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Speaker 1: What's shooting? What? What's What's what's shooting? I'm Robert Evans.

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Speaker 1: This is Behind the Bastards, the show where we ask

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Speaker 1: what is shooting? UM? Here with us today to answer

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Speaker 1: that question. Carl Casarda of Range TV. Carl, welcome to

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Speaker 1: the program. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to

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Speaker 1: be here. Do you do you like my NPR voice?

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Speaker 1: I did at the at the end they're kind of

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Speaker 1: trying to professionalize it a little bit. Yeah, I know.

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Speaker 1: It really takes this topic and makes it feel very

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Speaker 1: you know, astute and erudite. So I'm excited about this.

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Speaker 1: And Carl, you are, like me, very interested in firearms.

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Speaker 1: You are are professionally interested in firearms, unlike me because

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Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just a little bit of a hack

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Speaker 1: and a fraud. Um. And for Enranged TV, you do

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Speaker 1: all sorts of videos on on different kinds of weapons. Historic.

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Speaker 1: You've got a room full of historic guns that I'm

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Speaker 1: looking at right. I'm extremely jealous of your collection. It

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Speaker 1: looks it looks wonderful. UM. Carl, how are you, How

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Speaker 1: are you? How are you feeling today? Feeling pretty good?

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Speaker 1: Today is a pretty good day. You know, today is

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Speaker 1: actually the day we're recording this is uh Wyatt Earp

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Speaker 1: died in Los Angeles, California, and he, of course is

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Speaker 1: the prototype for the thin blue line police brutality we

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Speaker 1: have today. So hooray, Yeah, good for that. And uh,

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Speaker 1: today we're not gonna be talking thin blue lines stuff today, um,

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Speaker 1: although you know there might be a couple of shades

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Speaker 1: of that, but we are going to be talking about, Um,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about some gun related bastards, which

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Speaker 1: I thought I would have you on for um. And

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Speaker 1: the first bastard we're going to talk about is a

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Speaker 1: little fellow you may have heard of called Hiram Maxim.

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Speaker 1: Now what do you know about Mr Maxim? I know

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Speaker 1: that he had designed the belt fed water cooled machine

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Speaker 1: gun that every side of World War One used to

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Speaker 1: mow each other's children down. Yeah, he is why Europe

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Speaker 1: is no longer the economic center of the world, and

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Speaker 1: a lot of way there were other factors, but but

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Speaker 1: Mr Maxim played a role in that for sure. Um. Now, obviously, uh,

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Speaker 1: both of us are are very much into firearms as

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Speaker 1: a hobby. UM. I don't consider someone a bastard just

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Speaker 1: because they make a gun or really necessarily another kind

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Speaker 1: of weapons system. I do think there are certain weapons

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Speaker 1: systems like cluster bombs that you kind of have to

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Speaker 1: be a piece of ship to decide. UM. But as

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Speaker 1: a general rule, a gun as a tool, and and

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Speaker 1: there's nothing inherently a moral about designing a tool. UM.

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Speaker 1: That said, it's probably fair to note that within the

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Speaker 1: industry of people who design things for the purpose of killing,

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Speaker 1: there's probably a higher proportion of bastards than in a

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Speaker 1: lot of fields of industrial design. UM. And we are

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Speaker 1: going to talk today about two of the greatest gun

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Speaker 1: makers in human history. This week about two of the

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Speaker 1: greatest gunmakers in human history. Both of them were not

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Speaker 1: very pleasant people. UM. And, as I just stated here,

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Speaker 1: UM Steven's maxim is our subject today now here. UM

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Speaker 1: was were in on February five, eighteen forty and Singersville, Maine.

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Speaker 1: He wrote a biography later in life, the bulk of

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Speaker 1: which is a mix of lies and angry rants about

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Speaker 1: people he'd argued with. Like It's it's essentially at the

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Speaker 1: very end of his life, he drops, like the old

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Speaker 1: timy equivalent of a mixtape, yelling at all of the

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Speaker 1: people who he had had fights with over the course

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Speaker 1: of his career in the gun industry, and a lot

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Speaker 1: of it's like very technical stuff that I can't you know,

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Speaker 1: I can't tell you who actually invented the lightbulb, for example,

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Speaker 1: which is a major thing in his Did you actually

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Speaker 1: know much about Maxim the in his career before making

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Speaker 1: the machine gun? Honestly, no, I don't. I mean, I'm

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Speaker 1: very familiar with the gun obviously, or the machine gun

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Speaker 1: and how it revolutionized and changed warfare, But as for

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Speaker 1: the individual himself, no, I'm not not really familiar with

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Speaker 1: his life. Well, he was a really interesting guy. He's

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Speaker 1: one of these dudes that is just a compulsive inventor. Um,

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Speaker 1: Like one of those people who and it's this this

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Speaker 1: fascinating period the eighteen hundreds, is this moment where it's

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Speaker 1: also really easy to be an inventor because like industrial

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Speaker 1: like tooling and machining and whatnot has hit this this

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Speaker 1: level of professionalization and suddenly all sorts of things are possible.

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Speaker 1: And if you're into inventing, there's a lot there's a

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Speaker 1: number of dudes like Maxim who just over the course

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Speaker 1: of their life invent like sixty things that everybody uses today. Um.

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Speaker 1: And it's Maxim is one of those people. Um, and

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Speaker 1: he's he's he's a particularly interesting example on it. Now.

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Speaker 1: In his biography, which is again not a super reliable text,

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Speaker 1: he provides some thoughts on his family background that I

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Speaker 1: find interesting, and I'm gonna read a paragraph from that now.

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Speaker 1: This is him describing his ancestors. The ancestors of the

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Speaker 1: Maximum family with French Huguenots. They were driven out of

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Speaker 1: France and settled in Canterbury, England, from which place they

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Speaker 1: immigrated to Plymouth County, Massachusetts, where quote, they could worship

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Speaker 1: God according to the dictates of their own conscience and

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Speaker 1: prevent others from doing the same. Prevent others from doing

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Speaker 1: the same. That's very fun. Now, that's that's fun. I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna find my freedom so I can use it as

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Speaker 1: a wrench against others. Such a trend. Yeah, and Maximum

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Speaker 1: is being pretty self aware here. He is not that kind.

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Speaker 1: He's not a particularly religious man ever. Um. He famously

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Speaker 1: is more or less an atheist until he goes to

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Speaker 1: Russia to sell the machine guns, and they won't let

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Speaker 1: him talk to the czar unless he has a religion.

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Speaker 1: So he's like, I guess I'm Protestant. Better pick the

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Speaker 1: right one. Yeah, they didn't care. You just couldn't be

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Speaker 1: a pagan walking up to the czar, I guess, um,

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Speaker 1: so uh yeah. Most of the sourciers you'll find will

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Speaker 1: note that his father was a sheep farmer and very poor.

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Speaker 1: This is technically accurate, but I think it's accurate in

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Speaker 1: a way that gives readers an incorrect idea about here

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Speaker 1: UM's upbringing. Within his autobiography, he describes his family as

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Speaker 1: being comparatively well off. They just didn't have any money

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Speaker 1: because no one really had money at the time and

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Speaker 1: place where he lived, right, Like, they're not poor. Money

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Speaker 1: is not a meaningful fact of life for people living

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Speaker 1: in the wilderness of Maine in the eighteen forties. Like,

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Speaker 1: you don't do a lot of spending and stuff. Right.

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Speaker 1: They live in this kind of like community that's pretty

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Speaker 1: spread out and sprawling. Um, they were very self sufficient.

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Speaker 1: They bartered and traded with the people in their community

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Speaker 1: for the things they couldn't produce on their own. Like,

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Speaker 1: they were the kind of people who maybe a couple

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Speaker 1: of times a year they would go into a bigger

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Speaker 1: town and sell some products and use them to buy

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Speaker 1: a thing or two and they would have money for

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Speaker 1: that kind of brief period of time, but like money

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Speaker 1: is not They're not poor, they just don't have money.

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Speaker 1: Does that like make sense that kind of person. We

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Speaker 1: don't really have those people anymore. Yeah, well, I mean,

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Speaker 1: I'm sure there are some places in the world that

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Speaker 1: have some subsistence like that. But the reality is, if

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Speaker 1: you're self sufficient, you don't really need an Amazon Prime

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Speaker 1: account at that point. But you just you just do

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Speaker 1: your thing. You go out and get your milk, you

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Speaker 1: harvest your your your beef from your cows or whatever,

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Speaker 1: and you're good to go. That makes sense. Yeah, So

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Speaker 1: a lot of kind of popular sources on it will

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Speaker 1: say that he grew up poor. He doesn't seem to

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Speaker 1: have considered himself poor. He's like, well, we had everything

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Speaker 1: we needed. We just like, why would we have needed

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Speaker 1: money at that point? Um So, Yeah, at no point

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Speaker 1: in his childhood does Here seemed to have considered himself poor.

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Speaker 1: And their community was close to a group of Indigenous

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Speaker 1: Americans living in a small village nearby. Um Here's autobiography

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Speaker 1: is filled with the same kind of casual racism you

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Speaker 1: would expect from a book written by a man who

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Speaker 1: grew up in the eighteen forties. But it's also not

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Speaker 1: he's not like hateful in it. Um. And in fact,

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Speaker 1: there's a number of times where he will note stuff that,

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Speaker 1: like the way that the natives had positioned their village

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Speaker 1: was a lot smarter than how the white people had

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Speaker 1: put their houses because it was more protected from rain

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Speaker 1: and it got better sunlight. Um. So he was he

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Speaker 1: was somebody who was definitely possessed of the bigotry of

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Speaker 1: his time, um, but was also capable of like looking

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Speaker 1: at what these people were doing and recognizing that they

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Speaker 1: understood the the environment better and we're making smarter choices

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Speaker 1: about it, which he appreciated because he's got this kind

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Speaker 1: of mechanical mind right, Like he's somebody who thinks a

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Speaker 1: lot about efficiency, and he notes that their lives are

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Speaker 1: a lot more efficient than ours because they understand the

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Speaker 1: area better. Um. There's a point in his childhood where

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Speaker 1: like he and his father take advice from a local

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Speaker 1: chief they're friendly with on how to trap and prepare

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Speaker 1: different animals. More than anything, they hunted black bear, which

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Speaker 1: a lot of his early memories are like hunting black

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Speaker 1: bear with his dad. Um, and their community was the

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Speaker 1: kind of place that. There's a story he tells where

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Speaker 1: he and his dad are out in the field and

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Speaker 1: they see a black bear, so they run back to

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Speaker 1: their house for a gun, only to find that one

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Speaker 1: of their neighbors had spotted the bear, gone into their house,

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Speaker 1: grabbed their rifle and taking it out to go shoot

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Speaker 1: the bear. So it's like that kind of of community,

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Speaker 1: you know. Um, not only do people not lock their doors,

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Speaker 1: people feel fine grabbing like their their their neighbor's gun

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Speaker 1: to go shoot a bear if they see one. Um,

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Speaker 1: which is also not a very common thing today. I

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Speaker 1: don't think I've lived out in the in the sticks

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Speaker 1: a lot of my life, but I have not had

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Speaker 1: that kind of relationship with my neighbors. Yeah, I live

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Speaker 1: in a rural area as well, and I don't have

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Speaker 1: that relationship either. But at the same time, we live

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Speaker 1: in a world saturated with with the idea that we

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Speaker 1: know we technically in theory quote unquote know so many

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Speaker 1: people that we really don't. But I think it's changed

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Speaker 1: the nature of people live. Yeah, they definitely. Reading his

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Speaker 1: recollections of his childhood, I'm like, well, aspects of this

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Speaker 1: seemed kind of nice. This like all you worry about

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Speaker 1: is like producing what you need to survive. And that's

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Speaker 1: kind of this this this UM. It doesn't it doesn't

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Speaker 1: seem like a bad childhood, is what I will say

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Speaker 1: about it. UM. Now, we did a recent episode where

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Speaker 1: we talked about Melville Dewey that will be launching either

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Speaker 1: before or right after this one. UM Dewey who invinced

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Speaker 1: the Dewey decimal system and uh and hear him grow

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Speaker 1: up in kind of a similar time and in a

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Speaker 1: similar place, and the part of the Northeast they grow

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Speaker 1: up and is commonly known as the burned over district. UM.

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Speaker 1: And it's known that way because there's a shipload of

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Speaker 1: different social and religious extremist like Protestant kind of movements

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Speaker 1: that are swelling up and going swarming throughout the country

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Speaker 1: during this period of time. UM and here him or

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Speaker 1: was very aware of these kind of evangelical movements and

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Speaker 1: the influence they were having on the culture, and he

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Speaker 1: was not positive towards them. Neither was his family. And

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Speaker 1: I'm going to read a long excerpt from his autobiography

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Speaker 1: here because I think it's interesting and it gets you

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Speaker 1: into this guy's head because he's he is in a

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Speaker 1: their and extremely religious part of the United States. And

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Speaker 1: it is absolutely not something that that that that he

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Speaker 1: takes on in any sort of way. Quote. There have

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Speaker 1: been several epidemics of Millerites in the state of Maine,

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Speaker 1: sometimes called second Advents or world burners. These are Seventh

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Speaker 1: Day Adventists or what becomes that that, on one occasion,

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Speaker 1: having ascertained by diligent search in the Bible the exact day, hour,

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Speaker 1: and minute that the world would come to an end,

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Speaker 1: the saints disposed of their property. Some failed to plant

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Speaker 1: their crops, as they had enough to last until the

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Speaker 1: fatal day. When everything was in readiness for the final

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Speaker 1: end of all things, which was fixed for a certain

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Speaker 1: day in February. There was a lot of snow on

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Speaker 1: the ground. Some of the saints took great care to

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Speaker 1: have their watches and clocks corrected so as to know

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Speaker 1: the exact minute the final crash would come. The hour

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Speaker 1: fixed was about nine o'clock at night, and most of

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Speaker 1: the women appeared in their ascension robes. The Saints met

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Speaker 1: at a place called Gilman's Corner, in front of Gilman's

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Speaker 1: Little Store. Some repairs had recently been made to the roof,

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Speaker 1: and a ladder was still in position. A few minutes

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Speaker 1: before the final send off, an old and very fat

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Speaker 1: woman climbed up the ladder, got onto the ridgepole, and

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Speaker 1: walked forward to the end of the roof. She stood

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Speaker 1: there with her arms extended and her ascension robes fluttering

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Speaker 1: in the wind like a pair of wings. One of

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Speaker 1: the saints had his watch out and called off the

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Speaker 1: time as it passed, and when the exact minute arrived,

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Speaker 1: the old lady on the roof started to fly. She

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Speaker 1: gave a jump and landed in a big pile of snow,

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Speaker 1: which had a decidedly cooling effect and knocked every particle

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Speaker 1: of superstition out of her. She never had a relapse.

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Speaker 1: There was no one in the state of Maine that

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Speaker 1: ridiculed this movement with more reason and vigor than my

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Speaker 1: gifted mother. She had a lot of brains in the

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Speaker 1: top and in the front of her head and made

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Speaker 1: the best use of them. So that's his how he

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Speaker 1: feels about these kind of this religious movement that sweeps

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Speaker 1: through the country when he's a little kid. I find

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Speaker 1: that fascinating. Yeah, as an engineer and a person that

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Speaker 1: was clearly going to become a creator and an engineer

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Speaker 1: and a stem minded person. Seems like, very often we

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Speaker 1: don't see those types of things coexist. Someone that's very

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Speaker 1: scientific or technical or engineering wine it tends to not

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Speaker 1: be very superstitious and vice versa. They can be together,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, mostly you don't see them together. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: it's interesting. He kind of his his family seems to

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Speaker 1: be very much opposed to this, Like they're they're they're

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Speaker 1: they're very practical people. Um, and he's kind of influenced.

