The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, June 2, 1895, Page 17

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 189 17 « Bia Giuns FLyiNna A TALK WITH MAXIM, THE INVENTOR. LONDON, Exc., May 5, 1895.—I dined with Mr. Maxim a few days ago at his house at Baldwyns Park, Bexley, and could not help contrasting as a significent feature of the affairs of nations, the palace of the | gunmaker of to-day and his personal im- portance with the grimy quarters and the | humbleness of his predecessor of a century | ago. Mr. Maxim isa private business man not officially connected with any Govern- ment, yet he knows more about what is going on in the war departments of the nations of the world than almost any other man. Were henot & good manand true how valuable the information he might be prevailed upon to impart would | be to any statesman in Europe. Mr. Maxim was born in Maine. His age I do not know, but judge him to be | 60. His silver hair is brushed straight up | and back and corresponds in color with his moustache and beard. He is above me- dium height and has a frame of enormous | strength. His eyes and complexion are beautifully cle: denoting mental and physical energ: He never uses tobacco and indulges only in a little wine at din- ner. Mr. Maxim possesses in a high degree lucidity and directness of speech, so char- acteristic of able inventors, and can with & few sentences convey the idea of a ma- chine or process with marvelous clearness, which is wonderfully refreshing in this age of pedantic affectation and of obscure and complex phraseology. 5 He told me, incidentally, that he had aimed aboveall tk g his sojourn in England to avoid acquiring the English accent, and had flattered himself that he had succeeded until a couple of years ago | when he and M faxiin, also a native of New England ited his old home. The people there said: “We like them and think they are nice peopie, but isn’t it a pity | they have such a bad brogue.” Then he gave up in despair. After dinner in the course of a long, free interesting talk Mr, Maxim said: “I would not advise any young man to take invention up asa profession. Iwas not born an inventor. Early in life I be- came a mechanical draughtsman, and as I was very skillful at drawing I had oppor- tunities of working on a good many differ- ent kindsof machines. First I commenced | to make improvements in them and then | to make new machines and finally to take out patents on new machines. Forty or | fifty years ago I think the majority of in- | ventions came from illiterate workmen. A | man would be working on a machine and | would discover some way to improve itand | then take out a patent, but the day is past | when we may expect much from the un- scientific. I think you will agree with me that all the late patents of merit have ema- nated {from highly trained and scientific | engineers. 5 | “What is the actual length of life of the biggest guns, and what is their cost?” “The latest high-power guns made by | Canet at the Forges et Chantiers de la | Mediterranee can only be fired sixty rounds. The latest guns in the English | service also can only be fired sixty rounds. The cost of a thirteen-inch gun is about §50,000.” that the prevailing caliber?” “Yn Englind they make them thirteen inch. The States make them twelve and thirteen inch. The English used to have seventeen-inch guns, but they do not any more.” “What is the cost of 2 single charge for one of those big guns on board ship?” *“About $600.” nd the wear and tear is what?”’ fa gun costs $50,000 and should fire ty rounds, that is $833 a shot, the total would then be $1433 a shot.” J “Then war is becoming very expensive?’’ “That is it. War becomes more and more expensive every day. The cheapest thing that a man can have is a club, the most ex?ensive thing is a Maxim gun. The smallest size costs $15 a2 minute to fire, that is the cheapest one. The 1%4-inch inch gun costs $400 a minute to fire.”” “ghat is at its maximum speed ?”’ Py “From that down to nothing?” “According to what rate you fire at.” ““‘How many shots can you fire from one of these guns?” " “With the 134-inch gun we can fire 400 rounds a minute.” “What will be the result of the race be- tween the armor-plate maker and the gun- makers?”’ “The gunmaker will always be ahead.” ‘“Will they keep on increasing the size of ships in order to_float the great armor necessary to render them proof against pro%ecnles?” ““They could not do that very well. A man- of-war is always a compromise. If you have very thick armor you cannot have high speed. Moreover when a gun is larger than a 12-inch bore the mountings and everything about it become enor- mously heavy. The comparative strength of the steel as relates to the volume also becomes less in large guns, so I think that instead of their being made larger than now the tendency will be to make them smaller. It is quitetrue that armor-plate might be piled upon a very large shi thick enough to resist the fire from 12-inc| uns, but a ship so protected would be too iuvy and cumbersome to be of much use; it would be more like a slow moving fort than a ship. I think that the next ships will depend upon great rapidity of fire rather than upon thick armor-plate.” “Increase the power of attack rather than that of defense?” “¥es.” . % “What do you think, comparatively, of the naval ordnance of Enghnd and the United States and France?” E “There is not a very great difference. The new guns made in the United States are very effective; those made in England are almost _identical with them. Some of the recent French guns might give higher | that the gun would continue to fire even if AND MACHINES. velocities, but as against that they are shorter lived.” “In a single action would not the French guns be more effective ?”’ : “The velocities are only slightly higher.” “How about the Russians?"’ i “The Russians are rather conservative in guns; they prefer not to have such enormously high velocities and to have the uns last a little longer, and the same may e said of Krupp.” ¢ “How about the armor plate of ships of | different nations?”’ : 1 “All the recent armor plate is prac-| tically the same; it is Harveyized nickel steel.” “Then it becomes a question of equation of officers and men?” | “Yes; it is very evident that the Anglo- | Saxon race, for instance, would manage a | huge fighting machine, such as a ship which has at least sixty steam engines on board. with greater facility than Spaniards or Turks would be able to.” “But how about Frenchmen?"” their great success in that continent that they are so sought after at the present time. A few brave men conquered a terri- tory in Africa, about half the size of France, in a short time simply because they had very much better arms than their enemies. Their enemies, however, had breech-loading rifles.” . “Do you refer to Lobengula?” “Yes, he had 15,000 rifles, but did not have any Maxim guns. Several African chiefs have tried to get the Maxim guns and we have also been approached by eople that want to take them out to fadagascar. But we won’t sell them to Madagascar. The French are a great nation and very good customers of ours and we are not going to sell any guns if we can help it to shoot Frenchmen “with.” “Have the Cubans ever come to you for guns or have any Central or ~ South American people?” “I suppose as a rule we sell four or five hundred thousand dollars’ worth of various kinds of guns a year in South America, | sometimes more and sometimes less.” “What,” I asked, “‘would be the defense | against flying machines, sup;)osing they were adopted for war purposes? “Other flying machines,”” said Mr. Maxim, “I saw in a newspaper that some one was praying that I might never suc- ceed in making a flying machine, that a flving machine would abolish the silver streak (British Channel), when English- men would have to take their chances with the rest of the Europeans. They therefore hoped that I should never succeed. IfI had replied to this I should have said that the French and Germans were attempting “I am not prepared to say. Perhaps the to make flying machines, that the defense o A ”Wfl"mflq 45 T SOME OF THE ,{// MAXIM GUNS. highly trained Anglo-Saxon would not be | | s0'apt to make blunders in action as Rus- | sians, Austrians or Italians, but the | French and Germans might prove them- | selves to be quite as good as the Anglo- Saxons. In a modern man-oi-war, with | guns and machinery worked by steam, the | men that are the best stokers, that under- | stand machinery best and those who are the least liable to become excited in action will be the ones who will win the fight, everything else being equal. It is not a q}lllestion of bravery, nor one of boardinga | ship with cutlasses in their hands. 1t is| simply a question now of manipulating machinery. The machinery does the | fighting,” | “How do these rapid-firing guns apply | ¢ on land? They might, it seems, place | lines of automatic guns in position and let | them do the fighting in case both sides are armed with them ?"” “I can tell you a storyabout that. When | the first automatic gun was_made and it became known that it would really load and fire itself the German Government asked me to make one which couid be regulated to fire all the way from 1 to 600 shots a minute. The idea was that such a gun could be mounted in a_certain place, charged with say 2060 or 3000 rounds and set. to fire 100 shots a minute, for instance, and the men were killed or ran away. This it | was proposed o use in fortification or to fire on earthworks at night, the gun being | aimed in the daytime and arranged to con- | tinue firing all night if necessary. I sent one of these guns to Germany. It was| loaded with a belt of 333 cartridges, aimed at_the target and the trigger pulled, it being regulated to fire at its highest speed. The cartridges all went off in about half a minute. Then a detachment examined the target and counted the hits. As they were descending from