Birmingham Small Arms Company - History of The BSA Industrial Group

History of The BSA Industrial Group

BSA began in June 1861 in the Gun Quarter, Birmingham England founded specifically to manufacture guns by machinery. It was formed by a group of fourteen gunsmith members of the Birmingham Small Arms Trade Association. The market had moved against British gunsmiths following the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854 because the Board of Ordnance's Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield had introduced machinery made in the USA and Enfield's greatly increased output had been achieved with reduced reliance on skilled craftsmen. The War Office provided this new grouping of gunsmiths free access to technical drawings and their facilities at their Enfield factory.

The newly-formed company purchased 25 acres of land at Small Heath, Birmingham, built a factory there and made a road on the site calling it Armoury Road.

This machinery brought to Birmingham the principle of the inter-changeability of parts.

Read more about this topic:  Birmingham Small Arms Company

Famous quotes containing the words history of, history, industrial and/or group:

    ... that there is no other way,
    That the history of creation proceeds according to
    Stringent laws, and that things
    Do get done in this way, but never the things
    We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
    To see come into being.
    John Ashbery (b. 1927)

    America is the only nation in history which, miraculously, has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.
    Attributed to Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929)

    Nearly all the Escapists in the long past have managed their own budget and their social relations so unsuccessfully that I wouldn’t want them for my landlords, or my bankers, or my neighbors. They were valuable, like powerful stimulants, only when they were left out of the social and industrial routine.
    Willa Cather (1876–1947)

    Unless a group of workers know their work is under surveillance, that they are being rated as fairly as human beings, with the fallibility that goes with human judgment, can rate them, and that at least an attempt is made to measure their worth to an organization in relative terms, they are likely to sink back on length of service as the sole reason for retention and promotion.
    Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)