created by Hiram Maxim in 1884. This gun was an appropriated and more effective design to the Gatling gun which was used in previous wars. The actual work made on the Maxim machine gun dated back before 1884, as it is said to have taken Hiram Maxim more than 3 years to create variations, schematics and ideas for the Maxim machine gun used primarily throughout World War 1. Hiram Maxim first got his idea for the Maxim machine gun when he was hunting with his friends and noticed that the rifle that he was usage had a great amount of recoil. From this, he thought of the idea for a gun that can rapidly fire and reload by using the recoil to shift the empty shell out of place and replace with a live bullet. With this happening, the prototype gun can rapidly fire bullets at a staggering rate, whilst still being able to have a large ammunition capacity. Most of this technology used for the Maxim gun is said to have been developed around 1884, but the first usage of machine guns, such as the Puckle gun, was used throughout the American Revolution, but was ineffective due to the fact that the user would only be able to fire approximately 89 rounds per minute and had to be manually turned by a crank to be fired. |