Benjamin Berkeley Hotchkiss (1826 – 1885) was born in Watertown, Connecticut. In the 1850s, he was employed as a gunmaker in Hartford, working on Colt revolvers and Winchester rifles. In 1867, Hotchkiss moved to France and set up a munitions factory in Saint-Denis, near Paris, named Hotchkiss et Cie. After his death on 14 February 1885, the Hotchkiss company also developed an air cooled, gas actuated infantry machine gun in 1897 which was widely used by several countries, particularly France and the United States during World War I.