WORLD HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Some historians see machine guns as responsible for up to 40 percent of the Great War’s battlefield deaths. A more conservative consensus places the machine gun death rate at about 20-25 percent.

Detailed explanation-2: -One of Maxim’s early prototypes could fire 666 rounds in a minute – around 11 bullets every second. In the battlefield conditions of WW1 this meant an average of 500 rounds a minute with a range of over 3, 000 yards or 2, 743m.

Detailed explanation-3: -World War I popularized the use of the machine gun-capable of bringing down row after row of soldiers from a distance on the battlefield. This weapon, along with barbed wire and mines, made movement across open land both difficult and dangerous. Thus trench warfare was born.

Detailed explanation-4: -The defensive power of the machine gun created the stalemate on the Western Front, and almost all of the technologies that were introduced during the war were built in order to defeat it. The introduction of this weapon radically changed the strategies and tactics used by militaries in the future.