Description
SIR HIRAM MAXIM AUTOGRAPH Signature.
American born naruralized British inventor of the first portable, fully automatic machine gun.
A good, large AUTOGRAPH signature on thin card or heavy paper. Possibly cut from a letter or document, although the size of the signature and the heavy weight of the paper on which it is written suggests that this may have been an autograph purposely signed on blank material for a collector.
Approx 4.5 x 2 inches. Old mounting residue at foot (well away from the signature) and on verso. Very good.
Sir Hiram Maxim invented his machine gun in the 1880s and founded an armaments company with Edward Vickers in Crayford, Kent. Hiram Maxim was also the inventor of several other devices and machines, including the curling iron, devices to prevent the rolling of ships, various oil and steam engines and had been an early experimenter with flying machines. He has some claim to being the inventor of the incandescent light bulb and was involved in a long dispute with Edison over the patent. However (as every person born in Newcastle on Tyne will know) the lightbulb was invented by the Briton, Joseph Swan, who lodged the first patent in 1878.
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