Page "Basil Zaharoff" Paragraph 7

Round 2 took place in Vienna.

Here the contestants had been asked to modify their weapons so that they could use the standard size of cartridge used by the Austrian infantry.

After shooting a few hundred rounds Maxim's apparatus became erratic then stopped altogether.

When Maxim took the weapon apart to see what had happened, he discovered that it had been sabotaged, but it was too late to recover.

The third trial was also in Vienna, and here the gun worked perfectly.

But an unknown person went through the gathering of senior officers convincing them that the workmanship required to produce such a marvellous weapon could only be done by hand, one at a time, and that without the means for mass production Maxim could never produce the machine gun in sufficient quantities to satisfy the needs of a modern army.

Nordenfelt and Zaharoff had won.

Maxim, who knew he had a good product, successfully sought a merger with Nordenfelt, with Zaharoff as the principal salesman with a fat commission rate.