The Birmingham Small Arms Company Limited (BSA) 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.

It was formed by a group of fourteen gunsmith members of the Birmingham Small Arms Trade Association specifically to manufacture guns by machinery.

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.

BSA sold its ammunition business in 1897 to Birmingham Metal and Munitions Company Limited part of the Nobel-Dynamite Trust, through Kynoch a forerunner of ICI.

That decision was ratified by the shareholders of both companies at separate Extraordinary General Meetings held in the Grand Hotel, Birmingham on 27 February 1907.

The following year, marketed under BSA Cycles Ltd, the company sold 150 automobiles and again began producing complete bicycles on its own account.

By 1909, it was clear the new motorcar department was unsuccessful; an investigation committee reported to the BSA Board on the many failures of its management and their poor organisation of production.

Believing he could buy the missing management skills that could not be found within BSA, he started merger talks with The Daimler Company Limited of Coventry.

[13] In 1913, BSA undertook to manufacture quick-firing machine guns for the Lewis Automatic Arms Company whose rights covered the world except for the American Continent.

BSA produced rifles, Lewis guns, shells, bicycles, motorcycles and, through Daimler, aero engines, aircraft and other vehicles for the war effort as well as machine tools.

Other features were Amac carburettor, chain drive, choice of magneto or Magdyno, 7-plate clutch, 3 speed gear box with kickstarter and new type of cantilever fork[17] During the war Daimler had built enormous numbers of aero engines and aircraft and by the end was building 80 Airco de Havilland bombers a month.

Defence and military equipment including Daimler's Scout car were in heavy demand in Britain and in export markets.

[28] In the 1930s, the board of directors authorised expenditure on bringing their arms-making equipment back to use – it had been stored at company expense since the end of the Great War in the belief that BSA might again be called upon to perform its patriotic duty.

However the trials did not lead to acceptance; referring to the complex trigger mechanism, Frank Hobart said "no soldier could have coped with this watchmaker's dream",[c][29][30] By the outbreak of the Second World War, BSA Guns Ltd at Small Heath, was the only factory producing rifles in the UK.

The parlous state of affairs "no arms, no transport, no equipment" in the face of the threat of imminent invasion of Britain by Nazi forces was recorded by the Chief of the Imperial General Staff Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke in his diary entries of the 1/2 July 1940.

[31] The creation of the Home Guard (initially as the Local Defence Volunteers) following Anthony Eden's broadcast appeal to the Nation on Tuesday 14 May 1940 also created further demand for arms production to equip this new force.

At the same time BSA staff were providing lectures and demonstrations on motorcycle riding and maintenance to 250,000 officers and men in all parts of the UK.

The BSA factory at Small Heath was bombed by the Luftwaffe on 26 August 1940 resulting in one high explosive bomb and a shower of incendiaries hitting the main barrel mill which was the only one operating on service rifles in the country, causing the unaffordable loss of 750 machine tools but fortunately no loss of life.

Since BSA was the sole producer of the main aircraft armament, the resulting delays in productions reportedly caused most worries to PM Churchill among all the industrial damage during the Blitz.

[36][37] Workers involved in the works Civil Defence were brought in to help search for and clear bodies to get the plant back into production.

The Government Ministry of Supply and BSA immediately began a process of production dispersal throughout Britain, through the shadow factory scheme.

BSA were willing to manufacture the gun in the quantities required starting April 1943 but the cheaper and less accurate Sten Mk IV was adopted for production by the Ministry of Supply.

[33] A back-handed compliment was paid by Field Marshal Rommel to the workers at Radford Works when he used a captured Daimler Scout to escape following his defeat at El Alamein.

It was Bob Maitland who was responsible for the design of post war BSA range of lightweight sports bicycles based on his knowledge of cycling.

In an acrimonious dispute conducted in the media the matter was brought to the BSA shareholders at the Annual General Meeting where the decision of the Board was upheld.

TI Group, owners of the British Cycle Corporation, bought Raleigh in 1960 thus gaining access to the BSA brand.

The first BSA produced Sunbeam catalogue was published in 1949[54] Post war BSA expanded their bicycle range but faced problems of shortages of raw materials such as steel and was required to export a lot of their manufactured output in order to get a Government licence to purchase the necessary raw materials.

Sir Hallewell Rogers, BSA Chairman, had informed the shareholders at the company's 1910 AGM in Birmingham "We have decided to put a motor-bicycle on the market for the coming season ....

BSA had previously acquired a commercially available engine in 1905 and fitted it to one of their bicycle frames and discovered at first hand the problems that needed to be overcome.

BSA Cycles Ltd was set up as a subsidiary company in 1919 under Managing Director Charles Hyde to manufacture both bicycles and motorcycles.