Hiram Stevens Maxim is best known for inventing the first fully automatic machine gun. It gained the mechanical genius from Sangerville fame, riches and a knighthood from King Edward VII, and it modified the course of warfare.

Most people aren’t aware, however, that after this feat Maxim was able to indulge his lifelong interest in flight, becoming one of the early pioneers of aviation history, although his work was unequivocally eclipsed by the Wright brothers a century ago this week at Kitty Hawk.

First, the backwoods boy from Piscataquis County was a pioneer in electric lighting, and then, after moving to England where he decided to specialize in armaments, his famous gun enabled men to kill each other much more efficiently. It wasn’t until 1887 that his financial backers encouraged him to build an airplane that could do in the air what soldiers were able to do on the ground with the Maxim Gun.

Of course at this period nobody knew what an airplane would look like, or how it would be powered or flown. The gasoline engine hadn’t been perfected, and there was still a school of thought that favored balloons. But Maxim’s bent was for heavier-than-air craft using “dynamic energy,” an issue he had discussed with his father, Isaac, many years before in Sangerville as they walked through the woods watching how birds flew and discussing the possibility of building a flying machine.

On a rented estate In England, Maxim designed and built an enormous biplane. It weighed 4 tons and had a wingspan of 104 feet, and two giant propellers on the back, each 17 feet, 10 inches in diameter. Powered by two relatively lightweight steam engines, the prototype was run along an 1,800-foot track where on each dry run Maxim collected all sorts of data on lift and thrust and other engineering issues.

With his financial backers putting pressure on him to produce, Maxim held a demonstration of his mechanical behemoth for the press on July 31, 1894. The plan was to demonstrate how the machine worked on its track without actually taking off. The truth was Maxim hadn’t thought much about flying – how he would actually steer it once the craft was airborne.

But on the fourth run that day, the roaring monstrosity broke its bonds, rising off the track 6 or 8 inches for some 600 feet.

“I found myself floating in the air with the feeling of being in a boat,” Maxim, who was at the controls, later wrote. One of his assistants was thrown through the air, landing on his head, and the machine was badly damaged.

Ever after, Maxim, a shameless self-promoter, would claim to have built the first flying machine to rise into the air with passengers, even though there had been three other similar events recorded. And he would claim that his design had been the prototype for all successful flying machines to come. Of course, he knew that the weight of water required to fuel the steam engines would have made it impossible for his machine to remain aloft for long.

Events conspired to keep him from continuing his research. The money dried up, and public officials decided to convert his estate into a lunatic asylum – an event he joked he had inspired with his controversial research. His place in aviation history has been debated ever since.

“Hiram Maxim was the first scientific experimenter on the aeroplane and the first to obtain aeronautical data of any accuracy and value to flight. He should be accorded far more credit than is now given him for his pioneering work,” concluded collaborator Edward Hewitt.

But some critics complained Maxim was too concerned with engineering details, and not enough with the intricacies of actually flying a plane.

One of his biographers, Iain McCallum, has concluded that in 1903, “the Wright brothers proved they had found the right formula: first master control in the air, and only then add the power. The secret of the Wright Flyers was that they were deliberately constructed to be unstable and directed by an experienced hand.”

And wrote Wilbur Wright in 1900, “What is chiefly needed is skill rather than machinery.”

Wayne Reilly writes a history column each Monday in the Style section. During his 28 years at the Bangor Daily News, he worked as a reporter, editorial page writer and assignment editor. He can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.