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Speaker 1: He He definitely grows up with this kind of very

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Speaker 1: skeptical attitude about everyone around him, um, which is will

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Speaker 1: kind of become more of a factor in his personality

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Speaker 1: as he gets older. Um. But he grows up curious

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Speaker 1: about the world and a fairly open minded person for

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Speaker 1: his day. When he was fourteen years old, he was

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Speaker 1: apprenticed to a carriage maker, where he learned the basics

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Speaker 1: of engineering skills that would define his adult life. His

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Speaker 1: first invention came shortly thereafter, when he was working in

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Speaker 1: a mill with a terrific mouse problem. Here him set

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Speaker 1: to work on his own and designed an automatic mouse trap,

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Speaker 1: which was so successful that he was eventually able to

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Speaker 1: patent it. Many mouse traps today are based off of

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Speaker 1: his design, So like there's still mouse traps that are

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Speaker 1: based off the one he designed. When he's like fourteen

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Speaker 1: years old. UM, very smart kid, UM, and he's effectively adult,

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Speaker 1: an adult at fourteen, right, Like that's that's a kid today.

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Speaker 1: And like Germany in this period of time, you are

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Speaker 1: legally an adult at fourteen, and he's that it's pretty

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Speaker 1: much the same where where Maxim grows up. Like he's

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Speaker 1: he's working full time at this point, he's making a

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Speaker 1: man's wages and he's inventing a lot of ship. He

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Speaker 1: designs in his late teen years a silicate blackboard UM

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Speaker 1: in order to like make sketching out plans for other

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Speaker 1: inventions easier, and he he markets that a bit um

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Speaker 1: in the older adults around him recognized that he's kind

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Speaker 1: of a genius. When he's twenty four, his uncle Levi

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Speaker 1: hires him to work as an engineer in Abington, Massachusetts. UM.

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Speaker 1: And his uncle gives his nephew freedom to think an experiment,

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Speaker 1: which here him did until two years later he invented

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Speaker 1: the curling iron. He received his patent in eighteen sixty six.

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Speaker 1: And this is the first one he gets. He this

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Speaker 1: is he's also the inventor of the curling iron. The

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Speaker 1: guy who made the same dude invented the machine gun

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Speaker 1: and the curling iron. So now we can do our

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Speaker 1: fututions and we're getting rid of mice in our house. Maxim,

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Speaker 1: thank you so much. I can blame him for the

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Speaker 1: permanent scar I have from a curling and iron I

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Speaker 1: touched when I was like seven. So yeah, my favorite

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Speaker 1: meme the two hands shaking in the middle is Sophie

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Speaker 1: and millions of dead European boys and meeting in the

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Speaker 1: middle at angry at Hiram Maxims us with a bunch

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Speaker 1: of mice at the bottom with little protot exactly. Uh, so,

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Speaker 1: young Maxim was off to the races now. He designed

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Speaker 1: an automated sprinkler system soon after, but he struggled to

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Speaker 1: find investors for this product. We've talked about some like

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Speaker 1: industrial fires in this period. Folks are not convinced that

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Speaker 1: they need sprinklers or any kind of fire safety whatsoever

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Speaker 1: in this period of time. Well, the children workers are

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Speaker 1: easily replaceable. Yeah, there's a ton of kids you're gonna

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Speaker 1: put sprinklers in. So yeah, he can't really find any

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Speaker 1: investors for this um and he fails to convince any

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Speaker 1: moneyment that there was a future in the idea, but

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Speaker 1: he does draw interest from one wealthy backer, Spencer D. Schuiler.

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Speaker 1: Uh Now, Schuiler is not really interested in selling his

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Speaker 1: sprinkler system. He just sees that Maxim is extremely gifted. Um,

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Speaker 1: and it's like, well, I wanna I want to hire

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Speaker 1: this kid and profit off of his ideas. Uh Now,

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Speaker 1: this was an era in which electricity had become enough

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Speaker 1: of a thing that people knew any day now somebody

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Speaker 1: was gonna make a light bulb that people wanted in

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Speaker 1: their homes. Right, there are light bulbs at this point.

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Speaker 1: None of the people involved in the story about to

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Speaker 1: tell invented the first light bulb, but like, they're not good.

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Speaker 1: They blow up their fire hazards, They're not really a

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Speaker 1: thing you would want in your house. So it's this

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Speaker 1: kind of thing where people are trying to figure out

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Speaker 1: how to do a lightbulb. Well, and everyone knows it's

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Speaker 1: going to happen, it just hasn't quite happened yet, right, Like,

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Speaker 1: and there's kind of a race, right, all of these

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Speaker 1: different a lot of money. Edison is putting a lot

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Speaker 1: of money into like because everyone knows like, as soon

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Speaker 1: as we figure this ship out, it's going to be huge,

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Speaker 1: you know, artificial light anytime a day or night. That's

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Speaker 1: a that's a big deal. A lot of money in

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Speaker 1: that idea. UM. So Schuyler wanted in on that cash,

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Speaker 1: and he formed the US Electric Lighting Company with the

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Speaker 1: aim of being first to market. He made the young

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Speaker 1: Heiram Maxim, his chief engineer. Now, the story that follows

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Speaker 1: is very messy and a little beyond our scope today.

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Speaker 1: The short version is that Maxim worked alongside a guy

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Speaker 1: named William Sawyer. Sawyer was an inventor and is probably

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Speaker 1: the man who created the incandescent electric lamp, the first

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Speaker 1: good light bulb that you could like again, like the Sawyers,

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Speaker 1: probably the guy who figures this out first. Um. But

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Speaker 1: this is very messy because Edison also around the same

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Speaker 1: time his people come out and there's a series of

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Speaker 1: lawsuits over this, and saw Your wins most of the

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Speaker 1: lawsuits with Edison over the invention of the light bulb. Again,

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Speaker 1: he's probably the guy you would credit with US. Um.

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Speaker 1: He's also kind of a sketchy character himself. In eighteen

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Speaker 1: eighty he shot a doctor in the face during an

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Speaker 1: argument about their wives. So like he's he is a

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Speaker 1: messy fellow. Um and for the rest of his life

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Speaker 1: Sawyer and here him work together at this company. For

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Speaker 1: the rest of his life. Here And would argue that

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Speaker 1: he was the inventor of the first incandescent electric lamp,

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Speaker 1: or at least he claimed to have solved the problems

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Speaker 1: that made Sawyers lamp possible. Now, he never names Sawyer

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Speaker 1: in his autobiography, probably because he was scared of getting sued,

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Speaker 1: but he does go into a lot of detail about

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Speaker 1: the fact that his partner, who he calls Mr D,

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Speaker 1: was a nearly useless alcoholic. And I feel the need

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Speaker 1: to read an extensive quote from his autobiography here, because again,

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Speaker 1: this is like the guy who probably invented the first

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Speaker 1: electric incandescent lamp, and Maxim is so jealous about him

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Speaker 1: that he has to turn him into like a fucking

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Speaker 1: goblin in his autobiography, And I'm gonna read a quote

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Speaker 1: from that now. I found a very curious state of

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Speaker 1: affairs in Mr Schuyler's office. He had in his employee

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Speaker 1: a large, clumsy, brutal looking fellow, clean shaven, who we

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Speaker 1: will call Mr D. He was said to be an

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Speaker 1: expert electrician and telegraph operator. But he was a great drunkard,

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Speaker 1: being comfortably warned all the time, I had not heard

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Speaker 1: that description of drunk. I think we should bring that back.

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Speaker 1: You want to get in corned, Let's go get corn. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: The next day he told me that he was a

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Speaker 1: great believer in the future of electric lighting, that he

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Speaker 1: was the first in the field, and that if I

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Speaker 1: would take hold in a syst him, he would give

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Speaker 1: me a salary of ten dollars a day, as well

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Speaker 1: as a quarter interest in whatever might accrue from the work.

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Speaker 1: This was an exceedingly good offer, especially as I had

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Speaker 1: complete charge of the place. He informed all the men

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Speaker 1: that I had been put in charge, and the first

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Speaker 1: thing I did was have a talk with Mr d

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Speaker 1: I told him that it was not quite the thing

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Speaker 1: to have brandy brought into the place several times a

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Speaker 1: day and to keep drinking it while at his desk.

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Speaker 1: I assured him that there was a great deal more

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Speaker 1: nourishment in a pint of milk than in a gallon

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Speaker 1: of brandy, and advised him strongly to try milk. The

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Speaker 1: next day, he provided himself with a two quart tin pail,

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Speaker 1: and his brother was sent out two or three times

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Speaker 1: for milk. Mr D said the change was a good

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Speaker 1: one and he felt much better for it. Shortly after,

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Speaker 1: I learned that the so called milk was just about

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Speaker 1: half brandy and that the fellow was still in a

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Speaker 1: half drunken condition all day. I have no idea if

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Speaker 1: that's true. I was gonna say, did he just invent

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Speaker 1: the brandy milk punch? He may have. It's possible that

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Speaker 1: that Maxim is just lying because he's jealous. It's also

398
00:19:06,960 --> 00:19:09,080
Speaker 1: possible that Maxim is telling the truth. This guy was

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Speaker 1: a raging drunk and he still was invented the first

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Speaker 1: incandescent electric lamp um. I just find that very funny.

401
00:19:17,520 --> 00:19:21,120
Speaker 1: And also I I have trouble thinking of a more

402
00:19:21,119 --> 00:19:25,120
Speaker 1: disgusting drink combination than brandy milk. That doesn't sound good

403
00:19:25,160 --> 00:19:30,399
Speaker 1: to me. That doesn't. I don't mean like I like,

404
00:19:30,520 --> 00:19:33,119
Speaker 1: I like a white Russian, but brandy and milk, Just

405
00:19:33,200 --> 00:19:38,400
Speaker 1: straight brandy and milk. And we'll figure it out. Yeah,

406
00:19:38,440 --> 00:19:40,720
Speaker 1: we'll get corn. Maybe maybe i'd throw like a coffee

407
00:19:40,760 --> 00:19:43,680
Speaker 1: liqueur in there or something, but changes over there. Yeah

408
00:19:43,760 --> 00:19:46,560
Speaker 1: that would Yeah. I wonder how if you have if

409
00:19:46,560 --> 00:19:51,040
Speaker 1: it curdles um anyway, So whatever the precise truth about

410
00:19:51,119 --> 00:19:54,520
Speaker 1: Sawyer and his level of drunkenness by one to hear

411
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Speaker 1: him was a powerful and respected engineer is in his

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Speaker 1: own right. They don't beat Edison, but they make a

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Speaker 1: bunch of electric lamps that are good for like industrial

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Speaker 1: and entertainment lighting, and like they make a bunch of

415
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Speaker 1: money right there. They're selling lights all over the goddamn place.

416
00:20:07,160 --> 00:20:10,119
Speaker 1: So they Beta max of lights. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I

417
00:20:10,119 --> 00:20:13,840
Speaker 1: mean I think it works a little better than that. Um,

418
00:20:14,080 --> 00:20:17,040
Speaker 1: unless you're a Beta max supremacist. No I'm not. I'm not.

419
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Speaker 1: I'm not sitting underneath one of your antique rifles. Yeah,

420
00:20:21,840 --> 00:20:24,400
Speaker 1: I watch all my video in Beta max. M hm.

421
00:20:25,119 --> 00:20:28,439
Speaker 1: So one he goes to the Paris Exposition. Now we

422
00:20:28,480 --> 00:20:31,240
Speaker 1: talked about in our Basil Zaharaf episodes where we're talking

423
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Speaker 1: about like the birth of the arms industry as in

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Speaker 1: its modern form. These expositions where a lot of that happens.

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Speaker 1: And they're not just about weapons, right, every kind of

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00:20:40,440 --> 00:20:43,920
Speaker 1: a lot of ships being invented. There's combines and electric

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Speaker 1: lights and all sorts of ship there, but the most

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Speaker 1: popular things are always weapons, right, because human beings are

429
00:20:49,640 --> 00:20:53,560
Speaker 1: are human beings and people are not that interested in

430
00:20:53,560 --> 00:20:55,960
Speaker 1: in new fucking tractors. But if somebody makes a new gun,

431
00:20:56,000 --> 00:20:57,520
Speaker 1: everybody's gonna be like, well I want to look at

432
00:20:57,560 --> 00:21:00,600
Speaker 1: that motherfucker. Um, and this is are like we talked

433
00:21:00,640 --> 00:21:02,400
Speaker 1: about the crups. This is like these are the same

434
00:21:02,400 --> 00:21:05,760
Speaker 1: places where like Alfred krupp Is is putting his cannons

435
00:21:05,800 --> 00:21:09,639
Speaker 1: out in the like um so eighty one to hear

436
00:21:09,720 --> 00:21:13,040
Speaker 1: him goes to Europe for the Paris Exposition. His company

437
00:21:13,080 --> 00:21:14,960
Speaker 1: had made a bunch of fancy new lighting equipment to

438
00:21:14,960 --> 00:21:17,880
Speaker 1: show off, and he was basically running their booth. Uh,

439
00:21:17,920 --> 00:21:20,240
Speaker 1: this was a very important job, but here him's interested

440
00:21:20,280 --> 00:21:24,000
Speaker 1: hard already started to drift away from lighting. Now, the

441
00:21:24,040 --> 00:21:27,000
Speaker 1: story that comes next maybe apocryphal. I did not find

442
00:21:27,000 --> 00:21:30,000
Speaker 1: it in his autobiography, but every write up you ever

443
00:21:30,080 --> 00:21:34,000
Speaker 1: find of here in Maxim will include this story. Um.

444
00:21:34,040 --> 00:21:36,560
Speaker 1: I don't know if it actually happened. I think here

445
00:21:36,600 --> 00:21:38,919
Speaker 1: him said it happened that some occasions, it seems a

446
00:21:38,920 --> 00:21:41,040
Speaker 1: little bit like anyway, I'll just tell you the story.

447
00:21:41,440 --> 00:21:44,159
Speaker 1: While he's at this this exposition, he's friends with an

448
00:21:44,200 --> 00:21:47,560
Speaker 1: American and they're having a conversation about like the exposition

449
00:21:47,600 --> 00:21:50,480
Speaker 1: and the different inventions there and his friends says to him,

450
00:21:50,720 --> 00:21:53,240
Speaker 1: hang your chemistry and electricity. If you want to make

451
00:21:53,240 --> 00:21:55,720
Speaker 1: a pile of money, invent something that will enable those

452
00:21:55,720 --> 00:21:59,680
Speaker 1: Europeans to cut each other's throats with greater facility. And

453
00:22:00,160 --> 00:22:02,840
Speaker 1: that is supposedly what gets him to start working on

454
00:22:02,880 --> 00:22:06,600
Speaker 1: the Maximum gun um And if that's true, it does

455
00:22:06,640 --> 00:22:08,520
Speaker 1: say a lot about him that somebody's like, you know,

456
00:22:08,680 --> 00:22:11,280
Speaker 1: you make a lot of money helping Europeans murder each other,

457
00:22:11,320 --> 00:22:15,479
Speaker 1: and he's like, absolutely, wasn't wrong, wasn't wrong, not at

458
00:22:15,520 --> 00:22:17,479
Speaker 1: all wrong. Makes me think about Ron Harvard where they

459
00:22:17,480 --> 00:22:18,720
Speaker 1: had the bed about how to make a bunch of

460
00:22:18,760 --> 00:22:21,800
Speaker 1: money in religion, in this instance makes something to kill

461
00:22:21,840 --> 00:22:25,120
Speaker 1: Europeans kill each other. Yeah yeah, and he uh, he

462
00:22:25,160 --> 00:22:28,960
Speaker 1: decides to do this. Now there's another possibly apocryphal story

463
00:22:28,960 --> 00:22:31,719
Speaker 1: to explain his his how he gets the idea of

464
00:22:31,720 --> 00:22:34,320
Speaker 1: how to make the maximum gun, which is that he's

465
00:22:34,359 --> 00:22:36,760
Speaker 1: out hunting with like his family when he's a little

466
00:22:36,840 --> 00:22:39,520
Speaker 1: kid and he tries to fire it's it's usually said

467
00:22:39,560 --> 00:22:42,200
Speaker 1: as a rifle. I it seems like I don't know

468
00:22:42,200 --> 00:22:44,119
Speaker 1: if it's a rifle or a shotgun or something. But

469
00:22:44,160 --> 00:22:45,879
Speaker 1: he's trying. He tries to fire a gun that's too

470
00:22:45,920 --> 00:22:48,280
Speaker 1: powerful him because he's little, and it knocks him down.

