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Maxim - more than a magazine
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In 1882, Hiram Stevens Maxim, native of Sangerville and recent emigrant to Britain, was told by a man in Vienna, "Hang your chemistry and electricity! If you want to make a pile of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each others' throats with greater facility."
So he did.
Maxim developed the idea of using a gun's recoil force to automatically reload it, and came up with the Maxim gun, the first portable, fully automatic machine gun. Here's some vintage footage of him firing it.
Incidentally, you're hearing pretty much what Maxim heard - he became profoundly deaf as a result of his work with artillery.
Speaking of artillery, let's have a look at what Maxim's gun is capable of...
But Maxim's work was just as fatal to mice as men. You see, he also invented the common mousetrap. The violent, neck-breaking force of the trap has inspired Agatha Christie's long-running play (the cop did it), the Rube Goldberg-like contraption/game, and dozens if not hundreds of super-slow-motion photographers. Here they are capturing a mousetrap in action on an egg...
a human tongue (still attached!)...
and a light bulb.
Ironically, Maxim also claims to have invented the light bulb before Edison, but that's another story for another day.
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