Hiram Stevens Maxim

Hiram Stevens Maxim patents gas, recoil and blow-back methods of operation between 1883 and 1885 to operate a gun automatically.

Born in Sangerville, Maine in the United States in 1840, had become an apprentice coachbuilder at the age of fourteen and ten years later took up a job at the machine works of his uncle, Levi Stephens, at Fitchburg, Massachusetts.

He subsequently worked as an instrument maker and as a draftsman. (His early jobs in these arenas will lead him to often be disappointed with workers when he runs his own companies later on in life.)

His brother, Hudson Maxim, is also a military inventor, specializing in explosives.

They worked quite closely together until later in life, when there was a disagreement on a patent of smokeless powder.

The patent, Hiram claimed, had been put under the name 'H. Maxim,' and that because of this, his brother was able to stake a claim at the powder being his own.

Hudson, a skilled and knowledgeable man, sells armaments in the U. S., while Hiram works mainly in Europe.

Hudson has success in the States, which causes jealousy from Hiram (he laments having "a double" of himself running around in the States).

The jealousy and disagreements cause a rift between the brothers that will last the rest of their lives.

Maxim had developed and installed the first electric lights in a New York City building (the Equitable Life Building at 120 Broadway) in the late 1870s.

However, he was involved in several lengthy patent disputes with Thomas Edison over his claims to the light bulb.

One of these actions regarded the incandescent bulb, for which Maxim claimed that Edison was credited by means of his better understanding of patenting law (though in England Joseph Wilson Swan had already obtained the first patent in 1878).

He claimed an employee of his (Maxim's) had falsely patented the invention under his own name, and that Edison proved the employee's claim to be false, knowing that patent law would mean the invention would become public property, allowing Edison to manufacture the light bulb without crediting Maxim as the true inventor.

He married his first wife, Jane Budden, in 1867, with whom he has had three children.

He had married his second wife, Sarah, daughter of Charles Hayes of Boston, in 1881.

It is not clear if he was legally divorced from his first wife at this time.

Maxim had arrived in England in 1881 in order to reorganize the London offices of the U.S. Electric Lighting Company.

As a child, Maxim had been knocked over by a rifle's recoil, and this has inspired him to use that recoil force to automatically operate a gun.

After moving to England, he settles in a large house formerly owned by Lord Thurlow in West Norwood, where he develops his design for an automatic weapon, using an action that closes the breech and compresses a spring, by storing the recoil energy released by a shot to prepare the gun for its next shot.

He had thoughtfully run announcements in the local press warning that he would be experimenting with the gun in his garden and that neighbors should keep their windows open to avoid the danger of broken glass.

Emin Pasha, a German doctor and naturalist who had been appointed Governor of Equatoria, is able to send and receive letters via Buganda and Zanzibar and had been informed in February 1886 that the Egyptian government would abandon the extreme southern province Equatoria.

When the Mahdists captured Khartoum in 1885, Egyptian administration of the Sudan had collapsed, and Equatoria, located on the upper reaches of the Nile near Lake Albert, had been nearly cut off from the outside world.

In July, encouraged by the missionary Alexander Mackay, he had invited the British government to annex Equatoria itself.

Although the government is not interested in such a doubtful venture, the British public have come to see Emin as a second General Gordon in mortal danger from the Mahdists.

By November, Scottish businessman and philanthropist William Mackinnon, who had been involved in various colonial ventures, had approached Henry Morton Stanley about leading a relief expedition.

Stanley had declared himself ready "at a moment's notice" to go.

Mackinnon then approached J. F. Hutton, a business acquaintance also involved in colonial activities, and together they had organized the "Emin Pasha Relief Committee", mostly consisting of Mackinnon's friends, whose first meeting was on December 19, 1886.

The Committee had raised a total of about £32,000.

Stanley is officially still in the employment of Léopold II of Belgium, by whom he had been employed in carving out Léopold's 'Congo Free State'.

As a compromise for letting Stanley go, it had been arranged in a meeting in Brussels between Stanley and the king, that the expedition would take a longer route up the Congo River, contrary to plans for a shorter route inland from the eastern African coast.

In return, Léopold would provide his Free State steamers for the transportation of the expedition up the river, from Stanley Pool (now Pool Malebo) as far as the mouth of the Aruwimi River.

By January 1, 1887, Stanley was back in London preparing the expedition, to widespread public acclaim.

The plan of the expedition was to go to Cairo, then to Zanzibar to hire porters, then south of Africa, around the Cape, to the mouth of the Congo, up the Congo by Leopold's steamers, branching off at the Aruwimi River.

Stanley intends to establish a camp on the Aruwimi, then go east overland through unknown territory to reach Lake Albert and Equatoria.

He then expected that Emin will send the families of his Egyptian employees back along the just-pioneered route, along with a large store of ivory accumulated in Equatoria, while Stanley, Emin, and Emin's soldiers would proceed eastward to Zanzibar.

Coincidentally, public doubts over the plan center around whether it can be achieved; the possibility that Emin might not want to leave seems not to have been considered.

The expedition is the largest and best-equipped to go to Africa; a twenty-eight-foot steel boat named the Advance is designed to be divided into twelve sections for carrying over land, and Hiram Maxim has presented the expedition with one of his recently invented Maxim guns, which is the first to be brought to Africa.

Merely 'exhibiting' the gun is thought to be a scare that would spare the expedition problems with troublesome natives.

The Relief Committee had received four hundred applications by hopeful participants.

From these, Stanley had chosen the officers who were to accompany him to Africa:.

Stanley had departed London on January 21 and arrived in Cairo on the 27th.

Egyptian objections to the Congo route had been overridden by a telegram from Lord Salisbury, and the expedition is permitted to march under the Egyptian flag.

Stanley had also met with Mason Bey, Schweinfurth, and Junker, who had more up-to-date information about Equatoria.

Stanley had left Cairo on February 3, joined up with expedition members during stops in Suez and Aden, and arrives in Zanzibar on February 22.

The next three days had been spent packing for the expedition, loading the Madura, and negotiating; Stanley had acted as a representative of Mackinnon in convincing the Sultan of Zanzibar to grant a concession for what will later become the Imperial British East Africa Company (I.B.E.A.C.), and had made two agreements with Tippu Tib.

The first included appointing him as Governor of Stanley Falls, an arrangement much criticized in Europe as a deal with a slave-trader, and the second agreement regarding the provisions of carriers for the expedition.

In addition to transporting stores, the carriers are now also expected to bring out some seventy-five tons of ivory stored in Equatoria.

Stanley had posted letters to Emin predicting his arrival on Lake Albert around August.

The victorious Protestant and Roman Catholic converts now divide the Buganda kingdom, which they rule through a figurehead kabaka dependent on their guns and goodwill.

Thus, outside religion has disrupted and transformed the traditional state

Soon afterwards, the arrival of competing European imperialists— the German Doctor Karl Peters (an erstwhile philosophy professor) and the British Captain Frederick Lugard—break the Christian alliance; the British Protestant missionaries urge acceptance of the British flag, while the French Catholic mission either supports the Germans (in the absence of French imperialists) or calls for Buganda to retain its independence.

In January 1892, fighting breaks out between the Protestant and Catholic Baganda converts.

The Catholics quickly gain the upper hand, until Lugard intervenes with a prototype machine gun, the Maxim (named after its American inventor, Hiram Maxim).

The Maxim decides the issue in favor of the pro-British Protestants; the French Catholic mission is burned to the ground, and the French bishop flees.

The resultant scandal is settled in Europe when the British government pays compensation to the French mission and persuades the Germans to relinquish their claim to Uganda.

With Buganda secured by Lugard and the Germans no longer contending for control, the British begin to enlarge their claim to the "headwaters of the Nile," as they call the land north of Lake Victoria.

Allying with the Protestant Baganda chiefs, the British set about conquering the rest of the country, aided by Nubian mercenary troops who had formerly served the khedive of Egypt.

Bunyoro has been spared the religious civil wars of Buganda and is firmly united by its king, Kabarega, who has several regiments of troops armed with guns.

After five years of bloody conflict, the British occupy Bunyoro and conquer Acholi and the northern region, and the rough outlines of the Uganda Protectorate come into being.

Other African polities, such as the Ankole kingdom to the southwest, sign treaties with the British, as do the chiefdoms of Busoga, but the kinship-based peoples of eastern and northeastern Uganda have to be overcome by military force.

A mutiny by Nubian mercenary troops in 1897 is only barely suppressed after two years of fighting, during which Baganda Christian allies of the British once again demonstrate their support for the colonial power.

As a reward for this support, and in recognition of Buganda's formidable military presence, the British negotiate a separate treaty with Buganda, granting it a large measure of autonomy and self-government within the larger protectorate.

One-half of Bunyoro 's conquered territory is awarded to Buganda as well, including the historical heartland of the kingdom containing several Nyoro (root word and adjective for Bunyoro) royal tombs.

Buganda doubles in size from ten to twenty counties (sazas), but the "lost counties" of Bunyoro remain a continuing grievance that will return to haunt Buganda in the 1960s.