471
00:22:48,720 --> 00:22:51,040
Speaker 1: And this is what gives him the idea to make.

472
00:22:51,480 --> 00:22:55,280
Speaker 1: The thing that made the Maxim gun so revolutionary is

473
00:22:55,320 --> 00:22:58,320
Speaker 1: that it used the recoil. And obviously you know this,

474
00:22:58,400 --> 00:23:00,480
Speaker 1: but for the listeners, it used the re oil of

475
00:23:00,560 --> 00:23:03,760
Speaker 1: firing around to advance the next round. And that's why

476
00:23:03,760 --> 00:23:06,200
Speaker 1: it's automatic, right, And that had not been done. There

477
00:23:06,240 --> 00:23:10,199
Speaker 1: was no fully automatic weapons in that way at the

478
00:23:10,240 --> 00:23:13,159
Speaker 1: time that we're actually like worked very well. Um. I

479
00:23:13,200 --> 00:23:14,960
Speaker 1: don't know that I believe it. You know, he knocks

480
00:23:15,040 --> 00:23:17,000
Speaker 1: himself down and that's what gives him the idea. Whether

481
00:23:17,040 --> 00:23:19,800
Speaker 1: or not it's true. If you're an engineering minded person,

482
00:23:19,840 --> 00:23:22,560
Speaker 1: it's not hard to notice that, Like, oh, every time

483
00:23:22,560 --> 00:23:24,639
Speaker 1: I shoot a gun at recoils and this energy is

484
00:23:24,680 --> 00:23:27,560
Speaker 1: just wasted, right, Like, there's all all this energy that

485
00:23:27,600 --> 00:23:29,560
Speaker 1: I'm not we're not doing anything with like, and as

486
00:23:29,600 --> 00:23:32,480
Speaker 1: an efficiency minded person, I have no trouble seeing how

487
00:23:32,480 --> 00:23:34,159
Speaker 1: here could be, Like, I gotta find some way to

488
00:23:34,160 --> 00:23:38,080
Speaker 1: tap into to make use of that. Um. Now, at

489
00:23:38,119 --> 00:23:40,399
Speaker 1: the time, the closest thing we had to a machine

490
00:23:40,440 --> 00:23:43,040
Speaker 1: gun was the gatling gun and and the gatling gun.

491
00:23:43,640 --> 00:23:47,080
Speaker 1: They're they're actually not legally that difficult to get in

492
00:23:47,080 --> 00:23:49,320
Speaker 1: a lot of the US today because they're not legally

493
00:23:49,359 --> 00:23:51,800
Speaker 1: automatic because you don't pull the trigger and fire and

494
00:23:51,880 --> 00:23:55,000
Speaker 1: it's crank operated. The legal definition of a machine gun

495
00:23:55,080 --> 00:23:57,359
Speaker 1: is to fire more than one round perpress of the trigger,

496
00:23:58,040 --> 00:24:00,560
Speaker 1: and does not do that. Yeah, so you could go

497
00:24:00,600 --> 00:24:03,600
Speaker 1: get a gatling gun right now, listeners, if you want

498
00:24:04,280 --> 00:24:08,480
Speaker 1: uh to defend your stagecoach. Um. I don't know what

499
00:24:08,480 --> 00:24:11,000
Speaker 1: a gatling gun would be useful for in a modern context.

500
00:24:11,440 --> 00:24:14,920
Speaker 1: You could conceal carry it to go to the Walgreens

501
00:24:14,920 --> 00:24:18,680
Speaker 1: and pick up your prescription. It's a dangerous world. Put

502
00:24:18,680 --> 00:24:25,439
Speaker 1: a pistol brace on a gatling gun. Um. So the

503
00:24:25,440 --> 00:24:27,520
Speaker 1: gatling gun was pretty good at what it did for

504
00:24:27,600 --> 00:24:29,760
Speaker 1: the time. Right, Like, if if you're in a world

505
00:24:29,920 --> 00:24:32,280
Speaker 1: where there's not even a whole lot of semi automatic

506
00:24:32,359 --> 00:24:34,800
Speaker 1: weapons and some motherfucker's got a gatling gun, that can

507
00:24:34,840 --> 00:24:37,720
Speaker 1: be a pretty potent tool. Um. It has its uses,

508
00:24:38,119 --> 00:24:40,600
Speaker 1: but it is not we would not call it today

509
00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:43,920
Speaker 1: a good weapon. Um. It's very heavy, it's not easy

510
00:24:43,960 --> 00:24:46,720
Speaker 1: to use, it is extremely prone to failure, and they're

511
00:24:46,840 --> 00:24:49,080
Speaker 1: very hard to mass produced due in part to the

512
00:24:49,080 --> 00:24:51,440
Speaker 1: fact that it's got a shipload of barrels, right, And

513
00:24:51,720 --> 00:24:54,080
Speaker 1: because it has a shipload of barrels, it's much easier.

514
00:24:54,560 --> 00:24:56,640
Speaker 1: It's actually much easier for a gun with a shipload

515
00:24:56,640 --> 00:24:58,639
Speaker 1: of barrels to get way too hot than than the

516
00:24:58,680 --> 00:25:01,840
Speaker 1: gun that Maxim makes. Maxim's gun has one barrel, but

517
00:25:01,880 --> 00:25:04,280
Speaker 1: it's water cool. There's a big jacket around it that

518
00:25:04,320 --> 00:25:06,160
Speaker 1: they fill with. I think it's like a gallon of water.

519
00:25:06,520 --> 00:25:08,359
Speaker 1: And it turns out that's a much better way to

520
00:25:08,400 --> 00:25:12,400
Speaker 1: stop a barrel from melting is quickly, um than than

521
00:25:12,600 --> 00:25:17,080
Speaker 1: than just having like eight barrels on a rotating gun. UM.

522
00:25:17,280 --> 00:25:21,399
Speaker 1: So Maxim's gun is like it's like going from UM.

523
00:25:21,920 --> 00:25:24,760
Speaker 1: It's like everybody had a go kart and he's he

524
00:25:24,880 --> 00:25:28,480
Speaker 1: pulls up in like a Toyota high Lux like it's

525
00:25:28,600 --> 00:25:32,920
Speaker 1: it's it's just so much better than what it existed before. UM.

526
00:25:33,600 --> 00:25:35,359
Speaker 1: One of the things that's probably important to know is

527
00:25:35,400 --> 00:25:37,600
Speaker 1: that gatling guns, most of them at about two hundred

528
00:25:37,680 --> 00:25:39,760
Speaker 1: rounds a minute was the rate of fire, which seemed

529
00:25:39,800 --> 00:25:42,640
Speaker 1: huge for the day. The maximum gun could fire six

530
00:25:42,720 --> 00:25:45,240
Speaker 1: hundred rounds a minute, and that's like the first version.

531
00:25:45,280 --> 00:25:46,959
Speaker 1: It actually gets a lot faster. I think they get

532
00:25:47,040 --> 00:25:49,760
Speaker 1: up to like a thousand rounds a minute. Um. But

533
00:25:49,760 --> 00:25:53,560
Speaker 1: but it's he's it's it just blows every other machine

534
00:25:53,680 --> 00:25:56,000
Speaker 1: type gun that exists at the time, and there's a number,

535
00:25:56,040 --> 00:25:58,480
Speaker 1: there's like volley guns, people have all sorts of different ways.

536
00:25:58,880 --> 00:26:01,080
Speaker 1: They tried to make a wet been that could suppress

537
00:26:01,119 --> 00:26:04,520
Speaker 1: people by shooting a bunch of bullets. Maxims is just

538
00:26:04,680 --> 00:26:09,320
Speaker 1: like there's not even a comparison to what came before. Yeah,

539
00:26:09,400 --> 00:26:11,360
Speaker 1: and and when you said, like with the water cooling

540
00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:13,679
Speaker 1: properly set up in a position, when you have a

541
00:26:13,680 --> 00:26:15,320
Speaker 1: water tank to the left or right of it with

542
00:26:15,359 --> 00:26:18,159
Speaker 1: a hose going into it, it evaporates and the evaporative

543
00:26:18,160 --> 00:26:20,320
Speaker 1: water from the heat of the machine gun goes back

544
00:26:20,320 --> 00:26:23,120
Speaker 1: into a condenser and you can actually keep a maximum

545
00:26:23,160 --> 00:26:26,320
Speaker 1: machine gun fire essentially in perpetuity. Yeah, as long as

546
00:26:26,359 --> 00:26:29,520
Speaker 1: there's bullets, like keeping gun bullets and water, you can

547
00:26:29,600 --> 00:26:34,200
Speaker 1: keep shooting. Yeah, which come World War One, that's exactly

548
00:26:34,200 --> 00:26:39,000
Speaker 1: what will happen. Um. Yeah, it's a it's a remarkable device. Um.

549
00:26:39,080 --> 00:26:42,919
Speaker 1: Now Uh. Maxim immediately dubbed his new weapon once they

550
00:26:42,920 --> 00:26:45,400
Speaker 1: had tested it out a daisy and he's set to work,

551
00:26:45,400 --> 00:26:48,280
Speaker 1: putting it in front of representatives of several European governments.

552
00:26:48,280 --> 00:26:50,160
Speaker 1: He starts trying to sell this to anyone who will

553
00:26:50,200 --> 00:26:53,199
Speaker 1: buy it. The British are very impressed by this, and

554
00:26:53,240 --> 00:26:56,240
Speaker 1: they give Maxim his first order. So he fought founds

555
00:26:56,280 --> 00:26:59,520
Speaker 1: the Maximum machine Gun Company in London. But after this

556
00:26:59,560 --> 00:27:02,359
Speaker 1: first big get, he has this like really impressive start,

557
00:27:02,640 --> 00:27:05,320
Speaker 1: but then no one else is interested in the thing, right, Like,

558
00:27:05,400 --> 00:27:08,040
Speaker 1: he just can't find buyers. There's a number of reasons

559
00:27:08,040 --> 00:27:10,560
Speaker 1: we'll talk about for this part of it. Um is

560
00:27:10,600 --> 00:27:13,600
Speaker 1: because Maxim winds up in a conflict with Bastard's Pod

561
00:27:13,640 --> 00:27:16,720
Speaker 1: alumni Basil Zaharov, who was kind of like one of

562
00:27:16,720 --> 00:27:20,440
Speaker 1: the dudes who innvinced the military industrial complex. Basil is

563
00:27:20,440 --> 00:27:23,520
Speaker 1: an arms dealer at this point, um, and he initially

564
00:27:24,520 --> 00:27:27,520
Speaker 1: dedicates himself to stamping out the Maximum Gun because it's

565
00:27:27,520 --> 00:27:29,520
Speaker 1: bad for his profits. I'm going to read a quote

566
00:27:29,520 --> 00:27:33,080
Speaker 1: from American Heritage magazine here. Maxim soon found that it

567
00:27:33,119 --> 00:27:34,960
Speaker 1: was one thing to build a machine gun and quite

568
00:27:34,960 --> 00:27:36,760
Speaker 1: another to sell it. When he tried to peddle his

569
00:27:36,800 --> 00:27:39,600
Speaker 1: weapon to the European powers, he discovered they preferred the

570
00:27:39,640 --> 00:27:42,199
Speaker 1: Norton Felt machine gun, even by the standards of the

571
00:27:42,200 --> 00:27:44,800
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties, the Norton felt was was primitive, but its

572
00:27:44,840 --> 00:27:48,639
Speaker 1: makers had one great commercial advantage. Basil Zaharov, a mysterious

573
00:27:48,680 --> 00:27:52,560
Speaker 1: East European who was the best armed salesman in the world. Suave, persuasive,

574
00:27:52,560 --> 00:27:56,240
Speaker 1: and utterly ruthless. Saharof's shadowed maxim around Europe, telling would

575
00:27:56,280 --> 00:27:58,400
Speaker 1: be buyers that the superb new weapon was the work

576
00:27:58,400 --> 00:28:02,760
Speaker 1: of a Yankee philosophical instrument maker who painstakingly made each

577
00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:06,000
Speaker 1: gun to measurements of the utmost accuracy one part of

578
00:28:06,040 --> 00:28:08,320
Speaker 1: a millimeter here or there, and it will not work.

579
00:28:08,560 --> 00:28:10,600
Speaker 1: Do you expect you could get an army of Boston

580
00:28:10,680 --> 00:28:14,960
Speaker 1: philosophical instrument makers to work them. So that's Zaharov's like tactic.

