Hiram Maxim's invention, the Maxim Gun, portable, fully automatic, led to WWI trench warfare and the machine gun could level whole platoons, even decimate battalions, as they climbed over the top to charge into No Man's Land. Like a scythe, it could cut them down at the knees. In 1882 when in Vienna, Maxim met an American who reportedly told him, "If you want to make a pile of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each others' throats with greater facility." A fine killing machine his gun was, and while an American, Maxim was knighted by the British.
