Know Your Weapons: Hiram Maxim Invented More than Machine Guns

Hiram Percy Maxim, son of Hiram Maxim — inventor of the machine gun — is best known for his silencers.

The younger Maxim developed the first viable firearm suppressors at the turn of the 20th century, securing a series of patents between 1909 and 1920. He sold his designs through the Maxim Silent Firearms Company, which would eventually become the Maxim Silencer Company.

Maxim began his work in 1906, experimenting with different designs theoretically capable of moderating sound. He tried valves, vents and bypass devices, and came to believe that the propellant gases leaving a firearm’s muzzle could be whirled to create a vortex, thereby slowing them sufficiently to prevent them making noise as they left the muzzle.

Maxim’s first experimental silencer, pictured at left, used an offset snailshell-shaped chamber and valve to trap and swirl the muzzle gases in an effort to slow their travel. Maxim’s results with this design were encouraging. He continued to develop the idea of swirling the gases and, in June 1908, filed his patent for an “improvement in Silent Firearms.”

Patented in March 1909, this design used a series of curved vanes or blades to create a series of miniature vortices that captured and slowed the muzzle gases.

Maxim did not produce theModel 1909 silencer in great numbers. Its main flaw — the vortices caused the suppressor to quickly heat up. The curved internal vanes also proved expensive to manufacture. Still, the Model 1909 could reduce a .22LR pistol’s report by up to 30 decibels.

In October and November 1908, Maxim filled two more patents to protect an improvement on his earlier design. This new design became the Model 1910, which still relied on Maxim’s gas-vortex theory but simplified the vane arrangement.

Read the Remainder at War is Boring