581
00:28:15,040 --> 00:28:17,600
Speaker 1: He's not saying it's a bad gun. He's being like, well,

582
00:28:17,640 --> 00:28:20,000
Speaker 1: it's too good a gun. You can't train your like

583
00:28:20,119 --> 00:28:23,000
Speaker 1: these bum fuck infantry men. You have to actually operate

584
00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:25,680
Speaker 1: this thing like it's way too smart for them. They're

585
00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:28,840
Speaker 1: gonna break it um which is which is a smart

586
00:28:28,880 --> 00:28:30,760
Speaker 1: way like, and anyone who sees it knows it's a

587
00:28:30,760 --> 00:28:32,639
Speaker 1: good gun. So that's how you convince them it's a

588
00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:37,240
Speaker 1: bad thing to buy When maliflus lying failed, Zaharof bribed

589
00:28:37,240 --> 00:28:39,880
Speaker 1: officials to buy the nordon Felt. When bribery failed, He's

590
00:28:39,880 --> 00:28:43,640
Speaker 1: sabotaged Maxims guns on the eve of their demonstration. Finally,

591
00:28:43,760 --> 00:28:46,480
Speaker 1: Maxim merged with the norden Felt company. But even with

592
00:28:46,560 --> 00:28:49,520
Speaker 1: the indefatigable Zaharov now on his side, he found the

593
00:28:49,520 --> 00:28:52,960
Speaker 1: going rough. Many countries were suspicious of the revolutionary weapon,

594
00:28:53,160 --> 00:28:57,480
Speaker 1: and others simply didn't care. One Turkish official waived Maxim aside, saying,

595
00:28:57,760 --> 00:29:00,000
Speaker 1: invent a new vice for us, and we will receive

596
00:29:00,040 --> 00:29:03,000
Speaker 1: you with open arms. That is what we want. And

597
00:29:03,080 --> 00:29:05,400
Speaker 1: you do find that line in his autobiography. Whether or

598
00:29:05,440 --> 00:29:08,560
Speaker 1: not it's apocryphal, I don't know. But um, he was

599
00:29:08,600 --> 00:29:11,120
Speaker 1: really ahead of the game. The people couldn't. He was

600
00:29:11,240 --> 00:29:14,560
Speaker 1: envisioning something that these people couldn't comprehend. You, yeah, yeah,

601
00:29:14,600 --> 00:29:16,400
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of resistance. He tries to sell

602
00:29:16,440 --> 00:29:18,840
Speaker 1: this to the United States, and the War Department doesn't

603
00:29:18,840 --> 00:29:21,360
Speaker 1: want the thing. Um, we think it's it's seen as

604
00:29:21,440 --> 00:29:24,640
Speaker 1: unworthy by military standards. And there's this you see this

605
00:29:24,720 --> 00:29:26,640
Speaker 1: again when there starts to be this move to like

606
00:29:26,760 --> 00:29:30,280
Speaker 1: give infantryman semi automatic and automatic weapons, where It's like

607
00:29:30,520 --> 00:29:33,360
Speaker 1: they're just gonna waste the AMMO, Like this isn't gonna

608
00:29:33,360 --> 00:29:35,560
Speaker 1: help anything out there, just gonna like ruin our supply

609
00:29:35,640 --> 00:29:39,120
Speaker 1: lines and run through bullets too quickly. Um, there's this,

610
00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:42,720
Speaker 1: you know, the these these old kind of like military

611
00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:48,600
Speaker 1: brass types aren't don't really see how much this is

612
00:29:48,640 --> 00:29:52,120
Speaker 1: going to change the nature of conflict. Um. There are

613
00:29:52,120 --> 00:29:54,200
Speaker 1: some guys who do. But but but the people who

614
00:29:54,240 --> 00:29:56,520
Speaker 1: are making purchasing decisions in the United States are like,

615
00:29:56,520 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 1: absolutely not. We don't want these fucking things, which is

616
00:30:00,040 --> 00:30:02,120
Speaker 1: and it says. It says a lot that Americans are

617
00:30:02,120 --> 00:30:05,120
Speaker 1: turning down a gun like this, about like just how

618
00:30:05,240 --> 00:30:09,000
Speaker 1: stuck in their ways they are. Somebody like yeah, um,

619
00:30:09,080 --> 00:30:12,080
Speaker 1: and perhaps the machine gun would have remained a curiosity,

620
00:30:12,200 --> 00:30:15,320
Speaker 1: something large mustache general scoffed at as they drank brandy

621
00:30:15,320 --> 00:30:18,840
Speaker 1: in their war tents before ordering bayonet charges. But the

622
00:30:18,880 --> 00:30:21,720
Speaker 1: British were more far sighted than most, not all of them.

623
00:30:21,720 --> 00:30:24,400
Speaker 1: There's a lot of resistance in the British military towards

624
00:30:24,440 --> 00:30:27,680
Speaker 1: adopting the maximum gun. Um. But there are guys who

625
00:30:27,720 --> 00:30:29,640
Speaker 1: see the use that this thing is going to have,

626
00:30:30,240 --> 00:30:33,760
Speaker 1: not to fight European wars, but to help them police

627
00:30:33,800 --> 00:30:36,880
Speaker 1: their enormous colonial empire, because the British at this point

628
00:30:36,920 --> 00:30:40,440
Speaker 1: control more of the world than damn near anyone has

629
00:30:40,440 --> 00:30:43,160
Speaker 1: ever controlled. And there's not a lot of fucking British

630
00:30:43,160 --> 00:30:46,520
Speaker 1: people right, like, they don't have many you known, you know,

631
00:30:46,560 --> 00:30:48,560
Speaker 1: any more Boars per minute you can kill with the

632
00:30:48,600 --> 00:30:55,440
Speaker 1: machine gun. Yeah yeah, yeah, um and ad break real quick,

633
00:30:56,080 --> 00:31:03,120
Speaker 1: you know who else killed a lot of Boers? I've

634
00:31:03,120 --> 00:31:06,200
Speaker 1: been just laughing at who it could possibly we we are.

635
00:31:06,760 --> 00:31:12,520
Speaker 1: This podcast is entirely supported by Lord Kitchener. Um. Yeah,

636
00:31:12,880 --> 00:31:21,720
Speaker 1: so uh go uh occupied mayficking and listen to these ads.

637
00:31:22,640 --> 00:31:26,120
Speaker 1: It was a Boer war joke for abably sitting at

638
00:31:26,120 --> 00:31:36,600
Speaker 1: home for the empire. Yeah whatever, Okay, we're back. So

639
00:31:37,800 --> 00:31:41,600
Speaker 1: uh yeah British, some guys in the British Army see

640
00:31:41,600 --> 00:31:43,000
Speaker 1: the max and theent is like, well, this is a

641
00:31:43,040 --> 00:31:45,400
Speaker 1: thing that could actually help us deal with the manpower

642
00:31:45,440 --> 00:31:47,360
Speaker 1: shortages we have in the fact that like this, the

643
00:31:47,440 --> 00:31:50,360
Speaker 1: scramble for Africa is happening. In this period they've massively

644
00:31:50,440 --> 00:31:53,480
Speaker 1: expanded their holdings. And this is also a period where

645
00:31:53,760 --> 00:31:57,240
Speaker 1: kind of early on in the European occupation, um, they

646
00:31:57,280 --> 00:31:59,560
Speaker 1: have this shock and awe thing because their weaponry is

647
00:31:59,600 --> 00:32:02,640
Speaker 1: a lot better than what's available on the continent to

648
00:32:02,920 --> 00:32:06,160
Speaker 1: the indigenous people. That's starting to change by the late

649
00:32:06,200 --> 00:32:09,720
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds. UH, Indigenous resistance in Africa in this period

650
00:32:09,720 --> 00:32:13,480
Speaker 1: isn't mostly like dudes with you know, the very like

651
00:32:13,960 --> 00:32:16,240
Speaker 1: kind of stereotypical images of guys with like shields and

652
00:32:16,280 --> 00:32:19,800
Speaker 1: spears charging volleys of gunfire. It's insurgents with rifles. Like,

653
00:32:19,880 --> 00:32:23,240
Speaker 1: they have rifles now, and their resistance is starting to

654
00:32:23,280 --> 00:32:27,960
Speaker 1: get a lot more effective. Um So, while European weaponry

655
00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:30,960
Speaker 1: had initially represented a Titanic advantage, that started to turn

656
00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:33,920
Speaker 1: in this period. UM. Africans have a lot more access

657
00:32:33,960 --> 00:32:36,720
Speaker 1: to guns, and enough time has passed that different groups

658
00:32:36,720 --> 00:32:39,680
Speaker 1: have developed an understanding of European combat tactics and how

659
00:32:39,680 --> 00:32:42,520
Speaker 1: to disrupt encounter them. This came to a head with

660
00:32:42,600 --> 00:32:48,600
Speaker 1: the modest uprising. Like the Madhi the Islamic sort of um, yeah,

661
00:32:48,720 --> 00:32:51,600
Speaker 1: messianic figure. Yeah, the Madi is like, is like the

662
00:32:51,640 --> 00:32:53,880
Speaker 1: Islamic messianic Messianic is the word I was leaving for.

663
00:32:53,880 --> 00:32:56,640
Speaker 1: It's the Islamic messianic figure. So there's this guy calls

664
00:32:56,720 --> 00:32:59,720
Speaker 1: himself the Maddy. There's a big uprising um in like

665
00:32:59,760 --> 00:33:03,080
Speaker 1: North East Africa against the British, like in the Soudan

666
00:33:03,200 --> 00:33:06,080
Speaker 1: and everywhere. Um. And it doesn't go great for the British.

667
00:33:06,080 --> 00:33:09,160
Speaker 1: They suffer some really significant reversals um. And it leads

668
00:33:09,200 --> 00:33:11,840
Speaker 1: to like this whole situation gets out of hand enough

669
00:33:11,880 --> 00:33:14,120
Speaker 1: that one of their governors, a guy named Imman Pasha,

670
00:33:14,240 --> 00:33:18,080
Speaker 1: gets surrounded and sieged by this massive, fairly well equipped

671
00:33:18,160 --> 00:33:21,920
Speaker 1: army of modest warriors. Now, despite the British Army's purchase

672
00:33:21,920 --> 00:33:24,600
Speaker 1: of a number of Maxim guns, many generals still preferred

673
00:33:24,600 --> 00:33:27,200
Speaker 1: the gatling gun. Others considered it, and this is a

674
00:33:27,240 --> 00:33:31,080
Speaker 1: direct quote from a British general unsporting. So there's this

675
00:33:31,120 --> 00:33:34,240
Speaker 1: attitude that, like, it's not sporting to have a machine gun,

676
00:33:34,320 --> 00:33:39,120
Speaker 1: which it is not. They're not incorrect, colonialism is sporting.

677
00:33:39,720 --> 00:33:42,560
Speaker 1: Killing too many of them with an automatic weapon is unsporting.

678
00:33:42,640 --> 00:33:44,440
Speaker 1: So yeah, you have to at least give them some

679
00:33:45,120 --> 00:33:49,000
Speaker 1: illusion of chance, right yeah yeah. Um. And in eighteen

680
00:33:49,160 --> 00:33:52,520
Speaker 1: eighties six h Sir Henry Morton Stanley, who we have

681
00:33:52,640 --> 00:33:55,240
Speaker 1: talked about a lot on this show, is sent to

682
00:33:55,320 --> 00:33:58,400
Speaker 1: relieve and rescue Imman Pasha from the Mahdi's men. Now,

683
00:33:58,440 --> 00:34:01,040
Speaker 1: this relief effort is kind of mess. But he's sent

684
00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:03,040
Speaker 1: with a prototype of the Maxim gun and this is

685
00:34:03,080 --> 00:34:06,400
Speaker 1: like the first time it's really used in colonial combat,

686
00:34:06,720 --> 00:34:10,160
Speaker 1: mostly in like protecting his forces as they retreat, and

687
00:34:10,200 --> 00:34:12,680
Speaker 1: it's it works great, Like if you are trying to

688
00:34:12,760 --> 00:34:15,560
Speaker 1: run away while outnumbered, having a Maxim gun at your

689
00:34:15,560 --> 00:34:19,560
Speaker 1: back is a pretty pretty sweet thing to fucking have. UM.

690
00:34:19,640 --> 00:34:22,480
Speaker 1: So folks start to take notice within the British military

691
00:34:22,480 --> 00:34:25,680
Speaker 1: braass that like, well, this thing's this This could solve

692
00:34:25,719 --> 00:34:28,440
Speaker 1: a lot of problems for us UM and the battle

693
00:34:28,520 --> 00:34:31,359
Speaker 1: leads to more widespread adoption of the Maximum gun by

694
00:34:31,360 --> 00:34:34,960
Speaker 1: the Bridge. In eightee, all of this comes to a

695
00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:39,040
Speaker 1: head in what is now Zimbabwe at the Battle of Shangani. Now,

696
00:34:39,080 --> 00:34:41,760
Speaker 1: this was the most decisive battle of the First mata

697
00:34:41,760 --> 00:34:43,440
Speaker 1: bell A War, and we talk about this a bit

698
00:34:43,520 --> 00:34:48,440
Speaker 1: during our Cecil Rhodes episodes. UM. But the Battle of

699
00:34:48,440 --> 00:34:51,080
Speaker 1: Shangani is a fight between or the Matabelli War is

700
00:34:51,080 --> 00:34:53,840
Speaker 1: a fight between the forces of the British South Africa Company.

701
00:34:54,160 --> 00:34:57,520
Speaker 1: So these are British soldiers, but they're soldiers of a

702
00:34:57,600 --> 00:35:00,960
Speaker 1: corporation that's also kind of a froment in its own right.

703
00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:03,680
Speaker 1: We talked about this in the most Corporation in the

704
00:35:03,680 --> 00:35:07,279
Speaker 1: World episodes. We we've got over a number of these things. Um,

705
00:35:07,360 --> 00:35:09,880
Speaker 1: and these guys, these British South Africa soldiers, This the

706
00:35:10,680 --> 00:35:13,120
Speaker 1: Matta Belly War is the war that like leads to

707
00:35:13,120 --> 00:35:15,759
Speaker 1: the establishment of Rhodesia. Right, this is like where we

708
00:35:15,800 --> 00:35:17,920
Speaker 1: get the roadies and stuff from and a whole lot

709
00:35:17,960 --> 00:35:20,879
Speaker 1: of problems as a result of that. It's still having

710
00:35:20,920 --> 00:35:23,920
Speaker 1: that debate today, still having that probably, yeah, still still

711
00:35:24,239 --> 00:35:28,200
Speaker 1: an uncomfortable number of Facebook ads selling me roodation camouflage. Kere.

712
00:35:30,840 --> 00:35:35,359
Speaker 1: It is a nice pattern. Um so yeah, oh no, yeah,

713
00:35:35,400 --> 00:35:37,480
Speaker 1: nothing against their aesthetics. Going out and fighting in that

714
00:35:37,560 --> 00:35:40,640
Speaker 1: camera with your short shorts looked pretty cool. But what

715
00:35:40,680 --> 00:35:43,319
Speaker 1: they were actually doing wasn't all that cool. No, it

716
00:35:43,440 --> 00:35:46,759
Speaker 1: was not cool. Um but yeah. So the leader of

717
00:35:46,760 --> 00:35:49,520
Speaker 1: the Matta Belly, a guy named Globin Gula, has twenty

718
00:35:49,560 --> 00:35:52,960
Speaker 1: thousand riflemen. Um and the Matta Belly were competent strategists

719
00:35:52,960 --> 00:35:56,480
Speaker 1: and pretty well organized and disciplined. At Sheanani, three thousand

720
00:35:56,480 --> 00:35:59,000
Speaker 1: of their best men surrounded a force of seven hundred

721
00:35:59,040 --> 00:36:02,640
Speaker 1: British soldiers. Now, in an earlier period, this probably would

722
00:36:02,640 --> 00:36:04,879
Speaker 1: have been a massacre. Or at the very least a

723
00:36:04,920 --> 00:36:07,759
Speaker 1: hard fought and brutal retreat for the British. But on

724
00:36:07,880 --> 00:36:11,000
Speaker 1: this day the forces of the South Africa Company had

725
00:36:11,000 --> 00:36:14,080
Speaker 1: the Maxim gun and the Mata Belle had not. In

726
00:36:14,120 --> 00:36:17,640
Speaker 1: the slaughter that followed, more than fifteen hundred Matabelle are killed,

727
00:36:17,760 --> 00:36:20,319
Speaker 1: largely by the four Maxim guns the British brought to

728
00:36:20,360 --> 00:36:24,360
Speaker 1: bear on their forces. Four British soldiers died. Nothing like

729
00:36:24,440 --> 00:36:27,160
Speaker 1: this had ever been seen in colonial warfare, like a

730
00:36:27,280 --> 00:36:30,759
Speaker 1: kill ratio like this, um. It was it was unthinkable

731
00:36:30,800 --> 00:36:33,280
Speaker 1: as a disaster for the Manta Belle. Their leader commits

732
00:36:33,320 --> 00:36:36,839
Speaker 1: suicide on the battlefield. Several other warriors hang themselves during

733
00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:39,960
Speaker 1: the retreat. It is um a calamity for them, and

734
00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:42,200
Speaker 1: it is it's like it's a shock around the world

735
00:36:42,320 --> 00:36:45,440
Speaker 1: because this is the first time that you see what

736
00:36:45,560 --> 00:36:49,240
Speaker 1: a machine gun can do. Um And obviously fifteen hundred

737
00:36:49,280 --> 00:36:54,239
Speaker 1: to four it's a pretty stark uh lesson here, yeah,

738
00:36:54,320 --> 00:36:59,279
Speaker 1: real shades of the Yeah, yeah, exactly. This is I mean,

739
00:36:59,360 --> 00:37:01,600
Speaker 1: I mean a number of the men killing the Matta

740
00:37:01,640 --> 00:37:04,120
Speaker 1: Belli that day would probably die go on to get

741
00:37:04,200 --> 00:37:08,279
Speaker 1: killed by machine guns on the Western front. Um. So

742
00:37:08,400 --> 00:37:11,680
Speaker 1: it was very impactful back home Shangani, the battle is

743
00:37:11,719 --> 00:37:15,360
Speaker 1: an instant hit back in England, there's breathless news coverage.

