The Inventor of the Machine Gun Went Deaf—So His Son Invented the Silencer
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 9 September 2025
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, Hiram Percy Maxim grew up in the shadow of firepower. His father invented the machine gun, a weapon that changed modern warfare. But when that same weapon left his father deaf, Hiram took a different path. In 1902, he invented the first commercial gun silencer and later applied the same technology to early automobile engines. His work shaped not only the future of firearms but also the way engines and mechanical noise evolved across the 20th century. A pioneer of American invention, Maxim's legacy includes firearms suppressors, automotive mufflers, and a quieter world. Our regular contributor, Ashley Hlebinsky, shares the story.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:04.0 | What I told people, I was making a podcast about Benghazi. |
| 0:08.5 | Nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why? |
| 0:15.1 | Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies. |
| 0:18.5 | From prologue projects and Pushkin Industries, this is Fiasco, Benghazi. |
| 0:23.6 | What difference at this point does it make? |
| 0:26.6 | Listen to Fiasco, Benghazi, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:33.6 | You know, And we continue with our American stories, and we love to tell stories about how things came to be that we now have come to know. |
| 0:53.0 | One of them we recently told on the elevator break |
| 0:55.7 | and how it created elevators everywhere |
| 0:58.5 | in big cities around the world. |
| 1:01.6 | This one is the story of how the silencer came to be. |
| 1:05.8 | Telling the story is Ashley Lubinsky. |
| 1:08.3 | She's the former co-host of the Discovery Channel's Master of Arms. |
| 1:12.8 | Take it away, Ashley. |
| 1:15.8 | The name Maxim is most often associated with the development of the machine gun. |
| 1:21.6 | Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim is credited with an early successful machine gun. |
| 1:26.4 | And his brother Hudson was also known for something that was incredibly loud, |
| 1:30.2 | which was his development of explosives and propellant. |
| 1:33.8 | And while the inventions of the family were often known for their noise, |
| 1:38.2 | the next generation of the Maxim family retreated from that path to focus more on silence. |
| 1:53.0 | Hiram Percy Maxim, who was the son of Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim, was born in Brooklyn, New York on September 2nd, 1869. He was basically a Renaissance man throughout his life, and he would revolutionize multiple industries, |
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