In 1885, Hiram Maxim made a breakthrough in his design for an automatic machine gun. He realised that the gun should be easily field-stripped and his second prototype gun was too complicated. The Transitional MG (patented 8 July 1885) introduced the ‘sliding carrier’ to transfer a round from the feed belt to the chamber. The ‘sliding carrier’ design has been used in all subsequent Maxim and Vickers machine guns. This animation shows the operating mechanism.
![](https://surplused.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/2af.jpg)
Hi, Iām Rob, otherwise known as VBBSMYT.
I create the animations on my iMac using Cinema 4D, which I find very intuitive, and allows me to add smoke and flames, and then send the model to my trusty Render farm.
I make my models as accurate as possible through reference books and particularly good drawings. You may have seen my animations of early torpedoes and machine guns on YouTube. I enjoy finding out how things work and it has been fascinating to track the development from the late Victorian period up to World War 1.