744
00:37:15,360 --> 00:37:19,360
Speaker 1: There's all these lurid illustrations of like British soldiers heroically

745
00:37:19,400 --> 00:37:22,880
Speaker 1: surrounded fighting off hordes of barbarians. And this has compounded

746
00:37:22,920 --> 00:37:25,160
Speaker 1: a week later when a force of six thousand Mata

747
00:37:25,200 --> 00:37:29,160
Speaker 1: Belli attack Bimbezi and are again massacred by mass fire

748
00:37:29,239 --> 00:37:33,200
Speaker 1: from Maxim's gun. Twenty warriors die in this battle and

749
00:37:33,239 --> 00:37:36,520
Speaker 1: Matta Belli resistance crumbles after this, bringing the whole world

750
00:37:36,840 --> 00:37:40,600
Speaker 1: Rhodesia um. And these are just like these are nightmare battles,

751
00:37:40,640 --> 00:37:42,759
Speaker 1: Like if you actually think about what it means to

752
00:37:42,840 --> 00:37:47,680
Speaker 1: mow down with machine guns, it's horrific. But that's not

753
00:37:47,880 --> 00:37:52,399
Speaker 1: the picture that the British people, like the people back home,

754
00:37:52,400 --> 00:37:54,719
Speaker 1: are actually getting of these battles, which is we're going

755
00:37:54,760 --> 00:37:57,960
Speaker 1: to talk about in a bit um. But the impact

756
00:37:58,000 --> 00:38:01,560
Speaker 1: of this gun on the colonization of Africa is enough

757
00:38:01,600 --> 00:38:03,440
Speaker 1: on its own that Maxim would get a place in

758
00:38:03,480 --> 00:38:06,359
Speaker 1: behind the bastards. His gun makes the largest and most

759
00:38:06,440 --> 00:38:10,560
Speaker 1: terrible era of European domination in Africa possible. Right, the actual,

760
00:38:10,719 --> 00:38:14,440
Speaker 1: like the the real like the scramble for Africa and

761
00:38:14,480 --> 00:38:18,799
Speaker 1: the real complete lockdown of the continent by Europeans. I

762
00:38:18,840 --> 00:38:23,560
Speaker 1: don't think happens without the Maxim gun. It's absolutely necessary

763
00:38:23,600 --> 00:38:26,560
Speaker 1: in a lot of the atrocities that comes next, and

764
00:38:26,600 --> 00:38:29,560
Speaker 1: without Maxim there is certainly no Rhodesia Um And we

765
00:38:29,600 --> 00:38:31,799
Speaker 1: could go on for a long time about the the

766
00:38:31,840 --> 00:38:36,640
Speaker 1: horrors and lingering consequences of that pariah state. The centrality

767
00:38:36,680 --> 00:38:40,440
Speaker 1: of the Maxim gun to colonial military strategy was immortalized

768
00:38:40,440 --> 00:38:42,920
Speaker 1: by the writer Hilaire Bellock in a line uttered by

769
00:38:42,920 --> 00:38:46,279
Speaker 1: one of his characters, whatever happens, we have got the

770
00:38:46,320 --> 00:38:49,839
Speaker 1: Maximum gun and they have not. Now that's a quote

771
00:38:49,840 --> 00:38:51,279
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people have heard, especially if

772
00:38:51,320 --> 00:38:54,399
Speaker 1: you've listened to Dan Carlin's wonderful series on World War One.

773
00:38:54,960 --> 00:38:59,399
Speaker 1: But it actually it's very meaningful for how soldiers thought

774
00:38:59,440 --> 00:39:03,040
Speaker 1: about the mack some gun. That's not how civilians thought

775
00:39:03,080 --> 00:39:05,759
Speaker 1: about the Maxim gun. And the actual the influence of

776
00:39:05,800 --> 00:39:09,000
Speaker 1: the Maxim gun on the culture of colonizing nations is

777
00:39:09,000 --> 00:39:11,440
Speaker 1: a lot more insidious than you might think. Now I

778
00:39:11,480 --> 00:39:14,520
Speaker 1: want to show you a popular picture of the Battle

779
00:39:14,600 --> 00:39:18,400
Speaker 1: of Shangani, illustrated by artist Richard Woodville. Jr. So if

780
00:39:18,400 --> 00:39:20,680
Speaker 1: we can you drop that into the chat. This is

781
00:39:20,719 --> 00:39:23,040
Speaker 1: really interesting and not something I really had thought about,

782
00:39:23,040 --> 00:39:25,160
Speaker 1: because I had assumed when I read it, I'd read

783
00:39:25,160 --> 00:39:27,160
Speaker 1: about this battle a few times. I thought, I assumed

784
00:39:27,160 --> 00:39:30,000
Speaker 1: the people back home knew, Oh, we had a machine gun,

785
00:39:30,040 --> 00:39:32,200
Speaker 1: and so we were able to kill a shipload of people,

786
00:39:32,239 --> 00:39:34,239
Speaker 1: and that's why we didn't have so many warriors die.

787
00:39:34,760 --> 00:39:37,120
Speaker 1: That's not what a lot of British people know. They

788
00:39:37,160 --> 00:39:41,000
Speaker 1: just know four of our guys died for theirs because

789
00:39:41,040 --> 00:39:44,560
Speaker 1: we're such good fighters, right Like, That's that's the lesson

790
00:39:44,640 --> 00:39:48,120
Speaker 1: that they take. And it's a lesson that is um

791
00:39:48,160 --> 00:39:50,160
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's put forward in a lot of these

792
00:39:50,160 --> 00:39:53,680
Speaker 1: colonial paintings and illustrations. And this this this illustration I'm

793
00:39:53,719 --> 00:39:55,760
Speaker 1: showing you right now, there's like a bunch of British

794
00:39:55,760 --> 00:39:59,200
Speaker 1: soldiers and like cowboy style hats on a wagon train

795
00:39:59,320 --> 00:40:03,200
Speaker 1: and they've got rifles in hand, and there's there's natives

796
00:40:03,320 --> 00:40:06,200
Speaker 1: charging at them at very close range getting gunned down.

797
00:40:06,200 --> 00:40:10,279
Speaker 1: There's dead horses, wounded British soldiers and it looks like

798
00:40:10,320 --> 00:40:12,839
Speaker 1: it's happening at very close range, and it's this like

799
00:40:13,000 --> 00:40:17,000
Speaker 1: desperate struggle, right that's fascinating because as as as as

800
00:40:17,000 --> 00:40:19,000
Speaker 1: as noted, there's not a maxim here in sight. It

801
00:40:19,040 --> 00:40:22,600
Speaker 1: really looks this this, this artwork is the typical authoritarian

802
00:40:22,640 --> 00:40:26,160
Speaker 1: style artwork at which it shows the massive fighting capabilities

803
00:40:26,200 --> 00:40:28,880
Speaker 1: and brilliance of our heroic men fighting off at this

804
00:40:28,960 --> 00:40:32,200
Speaker 1: last stand and their their capabilities made it four to

805
00:40:32,280 --> 00:40:35,239
Speaker 1: what you said. But the reality is we didn't want

806
00:40:35,280 --> 00:40:38,160
Speaker 1: to give the citizens the reality that we were just

807
00:40:38,360 --> 00:40:43,480
Speaker 1: massacring essentially defenseless people with improved technology. Yes, and it

808
00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:46,840
Speaker 1: is it is really important to note, like you said,

809
00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:49,919
Speaker 1: there's not a maximum gun visible in this every it's

810
00:40:50,000 --> 00:40:54,280
Speaker 1: it's men with rifles, right, That's that's really worth noting.

811
00:40:54,560 --> 00:40:58,200
Speaker 1: Um So the fact that this picture excludes the maximum

812
00:40:58,200 --> 00:41:00,680
Speaker 1: gun to present an unrealistic picture. The battle is not

813
00:41:00,760 --> 00:41:04,960
Speaker 1: an isolated event. In fact, historians have studied and written

814
00:41:04,960 --> 00:41:10,359
Speaker 1: extensively about how comprehensively the maxim gun, arguably the most

815
00:41:10,440 --> 00:41:13,839
Speaker 1: essential tool for this phase of colonialism, was excised from

816
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:17,040
Speaker 1: the British popular imagination. And I'm gonna quote now from

817
00:41:17,040 --> 00:41:19,560
Speaker 1: a write up by Raymi Miz of the Rutger's Art

818
00:41:19,600 --> 00:41:25,000
Speaker 1: Review Graduate Journal. Quote, these brutal imperial campaigns were subsequently

819
00:41:25,040 --> 00:41:27,840
Speaker 1: met with a mountain of printed pictures in order to

820
00:41:27,880 --> 00:41:31,200
Speaker 1: satiate the interests of an eager British public. Few artists

821
00:41:31,280 --> 00:41:34,719
Speaker 1: contributed as prolifically as Richard Caton Woodville Jr. To the

822
00:41:34,719 --> 00:41:38,799
Speaker 1: wealth of war imagery that colored the widely circulated illustrated newspapers.

823
00:41:39,080 --> 00:41:42,240
Speaker 1: A self professed special war artist of the eighteen eighties

824
00:41:42,239 --> 00:41:46,040
Speaker 1: and eighteen nineties, albeit one who had never personally experienced battle,

825
00:41:46,280 --> 00:41:49,959
Speaker 1: Woodville submitted thousands of drawings to a wide variety of publications,

826
00:41:50,000 --> 00:41:53,920
Speaker 1: covering almost every imperial crusade. His illustrations, prints and oil

827
00:41:53,960 --> 00:41:58,000
Speaker 1: paintings incorporated the accepted motifs of high Victorian military art,

828
00:41:58,280 --> 00:42:00,720
Speaker 1: such as the belief in great men and mill terry heroes.

829
00:42:00,880 --> 00:42:03,520
Speaker 1: The depiction of war is an inspiring adventure, filled with

830
00:42:03,600 --> 00:42:06,959
Speaker 1: noble sacrifice and a compositional focus on hand to hand

831
00:42:06,960 --> 00:42:11,280
Speaker 1: combat and glorious cavalry charges, fraught with soldiers courageously lunging

832
00:42:11,280 --> 00:42:15,080
Speaker 1: and thrusting with swords and bayonets. However, almost never does

833
00:42:15,120 --> 00:42:17,880
Speaker 1: the machine gun upon which the majority of these colonial

834
00:42:17,920 --> 00:42:22,600
Speaker 1: victories were wholly dependent make an appearance. So from the

835
00:42:22,680 --> 00:42:25,880
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties up to the early nineteen hundreds, Colonial victories

836
00:42:25,920 --> 00:42:29,200
Speaker 1: against what seemed like long odds were celebrated in the

837
00:42:29,200 --> 00:42:32,520
Speaker 1: news and popular nonfiction with stories of heroism next to

838
00:42:32,600 --> 00:42:36,080
Speaker 1: full color illustration of small bands of Englishmen surrounded fighting

839
00:42:36,120 --> 00:42:39,160
Speaker 1: back to back against words of enemies. The maximum gun

840
00:42:39,640 --> 00:42:42,879
Speaker 1: isn't in almost any of these pictures. It virtually does

841
00:42:42,920 --> 00:42:47,480
Speaker 1: not appear in British popular illustrations of war in this period. Meanwhile,

842
00:42:47,600 --> 00:42:50,960
Speaker 1: the individual man with a rifle is nearly worshiped, and

843
00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:54,160
Speaker 1: there grows to be an increasing connection between the very

844
00:42:54,280 --> 00:42:58,280
Speaker 1: idea of manhood and the rifle. As F. Nori's Connell

845
00:42:58,360 --> 00:43:03,120
Speaker 1: wrote in his eighteen How Soldiers Fight. Apart from his physique,

846
00:43:03,120 --> 00:43:06,319
Speaker 1: the Britisher has no particular qualification as a cavalier, and

847
00:43:06,360 --> 00:43:09,040
Speaker 1: he lacks the quick intelligence of the boar and artilleryman.

848
00:43:09,320 --> 00:43:11,160
Speaker 1: But give him a rifle and a bayonet, and let

849
00:43:11,200 --> 00:43:13,239
Speaker 1: him have two years training to make a man of him,

850
00:43:13,400 --> 00:43:15,600
Speaker 1: and yet two more to remind him that he cannot

851
00:43:15,640 --> 00:43:18,399
Speaker 1: be one without the other. You see what he's saying there.

852
00:43:19,360 --> 00:43:21,680
Speaker 1: You need all this training not just to teach you

853
00:43:21,719 --> 00:43:23,680
Speaker 1: how to use a rifle and to make you into

854
00:43:23,719 --> 00:43:25,520
Speaker 1: a man that, but to remind you that you're not

855
00:43:25,600 --> 00:43:29,800
Speaker 1: a man without a rifle like that's it's this is

856
00:43:29,920 --> 00:43:32,960
Speaker 1: masterful propaganda. And a lot of the history work I

857
00:43:33,000 --> 00:43:35,640
Speaker 1: do within range I find what is so interesting to

858
00:43:35,680 --> 00:43:38,840
Speaker 1: me isn't that the narrative itself that's painted, and frequently

859
00:43:38,880 --> 00:43:41,880
Speaker 1: of the narratives are lies, or even if they're not lies,

860
00:43:41,960 --> 00:43:44,480
Speaker 1: what's most interesting is the things are the things that

861
00:43:44,480 --> 00:43:47,719
Speaker 1: are intentionally left out that paint the picture they want.

862
00:43:48,160 --> 00:43:50,279
Speaker 1: And this is a great example of that. It's not

863
00:43:50,320 --> 00:43:52,680
Speaker 1: it's not what they say, it's what they don't say

864
00:43:52,880 --> 00:43:56,440
Speaker 1: that frequently makes the narrative. Yeah, and it's remind me

865
00:43:56,480 --> 00:44:00,040
Speaker 1: to talk about how that kind of refer what in

866
00:44:00,200 --> 00:44:03,440
Speaker 1: what might be about to be the modern version of

867
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:07,120
Speaker 1: this with modern weaponry um, because there's a conversation there.

868
00:44:07,120 --> 00:44:11,000
Speaker 1: But in his paper, Raymie Miz cites this this guy's

869
00:44:11,040 --> 00:44:13,160
Speaker 1: quote and makes what I think is an extremely astute

870
00:44:13,160 --> 00:44:17,440
Speaker 1: observation quote In this estimation, the firearm is not simply

871
00:44:17,480 --> 00:44:20,960
Speaker 1: an ancillary tool, but rather a constitutive agent in the

872
00:44:21,080 --> 00:44:24,239
Speaker 1: making of the modern male soldier. Wood Fills pictures, when

873
00:44:24,239 --> 00:44:27,320
Speaker 1: examined through this lens, demonstrate that the machine guns usage

874
00:44:27,320 --> 00:44:32,120
Speaker 1: and physical mechanisms both analogize and reinscribe the volatile nature

875
00:44:32,160 --> 00:44:35,320
Speaker 1: of constructions of masculinity at the turn of the century.

