SIR HIRAM STEVENS MAXIM - AUTOGRAPH CIRCA 1910 CO-SIGNED BY: CLAUDE GRAHAME-WHITE - HFSID 4579

CLAUDE GRAHAME-WHITE and HIRAM S. MAXIM
Signatures circa 1910, the year before they co-founded the first military aircraft company!
Signatures: "C Grahame-White" in pencil and "Hiram S. Maxim" and two unidentified signers, 8x3. Signed on verso of letterhead of The Pictorial Newspaper Company, London, dated 1910. CLAUDE GRAHAME-WHITE (1879-1959)was the first Briton to receive a French flying license (January 4, 1910). That same year in March, he made the first night flight, and in October overflew Washington, D.C., landing on Executive Avenue, near the White House. He opened London's first aerodrome and Britain's first flying school and was the first British airmail pilot. HIRAM S. MAXIM (1840-1916) invented the Maxim automatic machine gun (1884, adopted by the British Army in 1889) and attempted to build an aircraft operated by steam engines (1894). Maxim became a British subject in 1900 and was knighted in 1901. He was the father of Hiram Percy Maxim(1869-1936), who invented silencers for explosive weapons and gasoline engines, and the brother of Hudson Maxim (1853-1827), also a prolific inventor of explosive devices. On March 30, 1911, Grahame-White and Hiram Maxim joined French aviation pioneer Louis Bleriot to found Grahame-White, Bleriot and Maxim, Ltd., a company dedicated to developing military aircraft. With active support from Britain's War Department, they began attaching bombs and machine guns to planes, techniques which would find dramatic application in World War I. Ink smudged at lower portion of Maxim's signature. Lightly creased and soiled. Lightly stained at blank right margin of verso. Otherwise, fine condition.