Prolific inventor, best known for the Maxim machine gun.

The son of a farmer, Maxim was apprenticed to a coachmaker. In 1878 he became chief engineer of the US Electric Lighting Co. and was responsible for introducing carbon filaments for electric lightbulbs.

Maxim moved to London and began developing a fully automatic machine gun. In 1884 he succeeded with a design that used the energy of each bullet's recoil force to eject the spent cartridge and insert the next bullet. It could fire more than 300 rounds per minute.

The Maxim Machine-Gun was adopted by the British army in 1889. Other military powers quickly followed suit. The gun was first used by Britain's forces in the Matabele war of 1893-94 in what is now Zimbabwe. In one battle, 50 soldiers defeated 5,000 Matabele warriors with just four Maxim guns.

Maxim's other inventions included smokeless gunpowder, a re-setting mousetrap, a hair-curling iron, a pneumatic gun and a plane.

His Maxim Gun Co. was eventually absorbed into Vickers Ltd. Maxim became a British subject in 1900 and was knighted in 1901.He died in 1916 and did not witness the carnage wrought by the then commonplace machine gun during the First World War.