876
00:44:35,360 --> 00:44:37,360
Speaker 1: In other words, the act of being a man with

877
00:44:37,400 --> 00:44:39,920
Speaker 1: a rifle is seen as the ideal of manhood, but

878
00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:43,640
Speaker 1: the reality, which is that individual rifleman matter very little

879
00:44:43,680 --> 00:44:46,200
Speaker 1: next to the presence of a maxim gun that's hidden.

880
00:44:46,760 --> 00:44:49,520
Speaker 1: Ramie goes on to write, the effectiveness of the gun

881
00:44:49,600 --> 00:44:52,560
Speaker 1: was impervious to mass casualties. As long as one man

882
00:44:52,680 --> 00:44:55,560
Speaker 1: survived to aim a functional gun, the odds remained in

883
00:44:55,640 --> 00:44:59,120
Speaker 1: his favor. Manpower was rendered almost irrelevant, and the gun

884
00:44:59,200 --> 00:45:02,560
Speaker 1: reigned supreme. As such, the machine gun was a vitally

885
00:45:02,840 --> 00:45:05,960
Speaker 1: useful tool in the colonization of Africa, and, as John

886
00:45:05,960 --> 00:45:10,000
Speaker 1: Ellis chillingly pronounces time and time again, automatic fire enabled

887
00:45:10,040 --> 00:45:12,520
Speaker 1: small groups of settlers or soldiers to stamp out any

888
00:45:12,560 --> 00:45:15,759
Speaker 1: indigenous resistance to their activities and to extend their writ

889
00:45:15,840 --> 00:45:19,200
Speaker 1: over vast areas of the African continent. Yet, also according

890
00:45:19,200 --> 00:45:22,240
Speaker 1: to Ellis, in England, in other countries, machine guns remained

891
00:45:22,280 --> 00:45:25,399
Speaker 1: hidden until the very outbreak of World War One. As

892
00:45:25,440 --> 00:45:28,600
Speaker 1: previously mentioned, this is certainly corroborated by the machine gun's

893
00:45:28,640 --> 00:45:31,879
Speaker 1: absence in popular war imagery and news coverage. What might

894
00:45:31,920 --> 00:45:34,439
Speaker 1: be the underlying reasons for such reluctance on the part

895
00:45:34,440 --> 00:45:36,840
Speaker 1: of the army and special war artists to acknowledge the

896
00:45:36,840 --> 00:45:39,919
Speaker 1: machine guns influence in their campaigns. For one, to quote

897
00:45:39,920 --> 00:45:42,799
Speaker 1: Ellis once more, where was the glory? Where was the

898
00:45:42,880 --> 00:45:46,120
Speaker 1: vicarious excitement for the reader's back home? If one told

899
00:45:46,160 --> 00:45:50,040
Speaker 1: the truth about the totally superior firepower, one couldn't pin

900
00:45:50,160 --> 00:45:52,920
Speaker 1: a medal on a weapon. The machine gun refuted the

901
00:45:52,920 --> 00:45:56,280
Speaker 1: need for almost all forms of traditional Victorian military heroics,

902
00:45:56,480 --> 00:46:00,239
Speaker 1: direct combat, cavalry charges and the traditional British infantry school air.

903
00:46:00,520 --> 00:46:04,560
Speaker 1: As Ellis observes, Europeans, as particularly the British, were too

904
00:46:04,560 --> 00:46:07,279
Speaker 1: concerned with trumpeting the virtues of their small squares of

905
00:46:07,320 --> 00:46:09,640
Speaker 1: heroes to admit that much of the credit for these

906
00:46:09,640 --> 00:46:13,920
Speaker 1: sickeningly total victories should go to the machine guns. I

907
00:46:13,920 --> 00:46:15,640
Speaker 1: don't want to get ahead of the discussion here, but

908
00:46:15,680 --> 00:46:17,480
Speaker 1: this makes me think right off the bat about the

909
00:46:17,520 --> 00:46:20,759
Speaker 1: machine gunner using these weapons against the indigenous people not

910
00:46:20,880 --> 00:46:25,160
Speaker 1: that different than someone sitting at a computer launching drone strikes. Yeah,

911
00:46:25,200 --> 00:46:27,560
Speaker 1: that's one of the things I want to talk about.

912
00:46:27,560 --> 00:46:30,040
Speaker 1: Another of them would be UM, the wire guided missile,

913
00:46:30,160 --> 00:46:35,839
Speaker 1: which is almost invisible in American popular depictions of combat UM,

914
00:46:35,880 --> 00:46:39,160
Speaker 1: but is uh the most important weapons system and a

915
00:46:39,200 --> 00:46:41,680
Speaker 1: lot of the different conflicts that were involved in right now,

916
00:46:41,760 --> 00:46:46,480
Speaker 1: and is UM. I have some some friends who are

917
00:46:46,840 --> 00:46:49,359
Speaker 1: deep like one of the things they're concerned about is that, like, well,

918
00:46:49,680 --> 00:46:51,839
Speaker 1: if you look at a lot of our near peer adversaries,

919
00:46:51,840 --> 00:46:53,279
Speaker 1: one of the things that they're doing is they're putting

920
00:46:53,280 --> 00:46:56,640
Speaker 1: a lot of wire guided missiles on small transports, UM,

921
00:46:56,680 --> 00:46:58,799
Speaker 1: little armored vehicles and stuff like that, even on like

922
00:46:58,880 --> 00:47:01,920
Speaker 1: technicals uh UM in the United States, which is very

923
00:47:01,960 --> 00:47:05,000
Speaker 1: dependent on large armored vehicles like im wraps, does not

924
00:47:05,160 --> 00:47:06,840
Speaker 1: do that to nearly so much of an extent. And

925
00:47:06,920 --> 00:47:09,680
Speaker 1: these huge vehicles that we've built in order to render

926
00:47:09,719 --> 00:47:14,080
Speaker 1: our troops effectively invulnerable to roadside bombs, into all forms

927
00:47:14,120 --> 00:47:17,239
Speaker 1: of incoming fire, you they're almost can't shoot one of

928
00:47:17,280 --> 00:47:19,680
Speaker 1: those things to pieces unless you've got like a fucking

929
00:47:19,680 --> 00:47:21,640
Speaker 1: Milan or some other kind of wider guided missile, in

930
00:47:21,640 --> 00:47:24,960
Speaker 1: which case it's just a big tomb UM. And it's

931
00:47:25,000 --> 00:47:26,800
Speaker 1: one of those things. I can remember sitting in the

932
00:47:27,200 --> 00:47:30,359
Speaker 1: fucking dustin Mosele with a couple of little Iraqi kids

933
00:47:30,440 --> 00:47:33,640
Speaker 1: drinking water and like watching these massive im wraps drove by.

934
00:47:33,640 --> 00:47:35,960
Speaker 1: Those are the only times I ever saw Americans that

935
00:47:36,000 --> 00:47:38,840
Speaker 1: weren't journalists out and Mosel you never saw them in person.

936
00:47:38,840 --> 00:47:43,440
Speaker 1: They were in these titanic and vulnerable vehicles, and uh,

937
00:47:43,480 --> 00:47:46,320
Speaker 1: those things are more or less invulnerable when you're fighting

938
00:47:46,360 --> 00:47:49,440
Speaker 1: somebody Who's best anti armor weapon as a homemade RPG

939
00:47:50,120 --> 00:47:53,360
Speaker 1: UM or something they may have stolen from the Iraqi armory,

940
00:47:53,480 --> 00:47:57,480
Speaker 1: but they're going to be increasingly useless in a world

941
00:47:57,920 --> 00:48:00,319
Speaker 1: that has so many more of these weapons. In part

942
00:48:00,360 --> 00:48:02,040
Speaker 1: of this, we've just been shot gutting them all over

943
00:48:02,080 --> 00:48:04,040
Speaker 1: the goddamn place, like that's the big thing. We gave

944
00:48:04,040 --> 00:48:06,080
Speaker 1: the Kurds a shipload and we get we've we've given

945
00:48:06,080 --> 00:48:08,880
Speaker 1: them all over the place because it's an easy weapons

946
00:48:08,880 --> 00:48:11,919
Speaker 1: system to give your allies to enable them to take

947
00:48:11,960 --> 00:48:15,680
Speaker 1: out any kind of armored vehicle effectively. UM and the

948
00:48:16,000 --> 00:48:19,200
Speaker 1: fact that it makes no presence in American popular imagination

949
00:48:19,239 --> 00:48:21,279
Speaker 1: and is the kind of thing that I could think

950
00:48:21,280 --> 00:48:24,280
Speaker 1: could be completely disruptive to us. Battle doctrine is something

951
00:48:24,320 --> 00:48:26,800
Speaker 1: that is going to be a thing at some point,

952
00:48:26,920 --> 00:48:32,520
Speaker 1: like the UM. But you know what else is completely

953
00:48:32,520 --> 00:48:39,040
Speaker 1: disruptive to us battle doctrine. Carl. Uh. Social media, well yeah, yeah,

954
00:48:39,160 --> 00:48:43,800
Speaker 1: that that that might take it hit yea Twitter, Twitter,

955
00:48:44,440 --> 00:48:46,880
Speaker 1: um could be a real problem. Um. But also the

956
00:48:46,920 --> 00:48:56,240
Speaker 1: products and services that support this podcast. Uh, we're back.

957
00:48:56,920 --> 00:48:59,920
Speaker 1: One thing. I should also note you ever do any

958
00:49:00,000 --> 00:49:02,480
Speaker 1: play any Warhammer when you were a kid, Carl? Actually

959
00:49:02,520 --> 00:49:05,160
Speaker 1: I didn't. I mean, I'm really familiar with the aesthetic,

960
00:49:05,840 --> 00:49:08,880
Speaker 1: but yeah, I never played it myself. It struck me

961
00:49:08,920 --> 00:49:10,759
Speaker 1: as I was looking through all these old paintings of

962
00:49:10,800 --> 00:49:14,040
Speaker 1: like British military victories in Africa, like, oh, that's what

963
00:49:14,160 --> 00:49:16,479
Speaker 1: all of the old Warhammer arts is based on, because

964
00:49:16,520 --> 00:49:18,680
Speaker 1: obviously those are kids all grew up in like British

965
00:49:18,719 --> 00:49:21,480
Speaker 1: public schools and saw a million of these a circle

966
00:49:21,520 --> 00:49:23,960
Speaker 1: of men surrounded by a horde of enemies like that

967
00:49:24,080 --> 00:49:28,640
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Like, Yeah, it's interesting when you find

968
00:49:28,640 --> 00:49:32,239
Speaker 1: those connections like that, the things that the echoes of

969
00:49:32,320 --> 00:49:34,760
Speaker 1: things from the past that then manifest themselves and ways

970
00:49:34,760 --> 00:49:37,080
Speaker 1: in the future, even so something as simple as science

971
00:49:37,080 --> 00:49:40,719
Speaker 1: fiction art. Yeah, I always find that fascinating. Yeah, it's

972
00:49:40,760 --> 00:49:42,840
Speaker 1: really interesting to me, and I'm sure there's more to

973
00:49:42,880 --> 00:49:45,440
Speaker 1: be I'm sure somebody who wanted to could write a

974
00:49:45,480 --> 00:49:49,040
Speaker 1: very interesting paper on that. Um. But yeah, So the

975
00:49:49,120 --> 00:49:52,080
Speaker 1: point that my is the author of this paper is

976
00:49:52,160 --> 00:49:54,960
Speaker 1: making is crucial to a number of the historical events

977
00:49:54,960 --> 00:49:57,720
Speaker 1: that come next after kind of the Scramble for Africa.

978
00:49:58,080 --> 00:50:02,160
Speaker 1: The supposed fearlessness of Colone Neil soldiers against tremendous numerical

979
00:50:02,239 --> 00:50:05,640
Speaker 1: odds was made entirely possible by machine guns, but the

980
00:50:05,719 --> 00:50:09,759
Speaker 1: massive popular imagination around these events led to widespread attitudes

981
00:50:09,760 --> 00:50:12,799
Speaker 1: in Victorian England and beyond that the truest way to

982
00:50:12,800 --> 00:50:14,880
Speaker 1: become a real man was to go and see war.

983
00:50:15,280 --> 00:50:17,600
Speaker 1: And it was a pretty safe bet because since you've

984
00:50:17,640 --> 00:50:21,240
Speaker 1: got the fucking maximum gun, you'll probably survive, and you'll

985
00:50:21,280 --> 00:50:23,360
Speaker 1: you'll come back with this story or whatever, and you

986
00:50:23,680 --> 00:50:27,240
Speaker 1: continue this this kind of legend of of what these

987
00:50:27,280 --> 00:50:29,839
Speaker 1: fights are like, because you don't want to tell people, well,

988
00:50:29,920 --> 00:50:31,960
Speaker 1: we just kind of pulled the trigger on a maxim

989
00:50:32,000 --> 00:50:36,520
Speaker 1: gun until there weren't people left. Victorian scholar Angus McLaren notes,

990
00:50:36,840 --> 00:50:39,120
Speaker 1: to be a man required effort and labor that was

991
00:50:39,160 --> 00:50:41,440
Speaker 1: not required of a woman. One did not go to

992
00:50:41,520 --> 00:50:43,840
Speaker 1: female by force to will her to be a woman.

993
00:50:44,040 --> 00:50:47,080
Speaker 1: She was born one. And mis goes on to include

994
00:50:47,280 --> 00:50:51,800
Speaker 1: The machine gun, however, negated most of these characteristics of manhood. Indeed,

995
00:50:51,840 --> 00:50:55,720
Speaker 1: it obstructed any opportunity for legitimate confrontation when used against

996
00:50:55,719 --> 00:50:59,040
Speaker 1: poorly armed opponents, and rendered obsolete qualities like strength and

997
00:50:59,120 --> 00:51:02,320
Speaker 1: skill in hand to hand in combat. So the British

998
00:51:02,360 --> 00:51:06,759
Speaker 1: and other colonizing nations are increasingly glorifying this idea of

999
00:51:06,800 --> 00:51:09,600
Speaker 1: the colonial soldier, of the man willing to fight for

1000
00:51:09,680 --> 00:51:13,280
Speaker 1: his empire, of of the value of like physical courage

1001
00:51:13,320 --> 00:51:15,520
Speaker 1: and like being willing to get stuck into a fight,

1002
00:51:16,040 --> 00:51:18,480
Speaker 1: and also obscuring the fact that none of those qualities

1003
00:51:18,520 --> 00:51:21,760
Speaker 1: matter anymore because machine guns exist. We see this echo

1004
00:51:21,800 --> 00:51:23,920
Speaker 1: again in Rhodesia when their slogan was be a man

1005
00:51:23,960 --> 00:51:28,120
Speaker 1: amongst men. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's this, it's this very

1006
00:51:28,200 --> 00:51:30,880
Speaker 1: false idea of the nature of conflict in order to

1007
00:51:32,280 --> 00:51:34,920
Speaker 1: and in this period, it's less of a con because

1008
00:51:34,960 --> 00:51:36,680
Speaker 1: most of the men who joined the army in this

1009
00:51:36,760 --> 00:51:38,799
Speaker 1: period like that. You go over and get shipped Africa, Yeah,

1010
00:51:38,800 --> 00:51:41,160
Speaker 1: you'll probably make it back. You're you're not likely to

1011
00:51:41,200 --> 00:51:45,000
Speaker 1: face serious threat because you've got this weapon. Once the

1012
00:51:45,040 --> 00:51:47,839
Speaker 1: machine guns get turned on each other, you know, it's

1013
00:51:47,840 --> 00:51:50,919
Speaker 1: a different it's a different thing um. And of course

1014
00:51:50,920 --> 00:51:54,319
Speaker 1: the reality is that Maxim's gun had rendered courage, skill

1015
00:51:54,360 --> 00:51:58,120
Speaker 1: and toughness completely meaningless. Uh. Nothing matters when you're standing

1016
00:51:58,160 --> 00:51:59,880
Speaker 1: in front of a machine gun but that there's a

1017
00:52:00,040 --> 00:52:03,200
Speaker 1: man behind that machine gun. But an entire generation of

1018
00:52:03,200 --> 00:52:06,400
Speaker 1: British and European manhood was raised on fantasies about what

1019
00:52:06,480 --> 00:52:08,880
Speaker 1: war was going to mean in the twenty first century.

