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\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\nHiram Percy Maxim was certainly not best known for his literature. The son and nephew of two well-regarded inventors, Maxim seemed destined to become a famous inventor himself. Maxim\u2019s father, Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim, was best known as the inventor of the Maxim gun \u2013 an invention for which he was knighted by Queen Victoria. Maxim\u2019s uncle, Hudson Maxim, invented a variety of explosives. Maxim himself invented the silencer. In the realm of weaponry and modern warfare, the Maxims were highly influential.<\/p>\n
But the Maxims influenced more of modern life as well. Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim was a key figure in the early development of incandescent light bulbs (he claimed that credit went to Thomas Edison due to Edison\u2019s deeper knowledge of patent law). Hiram Percy Maxim, who primarily grew up in Brooklyn, made his home in Hartford when he started working as an engineer in the motor-carriage department of the Pope Company. In Hartford, he pioneered the gasoline-powered automobile, and his invention of the silencer was also adapted for use on compression engines, eventually becoming mufflers for cars and air conditioners.<\/p>\n
Maxim\u2019s clear interest in machines and engineering extended beyond his work. In 1914, Maxim established the American Radio Relay League, the first organized group for amateur radio enthusiasts, and in 1926, he founded the Amateur Cinema League. Maxim\u2019s own amateur film survives in several collections, including a collection at the Hartford History Center at the Hartford Public Library. His films are largely home movies and films of travel, although Maxim did also film and edit short narrative films such as \u201cMag the Hag: A Dripping Melodrama\u201d featuring his daughter Percy.<\/p>\n
Towards the end of his life, Maxim seems to have grown reflective of his life and career. In 1933, he published Life\u2019s Place in the Cosmos<\/em>, which summarizes what science has to say about the existence of life beyond Earth in a \u201cconversational manner\u201d for the \u201cnontechnical man and woman\u201d (Maxim 1933, vii). Maxim then turned to the memoir. In 1936, the year of his death, Maxim published two memoirs: Horseless Carriage Days<\/em> about his role in the automobile industry (initially published in three installments in Harpers Bazaar<\/em>) and A Genius in the Family<\/em> about his father.<\/p>\n As the title suggests, A Genius in the Family<\/em> is written through the lens of a son in awe of his father. The memoir is likely Maxim\u2019s most popular book, having been turned into a movie entitled So Goes My Love<\/em> in 1946. The book begins when Maxim is four and tells stories of Maxim\u2019s childhood in Brooklyn and New Jersey, as well as a few trips to his father\u2019s home state of Maine.<\/p>\n The memoir largely recounts stories of his father\u2019s pranks, through which we see Maxim\u2019s father\u2019s attitudes towards religion, justice, and education. While Maxim\u2019s tone is humorous, his stories reveal his father to be an intelligent but sometimes cruel and condescending man. For every story where Maxim\u2019s father seeks to right an injustice (such as when he tracks down a man who has ripped off a servant in his household), there is a story where he plays with the emotions of people around him as if they were test subjects (such as when he goads a man who has come to his door for \u201cChristian charity\u201d into praying for his record player to stop to prove that prayer does not work).<\/p>\n These stories also clearly show how a fascination with engineering was passed down from father to son. Maxim recounts how his father talked to him as if he were an adult throughout his childhood and teased him for not understanding adult vocabulary or scientific principles. While some of these stories come off as mean, Maxim tells these stories fondly, offering them as examples of how life with his father instilled in him a curiosity and love of machines.<\/p>\n Maxim reveres his father throughout the memoir, yet he notes that his father was remarkable because of his genius and not because of his great parenting skills. To open the memoir, Maxim writes, \u201cI suspect I had one of the most unusual fathers anybody ever had. I was his firstborn. He knew considerably less than nothing about children and he had to learn how to be a father. He learned on me\u201d (Maxim 1936, 1). After recounting story after story of his father\u2019s pranks, Maxim concludes, \u201cHe had a brilliancy which sparkled, a masterful cleverness and resourcefulness that placed him above any other man I ever knew. But he never quite learned how to be a father\u201d (Maxim 1936, 193).<\/p>\n In Horseless Carriage Days<\/em>, Maxim writes about his own genius in the \u201cpioneer days\u201d of the automobile industry with the aim of ensuring that \u201ctheir atmosphere may not fade entirely from the memory of man\u201d (Maxim 1937, xi).<\/p>\n Maxim\u2019s book captures the atmosphere of the horseless carriage days. He keeps his notes about the engineering process to a minimum, focusing instead on memorable stories about the first motor track race in America (held in Branford, in which there were only two contestants: Maxim\u2019s Mark VIII and the Stanley Steamer), tales of sabotage, and the surprising story of how Henry Ford busted the Selden Patent for a gasoline-powered engine, an action that contributed to Pope Manufacturing\u2019s failure in 1914.<\/p>\n Throughout the book, Maxim is struck by how much technology has changed within his lifetime. Following his ambitious expedition from Hartford to Saybrook in his gasoline-engine tricycle, Mark VII, Maxim notes, \u201cI was the most optimistic of the optimists in 1897, but even I never dreamed motor-cabs, motor-wagons, motor-trucks, motor-buses, and private motor-cars would be used in the millions, as they are today\u201d (Maxim 1937, 104)<\/p>\n Maxim\u2019s wonder at how the world had exceeded his vision mirrors an episode in A Genius in the Family<\/em> in which Maxim recounts a memorable argument between his father and his father\u2019s employer, Mr. Schuyler, about the possibilities for electricity. Maxim recalls,<\/p>\n …Mr. Schuyler became prophetic. Said he, \u201cMaxim, you may say what you like, but I can see the day coming when electricity will be generated in large gasworks today and distributed through the streets for house lighting.\u201d To this my father shook his head and replied, \u201cNo, Schuyler. You are looking too far ahead. Such a day may come; but there are too many unsolved technical problems for me to believe it will be in our times.\u201d (Maxim 1936, 159-160)<\/p>\n Maxim later asserts that \u201cBoth Mr. Schuyler and my father lived to see the day when Mr. Schuyler\u2019s prophecies came true a thousand times over\u201d (Maxim 1936, 165).<\/p>\n As he looks back on his life, Maxim\u2019s writing is tinged with nostalgia. While Maxim lauds the great leaps made in technology during his lifetime, his writing aims to transport the reader to a time when this technology was not ubiquitous. As he concludes Horseless Carriage Days<\/em>, he says, \u201cToday the ability to [drive] is taken for granted; a motor trip has become as prosaic as a ride in a railroad train. All the hopes and ambitions of 1893 have been realized; but with their realization the sparkle and the thrill have departed\u201d (Maxim 1937, 175). As we become increasingly dependent on technology, Maxim reminds us of the importance of holding on to the enthusiasm and wonder of a visionary.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n from A Genius in the Family<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n from Horseless Carriage Days<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Hiram Percy Maxim – Biographical and Critical Sources<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Memoirs of a Hartford Inventor Written by Lian Kania Hiram Percy Maxim was certainly not best known for his literature. The son and nephew of two well-regarded inventors, Maxim seemed destined to become a famous inventor himself. Maxim\u2019s father, Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim, was best known as the inventor of the Maxim gun \u2013 an … Continue reading Hiram Percy Maxim (1869-1936)\u00a0<\/span> A Genius in the Family<\/em><\/h5>\n
Invention and Wonder at the Changing World<\/h5>\n
Anthology Selections<\/h4>\n