Fun with Guns at Christmas
Shooting Matches in the Living Room?
Ever wish you hold shooting matches in the house?
Here’s the “Best Christmas Present Ever!”
Just attach your Maxim Silencer, set up your Bullet Stop Sand Box and blast away.
No, this is not a parody from The Onion. In fact, TIME Magazine profiled its inventor in 1932.
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. Chief abater will be "Dr. Shush," the Maxim trademark character. ~ "Noise's Bogeyman" TIME January 4, 1932
Putting aside the absurdity of the ad …. Hiram Percy Maxim was a prolific and successful inventor, plus a writer and a radio pioneer. He even patented an electric car in 1897.
He was born in 1869 in Brooklyn, New York, and was the son of Sir Hiram Maxim, the inventor of the Maxim machine gun. He graduated from MIT at the age of 16 and worked as a mechanical and electrical engineer. (It was just a two year program, but still … smart kid.)
Engineer, scientist, inventor, and hobbyist Hiram Percy Maxim earned patents for his inventions in electric automotive design, noise abatement, and other fields. Also a passionate hobbyist, he left his mark on early aviation and wireless radio.
He wrote the book Life's Place in the Cosmos, published in 1933, an overview of contemporary science that surmised life existed outside of earth; as well as two books published in 1936: A Genius in the Family an amusing account of his youth, and Horseless Carriage Days wherein he recounted his days as an automobile pioneer.
A Genius in the Family was adapted in 1946 into a comedy-drama film produced by Universal Pictures titled, So Goes My Love. Maxim is played by Don Ameche and his wife is played by Myrna Loy.
Looking for more retro-tech?
The Isolator (1925)
“… The writer, who has to perform, almost daily, in connection with his editorial duties, many tasks that involve considerable concentration, has found out that it is almost impossible to keep his mind on a subject for five minutes without disturbance. For that reason, he constructed the helmet shown in the accompanying illustratio…
Can it be DONE? Car-'Phone (1934-35)
Scoops was a weekly British science fiction magazine published by Pearson's in tabloid format in 1934, edited by Haydn Dimmock. Scoops was launched as a boy's paper, and it was not until several issues had appeared that Dimmock discovered there was an adult audience for science fiction. These images are from Scoops’ recurring featu…
That is absurd! We don't shoot guns in the house. We take them to shopping malls and supermarkets.
Ha! I'd hate to be in the neighboring apartment to these guys, especially if the walls were thin!