1020
00:52:09,200 --> 00:52:13,239
Speaker 1: Here Maxim got unfathomably rich, selling governments the instruments by

1021
00:52:13,280 --> 00:52:16,920
Speaker 1: which this generation would be slaughtered and mass By the

1022
00:52:17,000 --> 00:52:19,200
Speaker 1: end of the eighteen hundreds, all the nations of Europe

1023
00:52:19,200 --> 00:52:21,960
Speaker 1: were going gaga from Maxim's gun. He sold it to

1024
00:52:21,960 --> 00:52:24,320
Speaker 1: the Germans as the mg O nine, to the British

1025
00:52:24,360 --> 00:52:26,440
Speaker 1: is the Vickars and as his weapon flew off the

1026
00:52:26,480 --> 00:52:30,040
Speaker 1: proverbial shelves. He made regular improvements and upgrades to increase

1027
00:52:30,080 --> 00:52:33,480
Speaker 1: its reliability and killing power. He developed his own smokeless

1028
00:52:33,480 --> 00:52:36,439
Speaker 1: powder alongside his brother Hudson, which made the weapon much

1029
00:52:36,440 --> 00:52:39,920
Speaker 1: easier to use in mass confrontations between two proper armies.

1030
00:52:40,080 --> 00:52:42,520
Speaker 1: This is the last big development that makes it effective

1031
00:52:42,560 --> 00:52:45,719
Speaker 1: for European conflict. Because the first version of the Maxim gun,

1032
00:52:45,760 --> 00:52:48,080
Speaker 1: there's the kind of smoke that it makes is so

1033
00:52:48,160 --> 00:52:51,240
Speaker 1: distinctive that you can target it with artillery very easily.

1034
00:52:51,600 --> 00:52:53,640
Speaker 1: The new smokeless powder and makes it a lot harder

1035
00:52:53,640 --> 00:52:55,480
Speaker 1: to see and thus harder to like just blow up

1036
00:52:55,520 --> 00:52:57,319
Speaker 1: the machine guns when you find them with you know,

1037
00:52:57,400 --> 00:53:02,080
Speaker 1: field guns or whatnot. Um Maxim is over was overjoyed

1038
00:53:02,120 --> 00:53:04,480
Speaker 1: to sell his weapon to multiple sides in the same war.

1039
00:53:04,920 --> 00:53:07,480
Speaker 1: This happened first in nineteen o five, when both the

1040
00:53:07,560 --> 00:53:10,799
Speaker 1: Russians and Japanese went to battle with his guns. If

1041
00:53:10,840 --> 00:53:13,440
Speaker 1: any of these powers were irritated at Maxim, they wanted

1042
00:53:13,480 --> 00:53:16,160
Speaker 1: his weapon badly enough to keep their mouth shut. The

1043
00:53:16,280 --> 00:53:19,440
Speaker 1: Queen of England made him a British citizen in nineteen hundred,

1044
00:53:19,480 --> 00:53:21,919
Speaker 1: which he was happy to accept. He had never quite

1045
00:53:21,960 --> 00:53:24,560
Speaker 1: forgiven the United States for refusing to buy his weapon.

1046
00:53:25,360 --> 00:53:27,880
Speaker 1: Most of the rest of Maxim's life was, in fact

1047
00:53:27,960 --> 00:53:30,160
Speaker 1: a process of him using his fame and wealth to

1048
00:53:30,239 --> 00:53:33,799
Speaker 1: harp on slights and grudges. His autobiography was largely a

1049
00:53:33,840 --> 00:53:37,000
Speaker 1: canvas for him to lay out petty irritations against other inventors.

1050
00:53:37,239 --> 00:53:39,640
Speaker 1: He even fell out with his brother Hudson, jealous that

1051
00:53:39,719 --> 00:53:42,799
Speaker 1: Hudson had an equal faculty for invention At one point,

1052
00:53:42,880 --> 00:53:45,640
Speaker 1: Hiram hired a private detective to stalk his brother and

1053
00:53:45,680 --> 00:53:49,400
Speaker 1: sabotage his work. Hudson would later claim, he told me

1054
00:53:49,480 --> 00:53:51,800
Speaker 1: one time that if the telescope hadn't been invented, he

1055
00:53:51,800 --> 00:53:53,839
Speaker 1: would have invented it. And I think he never felt

1056
00:53:53,920 --> 00:53:57,480
Speaker 1: kindly towards Galileo for having got ahead of him. That's

1057
00:53:57,960 --> 00:54:01,400
Speaker 1: he's very offended by the fact that other people make things.

1058
00:54:02,400 --> 00:54:05,640
Speaker 1: Uh so, yeah, a bit of a dick. Hudson responded

1059
00:54:05,640 --> 00:54:08,680
Speaker 1: to his brother's provocation by tracking down Helen Layton, a

1060
00:54:08,680 --> 00:54:11,319
Speaker 1: teenage girl that here Him had tricked into marrying him

1061
00:54:11,320 --> 00:54:14,440
Speaker 1: while he was already married to someone else. Maxim was

1062
00:54:14,560 --> 00:54:17,640
Speaker 1: charged with bigamy. Although he was acquitted, the charges ensured

1063
00:54:17,680 --> 00:54:20,200
Speaker 1: that he was the subject of mockery and whispered discussion

1064
00:54:20,239 --> 00:54:22,759
Speaker 1: for the rest of his life. By the time he

1065
00:54:22,800 --> 00:54:25,279
Speaker 1: was an old man, here Him was completely deaf from

1066
00:54:25,440 --> 00:54:28,920
Speaker 1: years of weapons testing without hearing protection. He also suffered

1067
00:54:28,920 --> 00:54:31,120
Speaker 1: bronchitis for the last sixteen years of his life, which

1068
00:54:31,120 --> 00:54:33,680
Speaker 1: has probably had something to do with, you know, all

1069
00:54:33,680 --> 00:54:36,560
Speaker 1: of the gunpowder and explosions and stuff he hung out around,

1070
00:54:36,640 --> 00:54:39,839
Speaker 1: or whatever chemicals he was every day. Could God only

1071
00:54:39,880 --> 00:54:44,799
Speaker 1: knows what kind of ship he was inhaling, you know, Um, yeah, uh.

1072
00:54:44,840 --> 00:54:47,960
Speaker 1: And that actually led to his last really significant invention,

1073
00:54:48,040 --> 00:54:51,280
Speaker 1: which was an inhaler to basically help with like asthma

1074
00:54:51,320 --> 00:54:54,040
Speaker 1: and the like. He called the Pipe of Peace UM

1075
00:54:54,280 --> 00:54:56,600
Speaker 1: his design because you couldn't spray with the kind of

1076
00:54:56,640 --> 00:54:58,680
Speaker 1: force that you can today. It was like a long

1077
00:54:58,760 --> 00:55:01,400
Speaker 1: glass tube where you would kind of like a crack pipe,

1078
00:55:01,440 --> 00:55:04,440
Speaker 1: heat a thing in a glass bulb and then inhale

1079
00:55:04,480 --> 00:55:06,880
Speaker 1: it to the back of the throat. UM, which was

1080
00:55:07,000 --> 00:55:09,319
Speaker 1: it was. It was a big improvement over similar kinds

1081
00:55:09,320 --> 00:55:12,080
Speaker 1: of devices that had existed before. UM. He filled his

1082
00:55:12,200 --> 00:55:15,319
Speaker 1: with menthol and evergreen mixed with water. UM. And he

1083
00:55:15,360 --> 00:55:17,399
Speaker 1: believes this is the first time that mental was ever

1084
00:55:17,520 --> 00:55:20,839
Speaker 1: used for this account, to like actually decongest and sue

1085
00:55:20,920 --> 00:55:23,680
Speaker 1: the throat. He's the first person to use menthol for

1086
00:55:23,719 --> 00:55:27,880
Speaker 1: that purpose, um, he claims. Um. I don't I I

1087
00:55:27,920 --> 00:55:30,400
Speaker 1: haven't found any arguments against that. I'm sure it was

1088
00:55:30,480 --> 00:55:32,880
Speaker 1: used in in some sort of indigenous medicine before he

1089
00:55:32,920 --> 00:55:35,440
Speaker 1: came across it. But he's certainly the first person to

1090
00:55:35,480 --> 00:55:37,839
Speaker 1: like do this and market it. UM and these are

1091
00:55:37,920 --> 00:55:40,680
Speaker 1: very popular his inhalers. He sells hundreds of thousands of

1092
00:55:40,719 --> 00:55:44,160
Speaker 1: these um, and it's it's funny because, like, this is

1093
00:55:44,200 --> 00:55:48,040
Speaker 1: actually a really significant invention. It's a major device within

1094
00:55:48,160 --> 00:55:51,080
Speaker 1: kind of the line of descendant of the asthma inhaler

1095
00:55:51,120 --> 00:55:54,359
Speaker 1: and stuff like, it's a very meaningful development for like

1096
00:55:54,520 --> 00:55:58,120
Speaker 1: human health that he contributes to here um. But a

1097
00:55:58,160 --> 00:56:00,239
Speaker 1: lot of people make fun of him for it. They

1098
00:56:00,239 --> 00:56:02,440
Speaker 1: call it like a quack remedy and attack him for

1099
00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:04,560
Speaker 1: it in a way that he never had been before

1100
00:56:04,680 --> 00:56:08,120
Speaker 1: in his career. And so in his nineteen fifteen autobiography,

1101
00:56:08,239 --> 00:56:10,640
Speaker 1: Maxim wrote, quote, it will be seen that it is

1102
00:56:10,680 --> 00:56:13,640
Speaker 1: a very creditable thing to invent a killing machine, and

1103
00:56:13,719 --> 00:56:16,279
Speaker 1: nothing less than a disgrace to invent an apparatus to

1104
00:56:16,320 --> 00:56:21,520
Speaker 1: prevent human suffering. He and wrong, that's what people like, right, No, seriously,

1105
00:56:21,719 --> 00:56:23,720
Speaker 1: this is so interesting. This guy was all over the board.

1106
00:56:23,760 --> 00:56:26,560
Speaker 1: I mean, from being being associated with the light bulb

1107
00:56:26,680 --> 00:56:29,840
Speaker 1: to making one of the worst in terms of effective

1108
00:56:30,600 --> 00:56:34,320
Speaker 1: killing machines on the battlefield, to something that actually legitimately

1109
00:56:34,400 --> 00:56:37,600
Speaker 1: was a medical health device. I mean that's wild. Yeah,

1110
00:56:37,680 --> 00:56:41,000
Speaker 1: it is. I mean the curling iron, don't forget the

1111
00:56:41,000 --> 00:56:48,080
Speaker 1: curling iron is obviously curling uh Hiram Maxim lived long

1112
00:56:48,200 --> 00:56:51,200
Speaker 1: enough to see his weapon reach its pothesis during the

1113
00:56:51,239 --> 00:56:53,840
Speaker 1: outbreak of the First World War. He died in the

1114
00:56:53,880 --> 00:56:56,880
Speaker 1: winter of nineteen sixteen, most of the way through the

1115
00:56:56,880 --> 00:56:59,719
Speaker 1: Battle of the Psalm. By that point in the war

1116
00:57:00,000 --> 00:57:02,920
Speaker 1: were than seven hundred and fifty thousand British soldiers had

1117
00:57:02,920 --> 00:57:05,840
Speaker 1: been killed. The majority of these deaths, by some accounts

1118
00:57:05,880 --> 00:57:08,360
Speaker 1: like two thirds were the result of German machine guns,

1119
00:57:08,680 --> 00:57:11,000
Speaker 1: and one day at the Song more than twenty thousand

1120
00:57:11,040 --> 00:57:14,920
Speaker 1: British boys were cut down by machine gun fire. Um

1121
00:57:14,960 --> 00:57:17,040
Speaker 1: so he lives to see it, and in the days

1122
00:57:17,080 --> 00:57:19,320
Speaker 1: before his death, there's no evidence that he was actually

1123
00:57:19,360 --> 00:57:22,000
Speaker 1: troubled by this at all. According to the website American

1124
00:57:22,040 --> 00:57:25,000
Speaker 1: Heritage Quote, he had other concerns. In his last years.

1125
00:57:25,120 --> 00:57:26,760
Speaker 1: He had rented a front room at the top of

1126
00:57:26,760 --> 00:57:29,120
Speaker 1: the building in a London business district, and there he

1127
00:57:29,200 --> 00:57:31,920
Speaker 1: spent hours blowing black beans out of a pea shooter

1128
00:57:31,960 --> 00:57:35,200
Speaker 1: at a Salvation Army band that regularly played across the street.

1129
00:57:40,480 --> 00:57:45,000
Speaker 1: Such interesting questions about like it raises such interesting questions

1130
00:57:45,040 --> 00:57:47,640
Speaker 1: because technology is going to advance, whether you're the person

1131
00:57:47,680 --> 00:57:51,680
Speaker 1: doing it or there was gonna be another machine gun right,

1132
00:57:51,760 --> 00:57:54,240
Speaker 1: and so I'm not justifying. At the same time, the

1133
00:57:54,320 --> 00:57:56,760
Speaker 1: question is if it wasn't maximum with someone else, So

1134
00:57:56,800 --> 00:57:58,320
Speaker 1: I bet you that was pretty much where he was

1135
00:57:58,360 --> 00:58:01,200
Speaker 1: putting his mindset at that point. You have to write,

1136
00:58:01,280 --> 00:58:02,960
Speaker 1: especially when you're hearing like, oh I made a thing

1137
00:58:03,000 --> 00:58:05,680
Speaker 1: and twenty kids died in a day because of it,

1138
00:58:06,080 --> 00:58:09,960
Speaker 1: Like yeah, of course you and you're not like obviously

1139
00:58:10,640 --> 00:58:13,160
Speaker 1: and other people were working on this. Someone would have

1140
00:58:13,160 --> 00:58:14,800
Speaker 1: made a machine And I think you could argue it

1141
00:58:14,920 --> 00:58:17,160
Speaker 1: like yeah, but maybe he was so smart. Maybe it

1142
00:58:17,160 --> 00:58:19,200
Speaker 1: would have taken another ten years. And maybe that means

1143
00:58:19,240 --> 00:58:22,240
Speaker 1: colonialism in Africa never really gets to the same point,

1144
00:58:22,320 --> 00:58:24,600
Speaker 1: or like we can do what ifs all the day,

1145
00:58:24,880 --> 00:58:27,800
Speaker 1: live long day. Obviously, I I tend to be more

1146
00:58:27,840 --> 00:58:30,680
Speaker 1: trends and forces than great man. And it's like someone

1147
00:58:30,760 --> 00:58:33,320
Speaker 1: would have developed this, right, there would have been machine

1148
00:58:33,360 --> 00:58:37,200
Speaker 1: guns mowing down a generation of of of European youth

1149
00:58:37,400 --> 00:58:40,720
Speaker 1: in World War One, with or without here in maxim.

