February 17, 2025 • 9 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1902, the first successful, commercially available gun silencer was invented by Hiram Percy Maxim. He also developed mufflers for internal combustion engines using much the same technology. Maxim was an American inventor, graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and son of Sir Hiram Stevens Maxi—inventor of the first portable, fully automatic machine gun.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
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. One of them we
recently told on the elevator break and how it created
elevators everywhere in big cities around the world. This one
is the story of how the silencer came to be.
(00:31):
Telling the story is Ashley Lebinski. She's the former co
host of the Discovery Channel's Master of Arms. Take It Away, Ashley.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
The name Maxim is most often associated with the development
of the machine gun. Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim is credited
with an early successful machine gun, and his brother Hudson
was also known for something that was incredibly loud, which
was his development of explosives and propellant. And while the
inventions of the family were often known for their noise,
(01:03):
the next generation of the Maxim family retreated from that
path to focus more on silence. Hiram Percy Maxim, who
was the son of Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim, was born
in Brooklyn, New York, on September two, eighteen sixty nine.
He was basically a renaissance man throughout his life, and
he would revolutionize multiple industries, automobiles, weapons, aviation, and the radio.
(01:30):
He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in eighteen
eighty six at just seventeen years old. Initially, Maxim was
drawn to the automotive industry. He's probably least known for this,
but he probably should be known for it most of all.
At the turn of the twentieth century, it was thought
that electric powered vehicles would be the wave of the future. Maxim, however,
(01:51):
back then, disagreed and would champion gasoline powered engines. By
eighteen ninety two, Maxim was building his own internal combustion
at and he updated that design and it won the
first American closed circuit auto race in eighteen ninety nine,
and of course he named it after himself. One issue
that persisted in his brain when it came to cars
(02:14):
was the noise associated with them, and so that's when
he shifts his kind of focus on engineering ways to
create sound suppression, and so by doing so, he then
invented and patented several types of automobile muffler systems that
redirected and slowed down a car's exhaust. Maxim then extended
(02:35):
those patents and an idea into the concept of firearms. Obviously,
Maxim grew up around firearms and he was keenly aware
of how loud that they could be, so he decided
to go in the opposite direction and make the weapons
less noisy. It was actually considered, it is still considered
today in other countries to be almost ungentlemanlike to have
(02:58):
a loud firearm. Maxim was inspired to create what becomes
the silencer in the bathtub, which sounds like the silliest
story on the planet, but he was in the bathtub
and he was watching the water form of vortex as
it drained from the tub, and he wondered then whether
gas in a firearms muzzle could be directed similarly to
(03:18):
reduce noise. He patented the Maxim silencer in nineteen oh
nine and the design that he had which differs from
modern silencer designs, but his design forced muzzle gases through
a series of curved veins that spun the gases and
reduced their pressure as they cooled. Essentially, reduced pressure equaled
reduced noise. Today, when you think about a silencer, a
(03:42):
lot of people associated with self defense, they associated with
the military or even something sinister. But back then Maxim
was just applying a concept that he created for the
automobile onto firearms, and it showed in kind of the
desirability of the product on the market. He designed the
silencer to be a civilian product. It was something to
(04:04):
be used in sporting guns because often if you were
hunting or target shooting, your firearm was pretty loud, and
so you saw it pop up in the different catalogs
and everything for people to buy rather than the military.
The military really didn't catch on with the silencer until
the middle of the twentieth century because the recoil out
of nineteen oh three was pretty hefty, and a silencer
(04:25):
didn't just reduce sound, it also reduced recoil, so it
was a great training aid for the military back then.
The Maxim Silent Firearms Company, which became the Maxim Silencer Company,
didn't just stop with silencers for firearms. They also sold
automobile silencers, air hoists, steam exhaust silencers, and motor boat silencers.
(04:47):
And they partnered a lot with General Motors to give
away a free silencer with every purchase, so if you
bought a car with General Motors, you got a free
silencer for your firearm. At the same time, fascinating with
the silencer or the suppressor is that it became highly regulated.
In nineteen thirty four, the National Firearms Act, which is
(05:08):
really the first big federal firearms law in the United States,
regulated several types of technology. They regulated machine guns, short
bail rifles, and shotguns and also silencers. And what that
meant was basically that you could still acquire it, but
you had to register it and go through a much
more intense background check and pay a two hundred dollars
(05:28):
tax stamp. But what's interesting is that nowadays in America,
it is a requirement to have a muffler on your car,
but to put one on your firearm, you have to
go through a very long background check and pay a
lot of money to stick it on the end of
your gun to alleviate sound issues when you are using
(05:49):
your firearm. And America's kind of a standalone in terms
of the way that they view silencers. Around the world,
in many countries, they're actually seen as an accessory. You
can buy them over the counter with any background process.
