Hiram Percy Maxim

American mechanical engineer

• Born: September 2, 1869
• Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York
• Died: February 17, 1936
• Place of death: La Junta, Colorado

Maxim’s varied career included work in aviation, the automobile industry, communications, and acoustics, and he is best known for his invention of the silencer. His innovations in automobile design provided the essential structure of the modern automobile, and he was a champion of the rights of amateur radio broadcasters.

Primary fields: Automotive technology; communications; mechanical engineering

Primary inventions: Automobile design; Maxim silencer

Early Life

Born in 1869, Hiram Percy Maxim was the only son of Hiram Stevens Maxim, a pioneer in electrical technology and aviation. The elder Maxim’s most famous invention was his Maxim gun, the first portable, fully automatic machine gun. His invention earned him wealth, social standing, and (after he became an English citizen) a knighthood. His brother, Hudson Maxim, was also an inventor, specializing in high explosives.

Growing up in such an inventive household, Hiram Percy Maxim soon developed a great appreciation of the technological arts, and he strove to live up to the family name. Attending public schools in Brooklyn, Maxim was so bright that he skipped several years of schooling and graduated early. He was accepted at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the leading electrical and mechanical engineering institution in the country. He again engaged in an accelerated program, graduating from MIT in 1886. Unfortunately, his father was not there to celebrate his success. The older Maxim, after losing a patent battle over the light bulb with Thomas Alva Edison, had moved to England and was already perfecting his machine gun designs. Unwilling to move to Europe, despite his father’s offer to financially support his projects and education, the younger Maxim chose to stay in the United States. The father and son never saw each other again, but they maintained correspondence until the father died in 1916.

Life’s Work

At MIT, Maxim became interested in aviation. He designed and tested several gliders and continued the experiments after he had graduated and moved to Hartford, Connecticut. In 1889, he crashed one of his gliders, badly injuring his right leg. The incident ended his flying days, but not his interest in aviation. Of the fifty-nine patents Maxim received during his career, several were for aircraft navigation and instrumentation devices. He also served on the planning board for construction of Brainard Field (now Hartford-Brainard Airport), one of the first municipal airports in the country.

Maxim also experimented in noise suppression, an interest sparked by his father’s work. After years of subjecting his ears to the loud bang of bullet firings, the elder Maxim was almost completely deaf by 1895. Although it was too late for his father, the younger Maxim wanted to prevent hearing loss for others. His solution was the Maxim silencer , a device for reducing the noise of a gun firing. His invention slid onto the end of a firearm and used internal baffles to muffle the sound produced by the combustion of the ammunition propellant. It was not a true silencer, however: It reduced the noise produced by the bullet firing but could not suppress the cracking noise when the bullet passed the sound barrier after leaving the barrel. After demonstrating his concept on firearms, Maxim later adapted his basic design to other applications, such as mufflers for automobiles and sound suppressors for factories. In 1930, Maxim patented a “window silencer,” a device that fit into an open window that permitted airflow but blocked exterior noise. Thanks to these inventions, Maxim is considered one of the pioneers of the science of acoustics.

Maxim made some of his greatest contributions in the automotive field. He first became interested in automobiles while at MIT, where several of his colleagues postulated the use of electricity for propulsion. He set aside the issue for several years after he graduated while working at engineering jobs in Indiana and Massachusetts. In 1890, Maxim became the operating superintendent of the American Projectile Company, a maker of munitions for the Army and Navy located in Lynn, Massachusetts. Commuting six miles between Lynn and his home in Salem every day by bicycle soon convinced Maxim that a more efficient mode of transportation would be a good idea, and he began to think again about electrically powered transportation. His plans and experiments brought him into contact with Albert Augustus Pope, a bicycle manufacturer in Hartford interested in getting into the automobile industry. Merging their ambitions, the two men founded the Pope Manufacturing Company in 1895, whose motor vehicle division became the Columbia Automobile Company in 1899. Their first electric car, promoted for its safety compared to the potentially dangerous gasoline-powered cars of the day, was sold in the United States, Canada, France, and the United Kingdom. As gasoline engines became safer, Maxim and Pope changed their designs to accommodate the new technology. Their first gasoline-powered car, introduced in 1900, set the design standard for most automobiles. It was the first automobile with a front-mounted engine (early cars had the engine under the driver’s seat) and a steering wheel on the left-hand side of the car (early cars had a centrally mounted tiller).

The Columbia Automobile Company went through several business manifestations as it acquired and merged with rival car companies. The company was able to defeat and acquire its rivals because it possessed the rights to the Selden patent (named for automobile inventor George B. Selden), which allowed Albert Pope to collect royalties from all manufacturers of internal combustion engine vehicles. The Columbia Automobile Company had purchased the rights to the patent and used it to suppress competition. Pope sold his shares in the company in 1903, leaving Maxim as the managing director. Henry Ford was beginning to dominate the automobile industry, however, and in 1911 Maxim also left the company, a few years before the firm went out of business. That year, Ford was able to convince the courts to overturn the Selden patent on the automobile, and his more efficient production systems made him the leading figure in the automobile industry.

Maxim’s other great impact was in radio communications. He understood the potential impact of instantaneous communications and received several patents for improved transmitters and receivers. His biggest contribution to radio, however, was his organization in 1914 of the American Radio Relay League (ARRL). With radio in its commercial infancy, Maxim became concerned that government and business might attempt to close the industry to amateur and independent radio transmitters. Maxim and the ARRL defended the rights of independent radio operators to use the airwaves. The ARRL created a network across the country that could relay information rapidly from coast to coast, something that single powerful transmitters of the day could not do. The same relay principle is used today to transmit cellular phone calls.

During the world wars, the U.S. government shut down the ARRL to free the airwaves for military transmissions, but the ARRL reclaimed the right to transmit after each war ended. Maxim created a set of operating guidelines to ensure the professional and ethical standards of the organization. The guidelines made amateur radio respectable, and its high standards ensured that the organization enjoyed a long life.

In 1936, Maxim fell ill while returning home by train from a trip to California. He was taken to a hospital in La Junta, Colorado, where he died on February 17. To honor Maxim’s role in creating the organization, the ARRL granted him the call sign 1AW, marking him as the first amateur radio operator.

Impact

The son and nephew of famous inventors, Maxim was an important inventor in his own right. His inventive genius touched on many of the early technologies that shaped the twentieth century: flight, electricity, the automobile, and telecommunications. His Maxim silencer brought him fame, and he applied its principle to mufflers for gasoline engines. Through the American Radio Relay League, Maxim championed the rights of amateur radio operators.

Bibliography

Ford, Steve. On the Air with Ham Radio: Your Guide to the Fascinating Ways Hams Communicate. Newington, Conn.: American Radio Relay League, 2001. A basic guide to the world of ham radio, the book contains a long history of the origins of amateur radio and especially the contributions of Maxim, the “father of amateur radio.”

Maxim, Hiram Percy. Horseless Carriage Days. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1937. Details Maxim’s activities in the early years of the automobile industry, exploring the era in which electric cars vied with internal combustion engine models.

Schiffer, Michael B. Taking Charge: The Electric Automobile in America. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2003. A broad survey of electrically powered automobiles in the United States. Contains a full description of the products manufactured by Maxim and the Columbia Automobile Company.

Schumacher, Alice Clink. Hiram Percy Maxim: Father of Amateur Radio, Car Builder, and Inventor. Cortez, Colo.: Electric Radio Press, 1998. The only single-volume biography of Maxim, the book is a relatively brief but full account of Maxim’s varied career, with an emphasis on his contributions to radio.