Existing comment:
World War I Machine Guns: Hiram Stevens Maxim, an America who moved to England and established a company bearing his name, produced the first fully automatic machine gun in 1884. His revolutionary design harnessed some of the energy of the burning gases (used to propel the bullet), to power the operating cycle of the gun. Although the importance of machine guns was apparent in the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa in 1899-1901 and the Russo-Japanese War waged mainly in China during 1904-05, only the Germans fully appreciated the lessons learned, and equipped its army with numerous Maxim guns by 1914. Th Allies were slower to appreciate the weapon's effectiveness, particularly in an entrenched defensive role, but eventually realized the wisdom of the United States Secretary of War Newton Baker's comment: "Perhaps, no invention has more profoundly modified the art of war than the machine gun."
Largely as a result of the effectiveness of the Machine Gun and barbed wire used in the defense, World War I remained a stalemate from 1914 until the German Army was exhausted in 1918. Late in the war, technology (in the form of the tank and innovations in tactics), overcame its early effectiveness. |