Valve & Vintage
Tony Smith G4FAI reflects on the life of Hiram Percy Maxim.
In his time, Hiram Percy Maxim W1AW (1869 -1936) was one of the most famous radio amateurs in the world; and his call can still be heard on the air from the Hiram Percy Maxim Memorial Station, located at ARRL HQ, Newington, Connecticut, USA. The station is known internationally for its Morse practice sessions and news broadcasts. Schedules and information about it can be found on: www.arrl.org/w1aw
ManyTalents
Although his contribution to amateur radio was massive, Maxim was a man of many other talents. He grew up in the world of ordnance. His father, Hiram Stevens Maxim, who became a British citizen and was knighted by Queen Victoria, invented the Maxim machinegun.
His uncle, Hudson Maxim, invented the explosive Maximite and other ordnance devices. Hiram Percy himself was also a distinguished inventor, becoming famous in the field of armaments long before he became a champion of amateur radio.
He was also an automobile pioneer. His book Horseless Carriage Days is a fascinating account of his involvement in the industry and how the early cars were constructed and developed. He built an early petrol-powered tricycle; he designed the Columbia electric car and superintended the development of a complete range of road vehicles before the turn of the century. A Columbia car used by Queen
Alexandra in the grounds of Sandringham House can be seen in the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu.
The Silencer
In 1902, while working on the problem of muffling motor exhausts, Maxim invented the ‘Maxim Silencer’, a device that virtually eliminated the sound of gunfire from sealed breech rifles.
Describing it later, he wrote: “The silencer was developed to meet my personal desire to enjoy target practice without creating a disturbance... It occurred to me one day that there was no need for the noise. Why not do away with it and shoot quietly?”
He formed his own company in 1908 to produce various versions of his invention, which caused a sensation. With the possibility of criminals using the silencers, press and public reaction judged them to be a menace to public safety and many states stopped their sale. Some countries banned their importation, and production finally ceased in 1930.
Maxim adapted the silencer to reduce noise in various industrial and marine applications, and in US fleet submarines. Another invention, the Maxim window silencer, ventilated rooms while keeping out noise; and his company was the first to develop a successful device to convert seawater to fresh water.
An enthusiastic film maker, he was organiser, and president, of the Amateur Cinema League. He was a pioneer in aviation, particularly gliding, and in 1910, with his son, he had an active amateur radio station with the callsign SNY.
He wrote a weekly ‘science for the layman’ feature for a newspaper syndicate, the scenario for a Pearl White film, and several books. He wrote and lectured about astronomy and was a keen yachtsman.
Co-founder of ARRL
In 1914, when unable to send a message direct to another station, he relayed it through another amateur halfway between the two stations. From this experience, he conceived the idea of a national organisation of amateur relay stations, handling third-party messages across America as a public service.
That year, with Clarence Tuska, its first secretary, he founded the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), becoming its first president. The following year, they started the League’s famous magazine, QST, jointly funding its first issue.
When America entered the first world war, in 1917, there were over 6000 amateurs in the country and, by then, the ARRL was their national representative body.
International Amateur Radio Union
The war curtailed all amateur activities, and the League closed down. After the war the US government was reluctant to allow amateur radio to start again. Maxim called together the old board of directors of ARRL, who raised funds to re-launch the League which, under his leadership, pressurised the government until amateur radio took to the air again on 1 October 1919.
In 1924, he came to Europe on behalf of ARRL, who believed there was a need for a body to represent the interests of radio amateurs at international conferences, and to encourage worldwide fraternisation. He met representatives of various organisations in France, who then invited all known national amateur radio societies to meet in Paris in March 1924.
As a direct result of this meeting, the
Photo 1: Hiram Percy Maxim. Photo 2: W1AW Memorial station. Photo 3: Columbia electric car designed by Maxim. (The Horseless Age,1903) Photo 4: Advertisement for Maxim Silencer. Photo 5: Horseless Carriage Days. An interesting book by Maxim. Photo 6: Logo of the International Amateur Radio Union. Photo 7: Maxim and Tuska jointly funded the first issue of QST.
