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BSA Cycles Ltd was set up in 1919 for the manufacture of both bicycles and motorcycles. BSA recommenced manufacturing bicycles on their own behalf from 1908. Bicycle production ceased in 1887 as the company concentrated on producing the Lee-Metford magazine loading rifle for the War Office which was re-equipping the British Army with it. In 1880 they manufactured the Otto Dicycle, In the 1880s the company began to manufacture Safety bicycles on their own account and not until 1905 was the company's first experimental motorcycle constructed.
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New ventures BicyclesThe next year BSA branched out into bicycle manufacture. In 1879 the factory, without work, was shut for a year. The first War Office contract was not agreed until 1868. Swinburn under the chairmanship of John Dent Goodman. The management of the BSA Company was changed at an Extraordinary Meeting called on Septemwhen the Company was changed from being run by a committee to that of an elected Board of Directors, Joseph Wilson, Samuel Buckley, Isaac Hollis, Charles Playfair, Charles Pryse, Sir John Ratcliffe, Edward Gem, and J.F. 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.įirearmsBSA's resort to the use of machinery was rewarded in 1863 with an order for 20,000 Turkish infantry rifles.
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The War Office provided free access to technical drawings and their facilities at their Enfield factory. Their greatly increased output had been achieved with reduced reliance on skilled craftsmen. The Board of Ordnance's Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield had introduced machinery made in the USA. The balance had moved against the Birmingham gunsmiths following the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854. Manganese Bronze continues to operate former BSA subsidiary Carbodies, now known as LTI Limited, manufacturers of London Taxicabs and the largest wholly British owned car manufacturer.īSA began in June 1861 in the Gun Quarter, Birmingham England, founded specifically to manufacture guns by machinery, by fourteen gunsmiths of the Birmingham Small Arms Trade Association. The original company, The Birmingham Small Arms Company Limited, remains a subsidiary of Manganese Bronze but its name was changed in 1987. Loss of sales and poor investments in new products in the motorcycle division, which included Triumph Motorcycles, led to problems for the whole group.Ī government-organized rescue operation in 1973 led to the takeover of remaining operations by what is now Manganese Bronze Holdings, then owners of Norton-Villiers, and over the following decade further closures and dispersals. The Birmingham Small Arms Company Limited, BSA was a major industrial combine, a group of businesses manufacturing military and sporting firearms bicycles motorcycles cars buses and bodies steel iron castings hand, power, and machine tools coal cleaning and handling plants sintered metals and hard chrome process.Īt its peak, BSA was the largest motorcycle producer in the world.