Inventor, Radio Pioneer. Hiram Percy Maxim, an American, was the father of organized amateur (HAM) radio. A "ham operator," his amateur radio call-sign was W1AW. In May of 1914 the American Radio Relay League was organized, which was mainly launched by him. With much affection, the group referred to him as "The Old Man." In 1908 he was the inventor of the Maxim silencer, a device attached to the barrel of a gun to lessen the noise of the weapon being fired. This device was first mass produced as a firearm silencer, but later met other sound suppressing needs, such as the automobile tail pipe muffler. His Maxim family were protestant French Huguenots, who came to this country in the middle seventeenth century to escape religious persecution, mainly from Roman Catholics. They landed first at Plymouth, Massachusetts before migrating to Maine. His father was Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim, the inventor of the Maxim machine gun, and his uncle the Hudson Maxim, the inventor of high explosives. As the youngest member of his class, he graduated from School of Mechanical Arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1886, and beginning a career as an engineer at the age of 17. By 1890, he was superintendent of the American Projectile Company plant at Lynn. He invented the gasoline-powered tricycle in 1895. He gained an interest in the new fields of aviation and automobiles. He served for many years as chairman of Hartford's Aviation Commission and was responsible for the first aviation field or airport in Hartford. Using the newly invented gasoline-powered engine, he designed the 1906 Columbia Gasoline Carriage, the first automobile to have the engine in the front of the driver. Working with automobile designs led him to making a muffler. He earned patents for his inventions in automotive design and noise abatement. He married and had two children. While returning from a trip west to Percival Lowell Observatory in California, he died from the complications of an infection in his throat.