science · 05 February 1840 · 185 years ago
birth
Born 5 Feb 1840; died 24 Nov 1916 at age 76.
Hiram Stevens Maxim was an American-English inventor whose best known innovation is the Maxim machine gun. His first patent was for a hair-curling iron (1866), followed by a device for generating illuminating gas and a locomotive headlight. In 1878, he was hired as chief engineer of the United States Electric Lighting Company, the first such company in the United States. In that post he produced a basic invention, a method of manufacturing carbon filaments. In 1881 he exhibited an electric pressure regulator at the Paris Exposition. Among his hundreds of other patents in the U.S. and Great Britain are a mousetrap, an automatic sprinkling system, an automatic steam-powered water pump, vacuum pumps, engine governors, and gas motors.
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