Hudson Maxim

American chemist

• Born: February 3, 1853
• Birthplace: Orneville, Maine
• Died: May 6, 1927
• Place of death: Landing, New Jersey

The brother of machine-gun inventor Hiram Stevens Maxim, Hudson Maxim invented several types of explosives, the most important of which was smokeless gunpowder, which is now used in all modern firearms.

Primary fields: Chemistry; military technology and weaponry

Primary invention: Smokeless gunpowder

Early Life

One of eight children of a poor family in rural Maine that frequently relocated, Hudson Maxim did not attend school until he was eight years old and did not even wear shoes until he was nine. To earn money for schoolbooks when he was young, he pitched hay on farms, pounded rocks in a granite quarry, and worked in a brickyard. Like his parents, he was exceptionally strong and very hardworking.

At the age of eighteen, Maxim enrolled at Maine Wesleyan Seminary, a coeducational college-preparatory school in Kents Hill that was later renamed Kents Hill School. He attended the school several weeks of each year for seven years, spending the rest of his time earning money to pay for it. When he was twenty, he took a job as a schoolteacher for one term a year and began in a classroom filled with unruly boys who had thrown their last teacher out a window. Maxim later admitted that at that time, he knew little more than his pupils did. However, he learned quickly enough to stay ahead of them and imposed order in the classroom after defeating the toughest boy in a wrestling match.

When he was twenty-two, Maxim hypothesized that all matter is composed of a single type of ultimate atom, and that differences in complex matter are due to the differing arrangements and motions of the atoms’ component. In 1889, Scientific American Supplement published an article he wrote explaining his theory. When Scientific American reprinted the article in 1921, the magazine credited him with anticipating some aspects of Albert Einstein’s atomic theory.

Meanwhile, Maxim had moved to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he set up a publishing business in 1883. He wrote a self-help book, The Real Penwork Self-Instructor for Penmanship, which his own company published. The book sold more than 400,000 copies, and his business grew large enough to employ one hundred people. However, the rise of typewriters and fountain pens killed the market for his book. Maxim also invented a color-printing process that Pittsfield’s Evening Journal used to become the first U.S. newspaper with daily color pages.

Life’s Work

In 1888, Maxim received a request from his older brother Hiram Stevens Maxim, then living in England, to hire some American workers for his gun company. At that time, Hiram was making a fortune from his automatic machine gun, which became known as the Maxim gun. Hudson took a mechanic and draftsman with him to England, where he went to work for his brother. He and Hiram worked together on many projects, including smokeless gunpowder.

After returning to the United States, Maxim continued his own experiments with explosives and founded the Maxim Powder and Torpedo Company in Squankum, New Jersey—a town that was later renamed Maxim in his honor. Based on nitrocellulose, his smokeless gunpowder became the standard for U.S. Army guns. Maxim’s claim that his formula for smokeless gunpowder was his own invention started a bitter feud with his brother. His own formulation was, in fact, different from that of his brother, but neither of them was actually the original inventor of smokeless gunpowder. What they had both done was reverse-engineer a smokeless powder sample that had come from a French government armory.

Maxim next turned his attention to developing smokeless cannon powder. The smokeless cannon powders available at that time were made in the form of flat strips, ribbons, or rods with one perforation. The grains burned when they came into contact with sulfur and charcoal particles, so the powder burned relatively slowly, and pressure decreased significantly as projectiles reached the forward part of the cannons’ barrels. Maxim devised a smokeless cannon powder cylinder that was three times as long as it was wide. Each unit was perforated with seven longitudinal holes. These holes allowed the cannon powder to burn evenly and rapidly, producing more ballistic force.

In 1894, Maxim lit a match to test the dryness of a small particle of mercury fulminate compound, forgetting that he was holding another piece of the compound in his left hand. The second piece ignited and blew off his entire hand, leaving the end of his wristbone exposed. His left thumb landed two hundred yards away. He eventually adapted very well to his handicap; he grew skilled at using the hook that replaced his lost hand and was not shy about gesturing with it as one would with a hand.

Meanwhile, Maxim’s first marriage, in Pittsfield, ended in divorce after five years. In 1896, he married Lilian Durban, the daughter of a nonconformist London pastor and magazine writer. Like her husband, Lilian had a special interest in poetry, and she worked with him in their home laboratory in Brooklyn, New York. In 1898, Maxim sold his factory and patents to E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, for which he worked his remaining years as a consulting engineer.

Another of Maxim’s major inventions was maximite, an explosive designed for use in artillery. (His brother Maxim used the same name for his own smokeless gunpowder, an unrelated product.) In 1901, the U.S. Army bought the exclusive right to use maximite from Maxim. Maximite needed delayed-action detonating fuses to work in artillery shells, so it could be activated after the shells penetrated enemy armor. Maxim invented the fuse, which in 1908 the U.S. Navy adopted.

In 1905, Maxim sold stabillite, an improved smokeless gunpowder, to du Pont. Earlier versions of smokeless gunpowder had to be dried for months before they could be used to give the volatile solvents left over from the manufacturing process time to evaporate. Because stabillite used no volatile solvents, it could be used immediately.