the target, and removing the ladders the officer in charge of the gun placed an- other belt in position, when the gun in- stantly commenced to fire, and the men dropped their ladders and scattered in all directions. The whole belt went through the gun before any one could think what was necessary to be done to stop it. An- other gun was ordered also having a regu- lator and so arranged that when the last shot was fired the trigger became de- tached. But there was more machinery in the regulator than in all the rest of the | gun, and only two were made. At pres- | ent the guns have ne regulators.” | “If men go on improving upon and de- | veloping these engines of destruction aud as they by so doing render the possibiiities of war between nations more and nore remote what will become of the avocation of the gunmaker?”’ l “I think that a few of the leading na- tions of the earth have become so highly | civilized that there is very littie chance of their making war upon one another. For instance, the United States, England and Germany will probably never go to war with each other. I do not think that | any one of these nations would go to war either for the sake of going to war or for glory. I am of the opinion also that such nations as France, Austria, Italy and Sga'm will soon follow suit, but we should not reckon from that war is to cease. Other nations have yet to pass through the same stage of civilization that we are just emerging from, and they must of necessity fight it out. Moreover, we have not yet finished; because we no sooner reach a point where great nations will not be prone to fight each other than international disorders arise.” Y . “Do you think that the improvements in ordnance really contribute materially to lessen the Emspect of war?” ““Well, yes but you must still remember that the most deadly instrument as far as actual war is concerned was the Roman short two-edged sword. It was then neces- sary for the armies to come very close together in order to injure each other atall. To be defeated meant to be vanquished. But with modern warfare, where we are able to kill 2 man three miles away the; simply keep furtherapart, that's all there is aboutit. Butif by any chance they should get very near each other there would be great slaughter. ~There has been no great war since the invention of the Maxim un. Suppose now that the Frenchmen ad had Maxim guns when their country ‘was being invaded by Germany. We hear that occasionally some brave old French- man would secrete himself in a clump of bushes and kill twenty Germans before he himself could be killed. Suppose they had had Maxim guns and smogelen wder. The gun could have been concealed in a ditch, a house, behind a hedge or boulder or almost anywhere, and one man would have been able to pourout such a deadly fire that he could have completely anni- hilated a battery of artillery or asquadron of cavalry before his position would have been found out. That is, there would be no smoke, they would not be able to see him, and no man has X“ been able to take sight at a sound. Thus a man with a Maxim gun would be able to kill a great number say at 600 or 800 yards range without his position being mo? than sus- pected by the enemy, whereas if the firing was at 1200 or 1500 yards they would not even hear the gun.” “The English have used these guns in Africa, have they not?” “Quite extensively. In factit is due to against flying machines wonld only be other flying machines, and that I, livine in England and veing identified with the English people, would naturally be mak- ing mine not to enable them to come here, but to keep them from coming here. Therefore, one ought to pray in the other direction.” *“You will never be able to build a flying machine big enough to take a 13-inch gun.” “Flying machines will' be used very much as torpedo-boats when they come. They are sure to come in time, hecause is possible to make them, and wt possible to make is sure to com c if there is a great demand for it. instance if the United States should go to war with some great nation and have a long war there would certainly be some- body to put money into flyinz machines and enough engineers would take hold of espe- . For | Without fiying machines it is the poor soldier that has to go forward and take the brunt of the battle. It is the soldier that has to become a living target. The mem- bers of Parliament, the King or the Em- eror, or whoever it is, keep at a distance, ut when flying machines become com- mon instead of making war upon the sol- diers the first man to be attacked will be the King or Emperor, the first building knocked down the royal paiace, the second one the House of Parliament.”” i “They would be great machines for in- vasion.” No hostile man-of-war can get near the United States now, buta flying machine would go right in. “There would be no defense against them but flying machines. Flying ma- chines could not strike at so great a dls- tance as a man-of-war. A man-of-war can sail 10,000 miles and still fire a shot, but it will be a long time before flying machines can go over 1000 miles. If they should be- come a reality as instruments of war, it would then be necessary for the United Stetes to take possession of the whole con- tinent and alP the islands if it did not want any one to make war upon it. It might be possible to make war on the United States from Canada with flying machines, but not from Great Britain or Ireland.” g “How long do you think it will be,” I asked, *‘before you havea flying machine ready for exhibition?”’ +‘Oh, I don’t know,” answered the in- ventor; ‘it will depend upon my luck and how much money I make and have to spend and how much time I can devote to it. As a rule, when I am working the hardest I am making most money, and have less time to spend. When I am earn- ing money I bhave no_time, and when I have plenty of time I am earning no money."” “Do you care to say how much money you have already spent on flying ma- chines?”’ “Oh, I think $80,000 and what spare time I had in four or five years.” “Mr. Maxim, what seems to be the prin- cipal cause of failure in the attempt to build flying machines throughout the world ?” ““Well, the great trouble has been that the matter has not been seriously taken up by men that had money and experience and were engineers. Some men might have very good ideas and live in a back attic and have no money to spend. An- other man might have some money to spend and spend it in the wrong direction, but as a whole everything relating to fiy- ing machines has been in the hands of mountebanksand chariatansuntil recently. Chey have attempted to navigatethe air by some kind of flapping wings, imitating those of a bird, but it would be just as ab- surd to attempt to make a flying machine with flapping wi t wonld be to make a Jocomotive that would walk on legs on the eround like a horse.” “How about a flying machine in a severe tempest.”” % 7ol 4 “Well. when one is a sufficient distance awayv from the surface of the earth the air is all moving in the same direction. If the wind were blowing, we will say forty miles an hour, aud the machine was 1000 feet from the earth and traveling against the wind, it would be just the same asit would | be if the machine was traveling in a calm and the earth was traveling the same direction as the machine was at the same speed. When the machine is once clear of the earth it makes no difference about the air blowing as far as the machine itself isconcerned any morethan it would h. an upon a fly buzzing around the inside of ge going sixty milesan hour. s to the car, not ¥ machine in a as relates to tne surround- lates to the earth.” high into the air do you think it or a machine to mount?” would not mount very keep mnear the earth, where the air is dense, about 1000 feet high, except when they want to go higher for the purpose of getting into the fog so as not to be 1, or in the night.” | ““What velocity do vou think they could | be made to travel at?” high.” They woul the matter and make it a big success at| “Well, certainly about forty milesan AN AIRSHIP DESTROYING AN OCEAN FLEET. once, instead of its development depend- | hour. I think they should travel from 60 ing upon one man.” “Would not ships need to be equipped with specially made guns to train upon flying machines?” ‘A ship, naturally, has to protect some- thing besides itself. It would be no use to have British ships in the channel with the sole object of protecting themselves. The ships are in the channel to keep a hostile army from landing in England. If they had flying machines they could come over in spite of the ships and drop their bombs adywhere they liked. Suppose now that some rich nation should take hold of fly- ing machines and develop them. Say the French should be possessed of flying machines. People in other countries might say they did not think they would do much damage. Suppose now the English and the French had ‘a dispute about some- thing and the question of lim'mg to war was being discussed in the House of Par- liament; say at about 8 o’clock a vote might be taken declaring war ogainst France. The French by some system of telegraphic codes would know at once that war had been declared, and it might be possible if they had a lot of flying ma- chines at Boulogne, in two_hours after the declaration of war and while the members were still discussing the question, to have the whole House of Parliament knocked down oyer their heads by nitro- glycerine dropped from the 'sky and the next morning they might find Portsmouth and Woolwich an a good many brid, and gas works com- pletely destroy: After that nations would be chary about declaring war. to 100 miles an hour for the best results. About 60 miles an hour would be a very fair speed.” “‘Well, as they cannot travel over 1000 miles they could not be used for trans- Atlantic purposes.” “No, I do not think so.” HEeNRY IrviNe DopgE. Conyrigh, 1896, br & & MeClure imited. A PREMATURE