Because Europeans love hunting, they love target shooting, and they
think it's rude to have allowed firearm, and so it's
interesting because I feel like Hire Percy Maxim was such
(06:12):
a brilliant marketer that he marketed an item that was
ultimately its modern dame downfall, and that was because they
marketed it as an item that was silent and brilliant
when you think about it, But silent today makes people
think that then a silencer causes a firearm to then
in fact be silent, when that's not really the case.
It suppresses sound, and in reality, most civilian accessible firearms
(06:36):
still emit a sounds ranging from one hundred and forty
to one hundred and seventy five decibels, and a silencer
really only marginally suppresses that sound, bringing levels down to
around one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty decibels.
A lot of times you're the comparison of it still
sounds like a jackhammer, so it brings it down to
help things, but it certainly doesn't silence that. And here's
(06:58):
an example of what gunfire sounds like with and without
a silencer. Hire and Percy Maxim invented the silencer. But
if you talk to a gun person today, you'll probably
hear them say that it is a suppressor, and the
(07:20):
reality is both as correct and a lot of gun
people will tell you to never call it a silencer,
but that's not fair to the history. Because Maxim patented
his invention in nineteen oh nine as a silencer. It
says that on the patent, and then he liked the
term so much that he named his company that the
Maxim Silencer Company. And if you think about it, it's
pretty brilliant marketing because who doesn't want a firearm that
(07:43):
doesn't make a loud noise. And he really doubled down
with this because he had advertisements where you had a
family that is sitting in a room, you know, hanging out,
and then in the other room, the dad is target shooting,
and it basically says, this is so silent that you
don't even have to disrupt your family in the other room.
So it's brilliant marketing on the part of Hire and
(08:04):
Percy Maxim. And then that term then translates into the
legal term of silencer with the National Firearms Act of
nineteen thirty four. So a lot of people want to
be more precise and they'll say suppressor or moderator or
if you want to go back to its origins in
the automobile industry muffler. But they use that because it's
a better descriptor. But they really shouldn't pick on people
(08:25):
who use the historical original term, especially if they know
what they're talking about. It makes you wonder if he
was not as good at marketing back in the nineteen hundreds,
whether or not the invention would be as regulated as
it is today.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
And a terrific job by the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Angler. And a special thanks to
frequent contributor here on this show, Ashley Lebinski. She's the
former co host of the Discovery Channel's Master of Arms.
She's the former curator in charge of the Cody Firearms Museum,
and she's the co founder of the University of Wyom
I mean College of Law's Firearms Research Center. And what
(09:03):
a story about Hiram Percy Maxim, born in all places
of Brooklyn, learns to lower and suppress the sound and
volume of the engines of cars, and from that suppression
of noise became the suppression of the sound of guns
for ordinary citizens. The story of the silencer here on
our American Stories
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. One of them we
recently told on the elevator break and how it created
elevators everywhere in big cities around the world. This one
is the story of how the silencer came to be.
(00:31):
Telling the story is Ashley Lebinski. She's the former co
host of the Discovery Channel's Master of Arms. Take It Away, Ashley.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
The name Maxim is most often associated with the development
of the machine gun. Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim is credited
with an early successful machine gun, and his brother Hudson
was also known for something that was incredibly loud, which
was his development of explosives and propellant. And while the
inventions of the family were often known for their noise,
(01:03):
the next generation of the Maxim family retreated from that
path to focus more on silence. Hiram Percy Maxim, who
was the son of Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim, was born
in Brooklyn, New York, on September two, eighteen sixty nine.
He was basically a renaissance man throughout his life, and
he would revolutionize multiple industries, automobiles, weapons, aviation, and the radio.
(01:30):
He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in eighteen
eighty six at just seventeen years old. Initially, Maxim was
drawn to the automotive industry. He's probably least known for this,
but he probably should be known for it most of all.
At the turn of the twentieth century, it was thought
that electric powered vehicles would be the wave of the future. Maxim, however,
(01:51):
back then, disagreed and would champion gasoline powered engines. By
eighteen ninety two, Maxim was building his own internal combustion
at and he updated that design and it won the
first American closed circuit auto race in eighteen ninety nine,
and of course he named it after himself. One issue
that persisted in his brain when it came to cars
(02:14):
was the noise associated with them, and so that's when
he shifts his kind of focus on engineering ways to
create sound suppression, and so by doing so, he then
invented and patented several types of automobile muffler systems that
redirected and slowed down a car's exhaust. Maxim then extended
(02:35):
those patents and an idea into the concept of firearms. Obviously,
Maxim grew up around firearms and he was keenly aware
of how loud that they could be, so he decided
to go in the opposite direction and make the weapons
less noisy. It was actually considered, it is still considered
today in other countries to be almost ungentlemanlike to have
(02:58):
a loud firearm. Maxim was inspired to create what becomes
the silencer in the bathtub, which sounds like the silliest
story on the planet, but he was in the bathtub
and he was watching the water form of vortex as
it drained from the tub, and he wondered then whether
gas in a firearms muzzle could be directed similarly to
(03:18):
reduce noise. He patented the Maxim silencer in nineteen oh
nine and the design that he had which differs from
modern silencer designs, but his design forced muzzle gases through
a series of curved veins that spun the gases and
reduced their pressure as they cooled. Essentially, reduced pressure equaled
reduced noise. Today, when you think about a silencer, a
(03:42):
lot of people associated with self defense, they associated with
the military or even something sinister. But back then Maxim
was just applying a concept that he created for the
automobile onto firearms, and it showed in kind of the
desirability of the product on the market. He designed the
silencer to be a civilian product. It was something to
(04:04):
be used in sporting guns because often if you were
hunting or target shooting, your firearm was pretty loud, and
so you saw it pop up in the different catalogs
and everything for people to buy rather than the military.
