One day, Uncle Joe got fired from his construction job. His nephew asked him what happened.
“You know what a foreman is?” he asked. “The one who stands around and watches the other men work?”
“What's that got to do with it?” he asked.
“Well, he just got jealous of me,” Uncle Joe explained. “Everyone thought I was the foreman.”
Sir Hiram MaximDied 24 Nov 1916 at age 76 (born 5 Feb 1840). Hiram Stevens Maxim was an American-English inventor whose best known innovation is the Maxim machine gun. His first patent was for a hair-curling iron (1866), followed by a device for generating illuminating gas and a locomotive headlight. In 1878, he was hired as chief engineer of the United States Electric Lighting Company, the first such company in the United States. In that post he produced a basic invention, a method of manufacturing carbon filaments. In 1881 he exhibited an electric pressure regulator at the Paris Exposition. Among his hundreds of other patents in the U.S. and Great Britain are a mousetrap, an automatic sprinkling system, an automatic steam-powered water pump, vacuum pumps, engine governors, and gas motors. |