OBITUARY. C. S. Coolidge of Santa Cruz Was Not on the Colima. Among those who were reported as hav- ing gone down on the Colima was C, S. Coolidge, a Santa Cruz printer. Mr. Cool- idge was in this city yesterday and wired the following dispatch to the Santa Cruz Sentinel: To Sentinel, Santa Cruz: Don’t write my obituary until after the carnival. Will be there. You had better write Zach’s first. C. 8. CooLipgE. The “Zach’ mentioned in the facetious dispatch is a printer whom Mr. Coolid blames for having told the world that he (Coolidge) dead. —————— The Grocers’ Picnic. The Retail Grocers’ Protective Union will hold & picnic on Wednesday next, June 5, at Schuetzen Club Park. They will close their stores on that day. Several of the wholesale houses have agreed to close their places of business, and a number of representati f“'-?n'imfl"i"m'mm'y‘" heis sfl,fi ,.i;: 10} 81 ey parti o augurl of grocers: day in California, IpyLs or THE JFIELD. BY A NATURALIST AT LARGE. SMALL GARDENERS. Lying here in the tall grass and nodding weeds I have been tor the last half-hour watching an innumerable company of gardeners preparing next year's crop. How busy they are! Once in a while one of them brushes against me, the only idler in sight, and goes off growling to himself, doubtless wondering what I am doing here intruding upon the society of busy people. Once one of them hovered about my head 80 persistently for a moment or two that I began to fear it might in the whole be wise for me to retire. She finally went off, how- ever, but before she could resume her labors a terrible thing happened. Down | from a great tree swooped one of her dead- liest foes, and, seizing my small gardener, bore her off in triumph to where, doubt- less, a hungry brood of nestlings were clamoring for just such a tidbit. For my wee gardener was neither more THE BEE HELPS THE LUPIN. NEW TO-DAY. effected. In time the sturdier, more vigorous cross-fertilized plants overran the weaker self-fertilized ones and spread over the earth. But the insects did not always find the flowers. Everything was of a uniform green color. It wasa wilderness of green, | No flowers brightened the forests with their attractive colors. No bright-hued birds flitted about among the trees. Only green stalks, green leaves, green herbage greeted the eyes of the seeking insects. But the flowers began to modify. Nature was working for the perpetuation of kind, and the work of our small gardeners began to be apparent. Around each cluster of stamens and pistils was an outer calyx of green petals and an inner whorl of green etals, the corolla. The first differings in Kue of the petals was probably adventi- tious—that is, out of the ordinary. They served, however, to attract the insects to the plants so distinguished, and these were more frequently fertilized than those that kept to the conservative line of green col- oring. Thus these adventitiously colored flowers were reproduced and the tendency LACES! LACES! LACES! Are what we are going to talk about THIS WEEK And we won’t have to say much, but just ask you to call and in- spect the greatest values in Laces we have ever offered. Thousands of New Patterns POINT VENICE LACES, NORMANDIE LACES, POINT DE PARIS LACES, BLACK SILK LACES, CHIFFON LACES, ETC. All of which we are offering at marvelously Low Prices. You can verify this statement in a moment when you call at our Lace Counter "and see the great values that are be- ing shown. EXTRA SPECIALS! 48-INCH BLACK SILK BRU! NET, hand- somely embroldered, ring effects, in white, blue or yellow, regular price $2 75 4 yard, Redaced to $1.10 a Yard 48-INCH BLACK -GRENADINE, in yellow, lav- ender or white stripes, regular price $2 a yard, Reduced to 75¢ a Yard 6-INCH EMBROIDERED CHIFFON LACES, in vellow, pink, blue, brown, gray, cream and biack, regular price 50c & yard, Reduced to 25¢ a Yard IN OUR WAIST DEPARTMENT. P A T ST SRCALE AND SATE! N SHIRT WAISTS, in all colors, manufacturers’ samples, regular prices $1 to $2 each, This Week 50c Each : IN OUR TIE DEPARTMENT. s e cae fam i tinpns i dna) 85 dozen NECKTIES, latest patterns, in four-in- hand, bows and fancy tecks, regular price 50 and 75¢ each, This Week 3 for $1.00 SEE DISPLAY IN OUR SHOW WINDOWS. NEWMAN & LEVINSON 125, 127, 120 and 131 Kearny Street and 209 Sutter Street. nor less than a busy bee, gathering nectar | from flower to flower of the lupin, and in- | cidentally securing from every plant she | visited a surety of next year’s fruitage. I was sorry for the bee. These ever- | recurring tragedies of the air are always | pitizble, and when, a little later, the feathered hunter returned for another morsel I sat up, whereupon he fled on swift wings to other hunting-groynds. | | But there were many gardeners left. | They fluttered about in every direction. There were big red and black butterflies | and airy-looking yellow ones hovering over | the tall mints and wild honeysuckle. There were beetles flitting among the pop- | pies and nestling down