The military really didn't catch on with the silencer until
the middle of the twentieth century because the recoil out
of nineteen oh three was pretty hefty, and a silencer
(04:25):
didn't just reduce sound, it also reduced recoil, so it
was a great training aid for the military back then.
The Maxim Silent Firearms Company, which became the Maxim Silencer Company,
didn't just stop with silencers for firearms. They also sold
automobile silencers, air hoists, steam exhaust silencers, and motor boat silencers.
(04:47):
And they partnered a lot with General Motors to give
away a free silencer with every purchase, so if you
bought a car with General Motors, you got a free
silencer for your firearm. At the same time, fascinating with
the silencer or the suppressor is that it became highly regulated.
In nineteen thirty four, the National Firearms Act, which is
(05:08):
really the first big federal firearms law in the United States,
regulated several types of technology. They regulated machine guns, short
bail rifles, and shotguns and also silencers. And what that
meant was basically that you could still acquire it, but
you had to register it and go through a much
more intense background check and pay a two hundred dollars
(05:28):
tax stamp. But what's interesting is that nowadays in America,
it is a requirement to have a muffler on your car,
but to put one on your firearm, you have to
go through a very long background check and pay a
lot of money to stick it on the end of
your gun to alleviate sound issues when you are using
(05:49):
your firearm. And America's kind of a standalone in terms
of the way that they view silencers. Around the world,
in many countries, they're actually seen as an accessory. You
can buy them over the counter with any background process.
Because Europeans love hunting, they love target shooting, and they
think it's rude to have allowed firearm, and so it's
interesting because I feel like Hire Percy Maxim was such
(06:12):
a brilliant marketer that he marketed an item that was
ultimately its modern dame downfall, and that was because they
marketed it as an item that was silent and brilliant
when you think about it, But silent today makes people
think that then a silencer causes a firearm to then
in fact be silent, when that's not really the case.
It suppresses sound, and in reality, most civilian accessible firearms
(06:36):
still emit a sounds ranging from one hundred and forty
to one hundred and seventy five decibels, and a silencer
really only marginally suppresses that sound, bringing levels down to
around one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty decibels.
A lot of times you're the comparison of it still
sounds like a jackhammer, so it brings it down to
help things, but it certainly doesn't silence that. And here's
(06:58):
an example of what gunfire sounds like with and without
a silencer. Hire and Percy Maxim invented the silencer. But
if you talk to a gun person today, you'll probably
hear them say that it is a suppressor, and the
(07:20):
reality is both as correct and a lot of gun
people will tell you to never call it a silencer,
but that's not fair to the history. Because Maxim patented
his invention in nineteen oh nine as a silencer. It
says that on the patent, and then he liked the
term so much that he named his company that the
Maxim Silencer Company. And if you think about it, it's
pretty brilliant marketing because who doesn't want a firearm that
(07:43):
doesn't make a loud noise. And he really doubled down
with this because he had advertisements where you had a
family that is sitting in a room, you know, hanging out,
and then in the other room, the dad is target shooting,
and it basically says, this is so silent that you
don't even have to disrupt your family in the other room.
So it's brilliant marketing on the part of Hire and
(08:04):
Percy Maxim. And then that term then translates into the
legal term of silencer with the National Firearms Act of
nineteen thirty four. So a lot of people want to
be more precise and they'll say suppressor or moderator or
if you want to go back to its origins in
the automobile industry muffler. But they use that because it's
a better descriptor. But they really shouldn't pick on people
(08:25):
who use the historical original term, especially if they know
what they're talking about. It makes you wonder if he
was not as good at marketing back in the nineteen hundreds,
whether or not the invention would be as regulated as
it is today.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
And a terrific job by the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Angler. And a special thanks to
frequent contributor here on this show, Ashley Lebinski. She's the
former co host of the Discovery Channel's Master of Arms.
She's the former curator in charge of the Cody Firearms Museum,
and she's the co founder of the University of Wyom
I mean College of Law's Firearms Research Center. And what
(09:03):
a story about Hiram Percy Maxim, born in all places
of Brooklyn, learns to lower and suppress the sound and
volume of the engines of cars, and from that suppression
of noise became the suppression of the sound of guns
for ordinary citizens. The story of the silencer here on
our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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