Maschinengewehr MG 08

In the Great War the standard Germany Army machine gun (shown here mounted on its sled) was a direct copy of the Maxim machine gun invented in the1880's by American Hiram Maxim.

In 1881 Maxim had visited the Paris Electrical Exhibition and there met a man who told him: "If you want to make a lot of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each other's throats with greater facility."

Maxim moved to London and over the next few years worked on producing an effective machine-gun. Maxim's gun used the energy of each bullet's recoil to eject the spent cartridge and insert the next. The Maxim Gun would fire continuously until the entire belt of bullets was used up, cooling the gun's barrel with circulating water. In 1885 he demonstrated the world's first automatic portable machine-gun to the British Army. Trials showed that the machine-gun could fire 500 rounds per minute and therefore had the firepower of about 100 rifles.

The German copy, the Maschinengewehr MG 08, fired a 7.65 mm shell from a 250 round fabric belt. Its effective range was 2,200 yards and extreme range, 4,000.