1150
00:58:40,760 --> 00:58:42,880
Speaker 1: Maybe the guns wouldn't have worked as well, maybe it

1151
00:58:42,920 --> 00:58:45,960
Speaker 1: would have taken longer. You know, these are all things

1152
00:58:46,000 --> 00:58:49,200
Speaker 1: that can be debated on. He was predominantly done with

1153
00:58:49,240 --> 00:58:53,720
Speaker 1: single shot trapter or rifles. Right, yeah, yeah, Um, so

1154
00:58:53,800 --> 00:58:57,040
Speaker 1: obviously it's one of those things. It's probable. I think

1155
00:58:57,040 --> 00:58:59,960
Speaker 1: it's either kind of between him or Krupp because Field artiller,

1156
00:59:00,040 --> 00:59:04,280
Speaker 1: he also kills an astronomical number of people. Um probably,

1157
00:59:04,280 --> 00:59:06,440
Speaker 1: but probably him or Crupp. That you would say is

1158
00:59:06,480 --> 00:59:10,560
Speaker 1: like the weapon inventor, who's whose invention killed the most people,

1159
00:59:11,200 --> 00:59:14,680
Speaker 1: both directly and like every other machine gun that exists

1160
00:59:14,720 --> 00:59:17,160
Speaker 1: up to the modern day is in some way descended

1161
00:59:17,200 --> 00:59:20,040
Speaker 1: from the maximum gun, right like, even if it's just descended,

1162
00:59:20,040 --> 00:59:23,520
Speaker 1: and that machine guns have a place in every military

1163
00:59:23,560 --> 00:59:25,800
Speaker 1: as a result of the success of the maxim guns.

1164
00:59:25,800 --> 00:59:29,680
Speaker 1: The same with like Crup's artillery, right like, it's all descended.

1165
00:59:29,760 --> 00:59:32,080
Speaker 1: That said, if Krupp hadn't figured out how to make

1166
00:59:32,280 --> 00:59:35,400
Speaker 1: cannons better than the big old brass Napoleonic ones, someone

1167
00:59:35,520 --> 00:59:38,880
Speaker 1: was going to write like it these are all worth

1168
00:59:39,400 --> 00:59:43,560
Speaker 1: talking about. Um yeah. That's one of the interesting questions

1169
00:59:43,560 --> 00:59:45,320
Speaker 1: that always pops up with the work I do, especially

1170
00:59:45,360 --> 00:59:47,720
Speaker 1: with firearms, and it applies to this, which is I

1171
00:59:48,040 --> 00:59:50,440
Speaker 1: intrinsically come from the idea that technology is going to

1172
00:59:50,480 --> 00:59:54,160
Speaker 1: happen regardless, and that the question isn't sure or should

1173
00:59:54,200 --> 00:59:56,040
Speaker 1: not technology exists I mean, there's a lot of things

1174
00:59:56,080 --> 00:59:57,760
Speaker 1: in this world I wish didn't exist. To be nice,

1175
00:59:57,760 --> 00:59:59,760
Speaker 1: to live in a world without water, cold belt field,

1176
00:59:59,800 --> 01:00:03,120
Speaker 1: machine guns, and nuclear weapons. But the reality is they do.

1177
01:00:03,920 --> 01:00:06,600
Speaker 1: And the problem isn't necessarily this technology. It's what we

1178
01:00:06,640 --> 01:00:09,720
Speaker 1: as humans do with it. Yeah, and it's and I

1179
01:00:09,760 --> 01:00:12,480
Speaker 1: think that's where the degree to which he's more morally

1180
01:00:12,520 --> 01:00:14,720
Speaker 1: culpable is the Yeah, of course I'll sell the both

1181
01:00:14,760 --> 01:00:16,560
Speaker 1: sides that everyone should have this thing. I want to

1182
01:00:16,600 --> 01:00:19,840
Speaker 1: get this out there as much as is fucking possible. Um.

1183
01:00:19,920 --> 01:00:23,840
Speaker 1: And then to be honest, though, like the greatest evil

1184
01:00:23,880 --> 01:00:25,680
Speaker 1: done as a result of the maximum gun is I

1185
01:00:25,680 --> 01:00:27,480
Speaker 1: think what we talked about in the middle of the episode,

1186
01:00:27,560 --> 01:00:31,520
Speaker 1: the hiding it from the populaces of the nations, using

1187
01:00:31,520 --> 01:00:34,200
Speaker 1: it until it couldn't be hidden anymore. That's and that's

1188
01:00:34,200 --> 01:00:38,400
Speaker 1: not on maxim. That's just that that there's a lot

1189
01:00:38,440 --> 01:00:40,320
Speaker 1: of blame to go around there, and it's it's a

1190
01:00:40,360 --> 01:00:42,840
Speaker 1: really fascinating thing to think about. And that's the thing

1191
01:00:42,880 --> 01:00:44,760
Speaker 1: that didn't have to happen, right, someone was going to

1192
01:00:44,800 --> 01:00:48,640
Speaker 1: make a machine gun. It wasn't inevitable that the machine

1193
01:00:48,680 --> 01:00:51,120
Speaker 1: gun would be hidden from the people paying for it

1194
01:00:51,160 --> 01:00:54,240
Speaker 1: to be used on other folks. That wasn't inevitable. It

1195
01:00:54,240 --> 01:00:58,080
Speaker 1: makes you wonder what we're not aware of right now? Yeah, well, yeah,

1196
01:00:58,120 --> 01:01:01,160
Speaker 1: we can talk about a number of different weapons systems, yeah,

1197
01:01:01,400 --> 01:01:07,000
Speaker 1: or other things for that matter, right yeah, But yeah,

1198
01:01:07,320 --> 01:01:10,920
Speaker 1: that's the story of here in Maxim Carl, that's that's

1199
01:01:10,960 --> 01:01:13,320
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. I mean, obviously I'm very familiar with the

1200
01:01:13,320 --> 01:01:15,040
Speaker 1: weapon and what it was, what it was used for

1201
01:01:15,120 --> 01:01:16,920
Speaker 1: World War One. I was not as familiar with it's

1202
01:01:17,000 --> 01:01:20,480
Speaker 1: used in the colonial efforts, which is particularly fascinating. Like

1203
01:01:20,520 --> 01:01:24,120
Speaker 1: I said earlier, the what's what's masterful propaganda is less

1204
01:01:24,160 --> 01:01:26,000
Speaker 1: about what people talk about, but what they leave out

1205
01:01:26,000 --> 01:01:28,240
Speaker 1: of the narrative, and that in this instance painted a

1206
01:01:28,320 --> 01:01:31,320
Speaker 1: very dismal picture. Like you said, there's no honor in

1207
01:01:31,560 --> 01:01:33,600
Speaker 1: going to be a soldier for the British Empire and

1208
01:01:33,600 --> 01:01:37,920
Speaker 1: then pushing a button and slaughtering people defenselessly. There's no

1209
01:01:38,000 --> 01:01:40,720
Speaker 1: honor and that even that's not sporting, as they would say, right,

1210
01:01:41,240 --> 01:01:43,920
Speaker 1: um and uh. But at the same time, they definitely

1211
01:01:43,960 --> 01:01:46,680
Speaker 1: wanted people to feel as though that the that honor

1212
01:01:46,800 --> 01:01:48,560
Speaker 1: was to be in that in that empire, and to

1213
01:01:49,040 --> 01:01:51,520
Speaker 1: further the empire's goals, the amount of people murdered in

1214
01:01:51,560 --> 01:01:54,840
Speaker 1: the process totally irrelevant. Yeah, And it is this thing

1215
01:01:54,880 --> 01:02:00,760
Speaker 1: where war becomes very unsporting. Um. And that's that's a

1216
01:02:00,800 --> 01:02:03,440
Speaker 1: big part of like this, the first year, particularly of

1217
01:02:03,480 --> 01:02:06,480
Speaker 1: World War One, is all of these these gallants French

1218
01:02:06,600 --> 01:02:10,640
Speaker 1: soldiers and their colorful pants, and these legions of German

1219
01:02:10,800 --> 01:02:13,840
Speaker 1: sixteen year old boys that the slaughter of the Hitler's

1220
01:02:13,840 --> 01:02:16,640
Speaker 1: first big battle, if I'm not mistaken, Um, all of

1221
01:02:16,680 --> 01:02:21,320
Speaker 1: these young men who learned very quickly that there's nothing

1222
01:02:21,360 --> 01:02:24,280
Speaker 1: sporting about war any longer, if indeed there ever was

1223
01:02:24,640 --> 01:02:26,640
Speaker 1: an interesting read in that regard, if you ever read

1224
01:02:26,800 --> 01:02:30,280
Speaker 1: Manfred von rich Toff and the Red Baron's autobiography, Um,

1225
01:02:30,320 --> 01:02:32,720
Speaker 1: he talks about being in the first cavalry charges of

1226
01:02:32,760 --> 01:02:35,560
Speaker 1: the war and very quickly being someone of Prussian descent

1227
01:02:35,680 --> 01:02:38,479
Speaker 1: on the ability to do something different. He decides, Wow,

1228
01:02:38,560 --> 01:02:41,000
Speaker 1: this isn't what I thought it was gonna be. I'm

1229
01:02:41,000 --> 01:02:44,280
Speaker 1: gonna go join the air service, right, but it's a

1230
01:02:44,280 --> 01:02:47,000
Speaker 1: really interesting um. The first couple of chapters of his

1231
01:02:47,040 --> 01:02:49,600
Speaker 1: autobiography or very much about this is what I thought

1232
01:02:49,640 --> 01:02:50,880
Speaker 1: I was going to see and this is what I

1233
01:02:50,920 --> 01:02:53,840
Speaker 1: actually saw. Yeah, And it's it's a lot of people

1234
01:02:53,840 --> 01:02:56,720
Speaker 1: were shocked, I think when they ran into the first fuselid,

1235
01:02:56,920 --> 01:03:01,120
Speaker 1: a fully automatic fire. It's it's remarkable. And in terms

1236
01:03:01,120 --> 01:03:03,680
Speaker 1: of like how recent a lot of this was, I

1237
01:03:04,000 --> 01:03:06,840
Speaker 1: interviewed a man once who had he was fourteen when

1238
01:03:06,880 --> 01:03:08,640
Speaker 1: World War ended, and in the Hitler Youth. He was

1239
01:03:08,680 --> 01:03:12,840
Speaker 1: a German Man. His grandfather was a Prussian cavalryman who

1240
01:03:12,920 --> 01:03:15,840
Speaker 1: had fought in the War of eighteen seventy and and

1241
01:03:16,040 --> 01:03:18,920
Speaker 1: charged men on horseback with a sword. And I like,

1242
01:03:19,000 --> 01:03:22,160
Speaker 1: I shook hands with this man who had shaken hands

1243
01:03:22,160 --> 01:03:24,520
Speaker 1: with a man who fought on horseback with a saber

1244
01:03:24,880 --> 01:03:27,280
Speaker 1: like that. It's it's not that far ago. It's not

1245
01:03:27,320 --> 01:03:30,920
Speaker 1: that long ago that like that was war, um. And

1246
01:03:30,920 --> 01:03:32,960
Speaker 1: it was Maxim's gun that had a major role in

1247
01:03:33,000 --> 01:03:37,160
Speaker 1: why that seems like the fucking medieval days now? Yeah,

1248
01:03:37,200 --> 01:03:39,000
Speaker 1: that in the aircraft, right, those are the two that

1249
01:03:39,040 --> 01:03:41,360
Speaker 1: to me right off the bat changed everything so much

1250
01:03:41,400 --> 01:03:45,840
Speaker 1: that the world was completely unrecognizable within two years. Yeah, yeah,

1251
01:03:45,880 --> 01:03:49,760
Speaker 1: it's it's really it's something else. Um, Well, Carl, we've

1252
01:03:49,800 --> 01:03:52,720
Speaker 1: got more to talk about another another guy who made

1253
01:03:53,200 --> 01:03:55,200
Speaker 1: a gun and also a guy who we don't have

1254
01:03:55,240 --> 01:03:56,960
Speaker 1: to do the whole Well, someone would have made it thing,

1255
01:03:57,000 --> 01:03:59,520
Speaker 1: because absolutely no other fucking person would have made the

1256
01:03:59,600 --> 01:04:03,600
Speaker 1: kind of happens this dude was obsessed with making. He's

1257
01:04:03,600 --> 01:04:06,400
Speaker 1: a beautiful maniac. We will be talking about him in

1258
01:04:06,480 --> 01:04:08,480
Speaker 1: part two, but for right now, Carl, do you have

1259
01:04:08,480 --> 01:04:11,480
Speaker 1: any playables to plug? Uh? I mean, just my normal

1260
01:04:11,520 --> 01:04:14,000
Speaker 1: thing I run in Range TV. You can find my content,

1261
01:04:14,080 --> 01:04:16,200
Speaker 1: you can find all my different distribution points at enrange

1262
01:04:16,240 --> 01:04:19,520
Speaker 1: dot tv. Um. I'm sometimes referred to as an alternative

1263
01:04:19,600 --> 01:04:23,080
Speaker 1: voice in the firearms content creator community in that I'm

1264
01:04:23,080 --> 01:04:25,600
Speaker 1: actually trying to be inclusive and believe that rights are

1265
01:04:25,640 --> 01:04:28,440
Speaker 1: for everyone, up for a specific category of people, and

1266
01:04:28,480 --> 01:04:31,200
Speaker 1: that makes you controversial in the firearms community. But if

1267
01:04:31,200 --> 01:04:33,480
Speaker 1: that's your bag, come check me out at Enrange dot tv.

1268
01:04:33,960 --> 01:04:38,400
Speaker 1: Definitely check Carl out at enranged TV. And um, you know,

1269
01:04:38,680 --> 01:04:41,720
Speaker 1: get yourself a gatling gun. There's nothing stopping you. I

1270
01:04:41,760 --> 01:04:43,600
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know I was feeling. I mean,

1271
01:04:43,600 --> 01:04:45,360
Speaker 1: if you're feeling a little colonial, you won't want to

1272
01:04:45,400 --> 01:04:48,440
Speaker 1: maxim right, Or if you're feeling like world domination, maybe

1273
01:04:48,440 --> 01:04:50,440
Speaker 1: some sort of tactical nuke. I mean, they'll probably available

1274
01:04:50,440 --> 01:04:53,760
Speaker 1: on the market now, right, I mean fingers crossed. That

1275
01:04:53,880 --> 01:04:56,080
Speaker 1: that would really make me feel a lot safer when

1276
01:04:56,080 --> 01:04:58,040
Speaker 1: I go out to fred Meyer to to do my

1277
01:04:58,080 --> 01:05:00,920
Speaker 1: grocery shopping. Well, I mean what I mean a minute,

1278
01:05:00,960 --> 01:05:02,600
Speaker 1: man or two, just a couple of minute minute, you know,

1279
01:05:03,000 --> 01:05:05,320
Speaker 1: like a dinger with them. What's more viable than a

1280
01:05:05,320 --> 01:05:07,920
Speaker 1: personal's false defense item except like a little, tiny tactical

1281
01:05:08,000 --> 01:05:10,320
Speaker 1: nuke on your belt. Look, if everybody had a tiny

1282
01:05:10,360 --> 01:05:13,520
Speaker 1: tactical nuke, we would no longer have fist fights. Hey,

1283
01:05:13,560 --> 01:05:15,040
Speaker 1: the only thing that stops the bad guy with a

1284
01:05:15,120 --> 01:05:16,640
Speaker 1: nuke is a good guy with a new That's right,

1285
01:05:16,760 --> 01:05:20,400
Speaker 1: That's right. Uh? That well, that was the story of

1286
01:05:20,440 --> 01:05:25,920
Speaker 1: the cold for it was all right. Well that's all

1287
01:05:25,960 --> 01:05:30,680
Speaker 1: for Part one. Part two Electric Boogaloo coming up.