History of BSA Motorcycles

The Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA) is a British based airgun and shotgun manufacturer and former manufacturer of military and sporting firearms, bicycles, motorcycles, cars, buses and bodies, steel, iron castings, machine and small tools, coal cleaning and handling plants, sintered metals and hard chrome process.
At its peak, BSA was the largest motorcycle producer in the world. Loss of sales and poor investments in new products in the motorcycle division, which included Triumph Motorcycles, led to problems for the whole group.

History

BSA was founded in June 1861 in the Gun Quarter, Birmingham in England by fourteen gunsmiths of the Birmingham Small Arms Trade Association who had supplied arms to the British government during the Crimean War, specifically to manufacture guns by machinery. The Government-owned ordnance factories had introduced machinery made in the USA into their factories on the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854, which greatly increased output and reduced the reliance on skilled craftsmen in the production of military firearms. Thus the balance had moved against the Birmingham gunsmiths. BSA's resort to the use of machinery was rewarded in 1863 with an order for 20,000 Turkish infantry rifles. The management of the BSA Company was changed at an Extraordinary Meeting called on September 30, 1863 when 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. Swinburn under the chairmanship of John Dent Goodman . The military arms trade was precarious as Government orders quickly dried up once initial demand was met in order to keep their own ordnance factories employed. BSA did not receive its first War Office order for firearms until 1868 . The BSA company branched out into bicycle manufacture in 1869 as the gun trade declined, but the factory was closed for a year in 1879 through lack of work, in 1880 they manufactured the Otto Dicycle, in the 1880s the company began to manufacture bicycles on their own account and in 1905 the company's first experimental motorcycle was constructed. BSA sold its ammunition business to Nobel Interests forerunner of I.C.I. in 1897 . In 1906 Frank Dudley Docker was appointed a director of the Company. By the autumn of that year BSA were in some difficulty. They had purchased the Sparkbrook Royal Small Arms Factory from the War Office, and in return, the War Office undertook to give BSA a quarter of all orders for Lee-Enfield rifles, but the War Office did not adhere to their undertaking. In an effort to use the Sparkbrook factory, BSA established a motor-car department there, and the first prototype automobile was produced in 1907. The following year the company sold 150 automobiles. All was not well however, as an investigation committee reported to the BSA Board in 1909 about failures in the management and organisation of production. Dudley Docker was appointed deputy chairman of BSA in 1909 and he started merger talks with the Daimler Car Company of Coventry . In 1910 BSA purchased the British Daimler Company for its management expertise but under the terms of the merger Daimler was obliged to pay BSA an annual dividend of £100,000. This financial burden deprived Daimler of badly need cash to fund development forcing the Daimler company to borrow money from the Midland Bank. BSA had still not recovered financially from the earlier purchase of R.S.A. Sparkbrook . In 1912, BSA would be one of two automakers pioneering the use of all-steel bodies, joining Hupmobile in the U.S.9

First World War
During the First World War, the company returned to arms manufacture and greatly expanded its operations. BSA produced rifles, Lewis guns, shells, motorcycles and other vehicles for the war effort.

Inter-war years

1935 magazine advert for the BSA range of motorcycles and 3-wheeler cars
In 1920, they bought some of the assets of the Aircraft Manufacturing Company (Airco), which had built many important aircraft during the war but had become bankrupt due to the falloff in orders once hostilities ceased. BSA did not go into aviation; the chief designer Geoffrey de Havilland of Airco founded the de Havilland company.
In 1921 they produced and successfully marketed their first side-valve V-twin of 770cc. As well as the Daimler car range, BSA re-entered the car market under their own name in 1921 with a V-twin engined light car followed by four-cylinder models up to 1926 when the name was temporarily dropped. In 1929 a new range of 3 and 4 wheel cars appeared and production of these continued until 1936.
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.
In 1931 the Lanchester Motor Company was acquired and production of their cars transferred to Daimler's Coventry works.

Second World War
By the Second World War, BSA had 67 factories and was well-positioned to meet the demand for guns and ammunition. BSA operations were also dispersed to other companies under licence. During the war it produced over a million Lee-Enfield rifles, Sten sub machine guns and half a million Browning machine guns. Wartime demands included motorcycle production. 126,000 BSA M20 motorcycles were supplied to the armed forces, from 1937 (and later until 1950) plus military bicycles including the folding paratrooper bicycle. At the same time, the Daimler concern was producing armoured cars.

Post-war
Sir Bernard Docker was chairman of BSA until 1956 with James Leek CBE Managing Director from 1939 until his retirement on ill health grounds in 1956, after which Jack Sangster became BSA Chairman Post-war, BSA continued to expand the range of metal goods it produced. The BSA Group bought Triumph Motorcycles in 1951, making them the largest producer of motorcycles in the world. The cycle and motor cycle interests of Ariel, Sunbeam and New Hudson were also acquired. Most of these had belonged to Sangster.
In 1960, Daimler was sold off to Jaguar. The BSA bicycle division, BSA Cycles Ltd., was sold to Raleigh in 1957. Bicycles bearing the BSA name are currently manufactured and distributed within India by TI Cycles of India.
The production of guns bearing the BSA name continued beyond the 1957 sale of the bicycle division, but in 1986 BSA Guns was liquidated, the assets bought and renamed BSA Guns (UK) Ltd. The company continues to make air rifles and shotguns, and is still based in Small Heath in Birmingham.(dari berbagai sumber)
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