Hudson Maxim

Hudson Maxim invented many weapons that influenced modern warfare, including the first smokeless powder made in America and "maximite," the first high explosive able to pierce armor. As a child, he received little schooling and once worked for seventy-five cents to buy his first atlas so that he could "see where Napoleon lived." In 1888 he began experimenting with explosives and a year later built a dynamite factory and smokeless-powder mill in Maxim, New Jersey, a town named for him. Although he developed many forms of "concentrated destruction," Maxim was a firm believer in peaceful arbitration and wrote many books and lectures on the subject.