Maxim gun

The Maxim gun was invented by Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim in 1884, and was the first recoil-operated machine gun. It has been called "the weapon most associated with British imperial conquest".

Functionality

The mechanism of the Maxim gun employed one of the earliest recoil operated firing systems in history. The idea is that the energy from the recoil is used to eject each spent cartridge and insert the next one, in lieu of a locked bolt or a lever mechanism. This made it vastly more efficient and less labor-intensive than previous rapid-firing guns, such as the Mitrailleuse, Gatling, Gardner, or Nordenfelt, that relied on actual mechanical cranking. It also decreased the gas buildup in the barrel, allowing the gun to fire more bullets over an extended period of time without overheating the barrel. The Maxim gun design required water cooling, giving it the ability to maintain its rate of fire for far longer than air-cooled guns. The disadvantage of this was that it made the gun less flexible in attack than the lighter air-cooled weapons.

Maxim

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Gun

A gun is a normally tubular weapon or other device designed to discharge projectiles or other material. The projectile may be solid, liquid, gas or energy and may be free, as with bullets and artillery shells, or captive as with Taser probes and whaling harpoons. The means of projection varies according to design but is usually effected by the action of gas pressure, either produced through the rapid combustion of a propellant or compressed and stored by mechanical means, operating on the projectile inside an open-ended tube in the fashion of a piston. The confined gas accelerates the movable projectile down the length of the tube, imparting sufficient velocity to sustain the projectile's travel once the action of the gas ceases at the end of the tube or muzzle. Alternatively, acceleration via electromagnetic field generation may be employed in which case the tube may be dispensed with and a guide rail substituted.

The first devices identified as guns appeared in China around CE 1000. By the 12th century the technology was spreading through the rest of Asia, and into Europe by the 13th century.