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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Hiram Maxim
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(1840–1916, kt 1901) American-born inventor, naturalized in 1900 and known for the machine gun which he developed in London in the 1880s; it was adopted by the British army in 1889. The first fully automatic gun (in the sense that the recoil was used to eject the spent cartridge and then insert and fire the new one), it achieved the extraordinary rate for the time of ten rounds per second. Manufactured by *Vickers, it became known as the Vickers Maxim.
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