Among Maxim’s other important inventions was motorite, a fuel for torpedoes and torpedo boats that he called his most difficult invention. Five feet long, seven inches in diameter, and dense and rubbery, each motorite bar was inserted in a steel tube. Each tube was open at one end, which was screwed to a combustion chamber. When a bar was ignited, water was pumped into the chamber and turned to steam by the motorite’s heat. A series of baffles directed the steam out the combustion chamber. The combustion of the motorite combined with steam power to propel the torpedo, approximately doubling the amount of energy used by self-propelled torpedoes. In 1912, Maxim gave the rights to motorite to the U.S. Navy for one dollar, but the Navy never used it. Maxim also invented an improved process for producing calcium carbide that was bought by the Union Carbide Company.

After the United States entered World War I in 1916, Maxim chaired the Committee on Ordnance and Explosives for the Naval Consulting Board. He also worked on military inventions, including an underwater mine that was detonated by the magnetic field emitted by submarines that approached within fifty feet. That invention he donated to the U.S. government.

Although Maxim rested only reluctantly, he enjoyed spending time at his country estate at Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey. However, he had a working laboratory at his estate, which was only three miles from his Squankum factory. The loss of his left hand did not dampen his enthusiasm for physically exercise, especially playing tennis. Maxim twice played the role of King Neptune to open the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City. Sporting a full beard, he rode a seashell barge and was surrounded by mermaids.

Maxim was also a serious lecturer and writer who promoted women’s rights and opposed alcohol prohibition, which he called a national calamity. In April, 1926, he testified before a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the harm caused by the Prohibition laws and extolled the benefits of moderate alcohol consumption. He argued that people who abstain from alcohol tend to consume excessive amounts of sugars and starches in unconscious compensation for missing the stimulation and feeling of well-being produced by alcohol. A year later, when he died of cancer, on May 6, 1927, he was lauded by the press and revered by most of the public.

Impact

The importance of Maxim’s development of smokeless gunpowder can be seen in its impact on battlefields. For centuries, smoke clouds discharged by black gunpowder revealed the positions of gunners to their enemies and often obscured the gunners’ own vision. The creation of smokeless powder was especially important for the Maxim gun, which fired six hundred rounds per minute. It was also a welcome improvement for the Maxim gun’s older American competitor, the Gatling gun. Smokeless powder is actually not a true powder; it takes its name from old-fashioned black gunpowder. It later became the standard for virtually all modern firearms. Even in guns with slow firing rates, it is cleaner and produces much less fouling in gun barrels, thereby helping to maintain accuracy and reduce malfunctions.

Maxim’s development of a technique for manufacturing powder without use of volatile solvents became especially important during wartime, when rapid production was necessary. However, his own specific process was not used because one of its components, trinitroanisol, damaged human skin when the gunpowder was touched.

During World War I, Maxim’s smokeless cannon powder was used extensively by the Allies, including the Russians. It allowed large guns to be fired more accurately and with higher muzzle velocities. It enabled guns to hit targets at greater distances and deliver greater destructive force. Artillery weapons killed more soldiers—on both sides—than did any other weapons in the war. Without Maxim’s powder, the Allies would have been at a significant disadvantage.

Bibliography

Johnson, Clifton. The Rise of an American Inventor: Hudson Maxim’s Life Story. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1927. Maxim’s autobiography, as told to an admiring journalist. Originally published in 1924 as Hudson Maxim, Reminiscences and Comments, this volume contains charming vignettes of Maxim’s boyhood in Maine and his thirst for education. Touches only lightly on the technical details of his inventions.

McCallum, Ian. Blood Brothers: Hiram and Hudson Maxim—Pioneers of Modern Warfare. London: Chatham, 1999. Interesting parallel biography of two inventive geniuses, but sparse on the impact of Hudson’s inventions and on the scientific details. Portrays Hiram as the greater inventor but sees Hudson as the brother who found greater happiness in his personal life.

Maxim, Hudson. Defenseless America. New York: Hearst’s International Library, 1915. In this book, Maxim warned that a U.S. war with Germany was unavoidable and painted a vivid picture of the devastation of an unprepared America by invading armies. Maxim gave away 117,000 copies, and the book became the basis for a movie, The Battle Cry of Peace (1915), which like the book played a significant role in shaping American public opinion in favor of entry into World War I.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Real Penwork Self-Instructor for Penmanship. Pittsfield, Mass.: Knowles & Maxim, 1881. Maxim’s book on penmanship that sold hundreds of thousands of copies and went through several editions during the 1880’s.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Science of Poetry and the Philosophy of Language. 1910. Reprint. Whitefish, Mont.: Kessinger, 2007. Applies scientific theory to poetry and language by arguing that words, like atoms, behave according to certain natural laws, and that poetry is the most mechanically efficient form of communication.

Wildman, Edwin. Famous Leaders of Industry. 1925. Reprint. New York: Cosimo Classics, 2005. Collection of biographies of famous inventors that emphasizes their perseverance and other virtues in order to inspire young readers. The book includes an admiring and mostly accurate chapter on Maxim.