among the clover and the pimpernel, and bees n great | numbers taking their fill from the purple cups of the soap plant. They were all | seeking to gratify their appetite for sugar, | but, incidentally, every. bug of them was doing as much for the flowers as the flow- ers were for them. I hinted last week at something of this | wonderful process by which most of our flowers are fertilized. I shall go more fuily into it to-day and leaye it to my readers if I have not spoken justly in call- | ing our insect friends small gardeners. %’ouder in the shade, among the tares’| and the watercress. a few scouring rushes | are growing. They belong to the primeval vegetation. They were giants 1n those days, the little rushes now scarcely a foot high. They represent the lowest order of vegetation and, like the ferns and mosses, produce no seed, but propagate themselves by means of spores. They are flowerless | plants. The pine tree yonder by the gate | is a still higher order. ~They are the very earliest_form of flowering plant, but their flower is the hard, brown, unlovely cone, fertilized by the wind and attracting only the squirrels and certain of the birds who through an age-long evolutionary process have developed crossed bills to serve them in extracting the pine nuts. Close athand, in the willow by the pool, we have a still more perfectly specialized order of vege- tation. The willow, too, is wind fertilized, although, too, certain of the birds assist in the process. The willow, however, de- pends almost wholly upon the wind for fertilization of its ~pretty hanging “pussies,” or ‘“‘catkins,”’ which are real) the flowers, the stamens and pistils which form the reproductive or- gans of the plant. A month ago the air all along the ravine was full of tfie floating white pollen-bearing fluffs of the willow. The wind bore them in every direction, for so hazardous are the chances of wind fertilization that nature, usually so parsimonious, is plunged into the most reckless extravagance to accomplish her ends. Some of the pollen was carried by the winds down across the city and out through the Golden Gate. Somefellamong the grasses and weeds, some was blown afar over the orchards and only a very infinitesimal portion of all produced ever floated down upon the willow trees and fulfiiled the end for which it was created. This waste of pollen, produced at a heavy expenditure by the plant, is so t that one 1s tempted to wonder where Dame Nature ever acquired her reputation for economy. You will find it in the season lying useless and wasted on the ground in pine forests. Those mysterious ‘‘yellow storms,” of which we hear from time to time, filling the air and covering the earth with fine powder, are produced by the pol- len of trees blowing before the siorm and precipitated uselessly to earth. In the multitude of this waste the trees get fertilized after a fashion and the species are preserved. But these are primitive methods. Indue course of time insects began to appear upon the scene. There was nothing for them in scouring rushes and ferns, rich in silicon, nor in the hard fruits of the conifers. But there were other ‘planu that produced pollen. The most of these | vitations, but will do it as cheaply | past our finding out. We may not size | to differentiation in. color was strength- ened. In the process of fruiting a minute uantity of honey was secreted in each ower, and this, foo, served to attract the insects. Every sort of creature is fond of | sugar, and ‘the insects came to associate the pale-colored flowers with the sweets | they loved. So the flowers that offered the most honey were oftenest visited. The vetals, at first pale colored and small, be- came larger and brighter in hue. Now see how nature works. She will | spread a feast for the insects and issue i; P ble. The bright petals are attractive; so bright they shall be—but their brightness | means death. The petals are in reality | degenerate leaves. The process of color: tion in them is a process of oxidation simi- lar to that which produces the brilliant | coloring of autumn leaves. When the | seed is actually ready for fertilization the alyx opens and spreads out its attractive announcement to_the insect, not that he | can now make himself useful, but—cun- | ning Dame Nature—that a feast is now spread for him. When the flower has actually been fertilized the pretty petals fall off, the feast is over am{’theinsect’s work is done. Now, there has been all along, an equal | development on the part of the insects. | The flowers have modified, not only in | color, but in form. The simple petals | ‘have, in some cases, muitiplied many fold. | M. FR'EDMAN & flo., In others they have united and formed single cups and hells. Others again have 224 to 230 and 306 Stockton and 237 Post Street. adapted themselves to the forms and re- Free packing and delivery across the bay. FURNITURE 4 ROOIMS $90. Parlor—Silk Brocatelle, trimmed. 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