Until the start of World War I, the Army had used a variety of older machine guns, like the M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun "Potato Digger" (which Browning had also designed) and weapons like the Maxim Gun, the Benet–Mercie M1909, and the Hotchkiss M1914 machine gun. Although the Model 1917 was intended to be the principal US Army heavy machine gun in the war, the Army was, in fact, forced to purchase many foreign weapons—the French-produced Hotchkiss 8 mm machine gun was actually the most common heavy machine gun used by the American Expeditionary Force.