WI: Firearms and machine guns without Hiram Maxim

If Maxim had not invented his recoil operated machine gun as he did in OTL how would firearms technology develop differently from OTL. The next person that I could imagine to invented the first automatic machine gun would be John browning with his gas operated Colt 1895 which as I understand it he developed independently.
 
Perhaps Schwarzlose and his machine gun design takes the place of the HMG void left over from Maxim's design? After all, it was apparently relatively simple and easy to manufacture compared to the German MG 08. Otherwise, maybe air-cooled gun technology advances a bit to fill the water-cooled void or further research into powered Gatling guns goes into effect.
 

TFSmith121

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Powered Gatlings?

Nordenfelt MGs?

Even without gas operation, seems like mechanical engineering for the wespons and chemical engineering for the munitions are about to the point where automatic weapons of some sort were going to become widespread.

Best,
 
Weren't many of the heavy machine guns used in the late C19 early part of the C20 at least based on the Maxim? I guess those crank operated multi barrelled guns whose name has slipped my mind and the Gatling would have stuck around longer.
 
Neither the Schwarzlose nor Hotchkiss nor Browning designs were in any way based on Maxim's design (despite the first and last's resemblance to the Maxim Gun, that's just coincidental and IMO based on their use of a water-cooling system).
 
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