The Hotchkiss machine gun was any of a line of products developed and sold by Hotchkiss et Cie, (full name Société Anonyme des Anciens Etablissements Hotchkiss et Cie), established by United States gunsmith Benjamin B. Hotchkiss. Hotchkiss moved to France and set up a factory, first at Viviez near Rodez in 1867, then at Saint-Denis near Paris in 1875 manufacturing arms used by the French in the Franco-Prussian war, and later the U.S. government, who deployed them in the 1879 Mill River Campaign against Sitting Bull.
At the turn-of-the-twentieth-century, the company introduced the gas-actuated Hotchkiss machine gun, a sturdy and reliable weapon which was widely used during World War I and thereafter by the French Army. Weapons manufactured in the Hotchkiss machine gun line include:
- Hotchkiss M1909, light machine gun also known as the "Hotchkiss Mark I" in British service
- Hotchkiss M1914, medium machine gun
- Hotchkiss M1922, light machine gun
- 13.2 mm Hotchkiss machine gun, heavy machine gun
- 25 mm Hotchkiss anti-aircraft gun, autocannon but sometimes referred to as a machine gun
- The Modified Hotchkiss machine gun, a Greek modification used in WWII
- Hotchkiss Type Universal submachine gun
Famous quotes containing the words machine and/or gun:
“... in the fierce competition of modern society the only class left in the country possessing leisure is that of women supported in easy circumstances by husband or father, and it is to this class we must look for the maintenance of cultivated and refined tastes, for that value and pursuit of knowledge and of art for their own sakes which can alone save society from degenerating into a huge machine for making money, and gratifying the love of sensual luxury.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)
“I’d like to say I didn’t intend to kill her. But when you have a gun ... you always intend ... when you have to.”
—Ketti Frings (1915–1981)