31- المدفع الرشاش هيرام مكسيم أمريكي 1883م
-ابن مزارع وقاطع خشب ورعى الغنم وهو طفل.
- لا يعرف متى مات والديه.
-في سن الرابعة عشرة ترك المدرسة وعمل لدى صانع عربات.
- ترك الاسرة وعمل في عدة مهن.
- كتب ابنه 60 قصة مذهلة عن طفولته حتى ن الثانية عشرة.
- عاش طفولة صعبة وكان يسير حافي القدمين اصلع وبنطالة ممزق.
واضح انه عاش حياة ازمة ولكننا لا نعرف تفاصيل طفولته وعليه سنعتبره مجهول الطفولة.

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Born in Maine, USA, 5 February 1840, of French Huguenot descent, Hiram Stevens Maxim spent his early childhood in the town of Sangerville. He was "a poor little bareheaded, bare-footed boy with a pair of drill trousers, frayed out at the bottom, open at the knees, with a patch on the bottom, running wild but very expert at catching fish." He led a rough, self-reliant life and became a master of many trades.
Young Maxim was first apprenticed to a carriage maker at the age of 14, and made astronomical instruments in his spare time, as well as supporting himself by working as a part-time barman.
Much of his early working life was spent in engineering firms where the foundation of his skills were laid and by 1873 he had become the senior partner in a company building gas and steam engines, in New York.
Maxim was an eccentric and boisterous individual with a tremendous capacity for hard work

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Hiram Percy would later author a biography on his father entitled A Genius in the Family, which contained about 60 anecdotes of Hiram Percy's experiences with his father throughout his early life (until about 12). Most of these short stories are incredibly amusing and captivating; they give a reader an insider's (and child's) view of this magnificently brilliant man's personal and family life--the same family he would later abandon when moving to Europe (which would become a permanent move).[
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Nationality British
ethnicity American
gender Male
Occupation inventor
A member of a noteworthy family of mechanics and draftsmen, Hiram Maxim, thecreator of the first practical automatic machine gun, also experimented witha steam-powered flying machine in 1894. At age twenty-four, in his uncle's engineering firm in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, he invented a curling iron. Around 1868, he created a locomotive headlight that came into common use. His later inventions included an automatic fire extinguisher, automatic gas generator, engine governors, steam and vacuum pumps, inhalers for bronchitis, a mousetrap, automatic spindle, density regulator for equalizing the illuminating value of gas, and an electrical pressure regulator, which won him a French Legion of Honor.

Born in Sangerville, Maine, Maxim was the eldest son of a farmer and woodworker. At age fourteen, Maxim was apprenticed to a carriagemaker and learned numerous other trades in New England and Canada. As a hobby, he enjoyed pugilismand toyed with the idea of becoming a professional boxer, but instead he moved to Fitchburg, Massachusetts, where he worked for an engineer. From there he migrated to Boston and worked for a maker of scientific instruments, then to New York, where he was employed at the Novelty Iron Company and secured hisfirst patent for a curling iron. At age thirty-eight, he became the chief engineer for the United States Electric Lighting Company. His first major contributions were the graphite-rod incandescent light bulb in 1878, a standardized coating of carbon lamp filaments in 1880, and an electric current regulator, which won international praise in 1881 at the Paris Exhibition.

While in France, Maxim became intrigued with the possibility of creating an automatic weapon, something European designers had been struggling to produce.Maxim went to work in London, and later became a British subject. At his laboratory in Hatton Garden, London, he produced his Maxim single-barrel automated gun in 1884, which was belt-fed and water-cooled, an advancement over thehand-cranked Gatling gun. The device, capable of firing 666 rounds per minute, loaded, fired, then extracted and ejected the cartridge, using energy derived from the momentum of recoil. A subsequent model, dubbed the Vickers Maxim,became standard British Army issue. Later, he developed the pom-pom gun, which launched one-pound shells, and the aerial torpedo gun.

Maxim's contributions to the British military earned him a knighthood by Queen Victoria in 1901. He continued to work on the delayed-action fuse and cordite, a smokeless powder made from nitroglycerin and cotton, which he evolved with the help of Hudson Maxim, his brother and partner. Maxim's improvements in weaponry gave significant advantage to British forces during the Boxer Rebellion and the Boer War. Soldiers, grateful for the improvements, chanted: "Whatever happens, we have got/The Maxim gun and they have not!" Soon, the gun came into use in every major country. It was not until the perfection of tankwarfare that the machine gun slaughter of World War I was successfully countered.

Maxim's total output included 271 patents. He tried without success to createa steam engine light enough to power a biplane, but recognized that he needed an internal combustion engine to achieve success. He died in New York on November 24,1916.

Father: Isaac Weston Maxim
Mother: Harriet Boston Stevens
Brother: Hudson Maxim (b. 1853)
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