The Birmingham Small Arms Company Limited was a major British 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.
After the Second World War, BSA did not manage its business well, and a government-organised rescue operation in 1973 led to a takeover of such operations as it still owned. Those few that survived this process disappeared into the ownership of other businesses.
BSA began in June 1861 in the Gun Quarter, Birmingham, England. It was formed by a group of fourteen gunsmith members of the Birmingham Small Arms Trade Association specifically to manufacture guns by machinery. They were encouraged to do this by the War Office which gave the BSA gunsmiths free access to technical drawings and to the War Office's Board of Ordnance's Royal Small Arms Factory factory at Enfield. New machinery developed in the USA installed at Enfield had greatly increased its output without needing more skilled craftsmen. This new machinery brought to Birmingham the principle of the interchangeability of parts.
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