Hiram Percy Maxim

Hiram Percy Maxim (September 2, 1869 – February 17, 1936) was co-founder of the American Radio Relay League and originally had the amateur call sign 1AW, and later W1AW, which is now the ARRL Headquarters club station call sign. His rotary spark gap transmitter "Old Betsy" has a place of honor at the ARRL Headquarters.

Early years

He was the son of Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim, inventor of the Maxim Machine gun. He had two sisters, Florence Maxim, who married George Albert Cutter, and Adelaide Maxim, who married Eldon Joubert, Ignace Paderewski's piano tuner. [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Noise's Bogeyman |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,742801,00.html |quote=While mental hygienists, efficiency experts and city officials have been bewailing the maddening effects of city noise, Hiram Percy Maxim has been manufacturing noise mufflers at Hartford, Conn. Last week he announced that his Maxim Silencer Co., of which he is president and his only son Hiram Hamilton is chief engineer and whose factory is in Asylum Street, Hartford, will—besides continuing to make silencers for guns, motor exhausts, safety valves, air releases, in fact every kind of pipe which emits a gas—offer a consulting service in noise abatement. |publisher=Time (magazine) |date=Monday, January 4, 1932 |accessdate=2007-08-21 ] Hiram was a mechanical engineering graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Maxim tinkered with internal combustion engines before contacting the Pope Manufacturing Company about the possibility of manufacturing a gasoline-powered automobile. Albert Augustus Pope hired Maxim to run his Motor Vehicle Division. In 1899, with Maxim at the controls, the Pope Columbia, a gasoline-powered automobile, won the first closed-circuit automobile race in the US at Branford, Connecticut. Columbia later began manufacturing an electric automobile.

Marriage

He married Josephine Hamilton, the daughter of the former Maryland Governor William T. Hamilton around 1898, and had a son, Hiram Hamilton Maxim, and a daughter, Percy, who married John Glessner Lee, the grandson of John J. Glessner. The John J. Glessner House designed by Henry Hobson Richardson is now a Chicago landmark. Percy Maxim Lee was president of the League of Women Voters from 1950-1958, and testified in the U.S. Senate against Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1955.

Maxim is also noted as the inventor of the "Maxim Silencer", a suppressor for firearms (patented in 1909) as well as of a silencer (or muffler) for gasoline engines.

He created the ARRL in 1914 because he saw a need to build up an organized group of "Relay" stations to pass messages via amateur radio. This allowed messages to pass farther than any particular station of the time could reach.

H.P. Maxim wrote an amusing account of his youth in the book "A Genius in the Family: Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim Through a Small Son's Eyes." This book was adapted to the screen as So Goes My Love. H.P. Maxim recounted his days as an automobile pioneer in his book "Horseless Carriage Days." Also wrote the book "Life's Place in the Cosmos," an overview of contemporary science that surmised life existed outside of earth.

Death

Hiram Percy Maxim was returning to his home in Hartford, Connecticut, in February, 1936, from a trip to California to visit the Lick Observatory. He fell ill and was taken from the train to a hospital in La Junta, Colorado, where he died the following day, February 17, 1936. Hiram P. Maxim was buried in the Rose Hill Cemetery in Hagerstown, Maryland, in the Hamilton family plot belonging to his wife's family. [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Hiram Percy Maxim, Wireless Amateur No. 1, Defended Rights of Youth |url=http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30B13F83C54147B93C1AB1789D85F428385F9 |quote=Radio amateurs, numbering more than 45,000 in the United States, are mourning the loss of a friend and faithful ally in the passing of Hiram Percy Maxim of Hartford, Connecticut. As an ardent wireless amateur Mr. Maxim is remembered by veteran experimenters of pre-war days by the musical tone of his quench spark gap which spelled out the call letters of his pioneer station. |publisher=New York Times |date=February 23, 1936, Sunday |accessdate=2007-08-21 ] cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Hiram Maxim Dies. Invented Silencer. Device, Originally Used for Firearms, Now Employed More in Other Ways. Was patron of Amateurs. Headed Radio and Film Groups Followed in Footsteps of Father and Uncle. |url=http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30714FA3E5B1B7B93CAA81789D85F428385F9 |quote= |publisher=New York Times |date=February 18, 1936 |accessdate=2008-04-25 ]

Patents

* - "Motor vehicle"
* - "Motor vehicle running gear"
* - "Electric motor vehicle"
* - "Motor road vehicle"
* - "Silent Firearm" Issued March 30, 1909.

ee also

*Suppressor

External links

*Britannica|9051539

References