International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) was formed. At its first Congress the following year, the IARU recommended that Esperanto be adopted as the standard international language for radiotelephony and for use at future Congresses. However, the Scandinavian representatives opposed this proposal, claiming that English was a much easier language to learn.
The Congress elected Maxim as its International President. The headquarters of IARU were located at West Hartford, HQ of ARRL, and he was now deeply involved in international, as well as national, amateur radio affairs.
Allocation of InternationalWavebands
In 1927, an International Radio Telegraphic Conference was held in Washington DC, but the official British delegation had no instructions to consider the interests of radio amateurs in their negotiations.
Maxim and Kenneth Warner, secretary of both the ARRL and the IARU, attended the conference and, by arrangement with the Radio Society of Great Britain, represented the interests of British amateurs.
They pressed hard for the allocation of wavebands on a worldwide basis, and their efforts resulted in the adoption of the harmonically related frequencies for the main amateur bands as we know them today.
The IARU Today
Over the years since its foundation by Maxim and Warner, the IARU has become a federation of 160 national amateur radio organisations, promoting the interests of the hobby worldwide, while seeking to protect and enhance its spectrum privileges.
It is recognised by the United Nations as a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) due to its consultative status with other United Nations bodies, including the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Its founders would have been proud of what it has become.
‘The Old Man’
Apart from his involvement in the world of international negotiations and conferences, Maxim found time to get down to basics too. For many years he wrote a column in QST under the pseudonym The Old Man, with his identity only being revealed after his death.
The magazine’s editor wrote of him: “With unerring aim and caustic wit he turns up to view the things that are ‘rotten’ in amateur radio, and his lessons go home because he entertains us at the same time.”
It was a time when semi-automatic (bug) keys were widely used on the bands. The Old Man particularly disliked what he called “the speed maniacs” who he described as “Young Squirts”. He wrote “Why doesn’t some smart aleck (sic) start a sending school for Young Squirts? Teach them how to send. And why, for Pete’s sake, do they … make I and E sound like S?
“Extra dots on everything. Letters hatcheted (sic) clean in two, F becoming a clean IN, and so on. You simply can’t read the stuff ... Did they never hear that a dot was supposed to be one-third the length of a dash? Do they find nothing incongruous in sending alleged Morse at 30 so far as concerns the dashes, while the dots are at the rate of 65?
“Good ops have clean fists. They don’t hash everything up the way these modern Young Squirts do. They don’t send a TH so it can’t be told from a 6. They don’t rip a lot of hash off at 40 and then have to
repeat it four times before it becomes evident that the message is ‘Greetings by radio’… It’s just plain rotten and getting worse by the hour”.
He was commenting on a different, earlier world of amateur radio, but his remarks about high-speed sending could well have some relevance today!
Same Problems
In today’s world of CW operating, the beginners, the improvers, and those with only moderate skill, still using manual Morse in one form or another, have the same reading problems that their forebears had.
Signals from high-speed stations are still sent at a gallop, the faster they go, the more mistakes are made, letters are sent incorrectly, and words are run together, requiring frequent repeats.
Contests using high speed are one thing, where everyone taking part knows what to expect in a limited exchange, or a computer sends and reads it for them. But actual communication? That’s another thing altogether! It is supposed to be the convention that operators reduce speed to match that of the slowest station in a QSO but that doesn’t always happen. The Old Man would still have a few things to say if he was around today!
DailyTribute
As can be gathered, Maxim was a keen CW operator and his personal key, used when his call was 1AW, is now preserved in the Antique Wireless Association’s museum at East Bloomfield, NY.
He died in 1936, still president of ARRL and IARU, and was mourned by amateurs everywhere, who had gained so much from his work on their behalf.
His Memorial Station can be heard on the air for approximately eight hours a day, five days a week, with code practice, code and teleprinter bulletins. Voice bulletins are also transmitted, at 9:45 PM eastern time with SSB on HF, 6m, and 2m FM. The story of the station and a description of its facilities can be found at: