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:
“But it is found that the machine unmans the user. What he gains in making cloth, he loses in general power. There should be a temperance in making cloth, as well as in eating.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“As for fowling, during the last years that I carried a gun my excuse was that I was studying ornithology, and sought only new or rare birds. But I confess that I am now inclined to think that there is a finer way of studying ornithology than this. It requires so much closer attention to the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only, I have been willing to omit the gun.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)