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''This article is not about'' ''Gamo'' ''subsidiary BSA Guns (UK) Limited or BSA Company or its successors.'' 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. 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. A government-organised 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 original company, The Birmingham Small Arms Company Limited, remains a subsidiary of Manganese Bronze but its name was changed in 1987. Manganese Bronze continues to operate former BSA subsidiary Carbodies, now known as LTI Limited, manufacturers of London Taxicabs and formerly the largest wholly British-owned car manufacturer. (Manganese Bronze is now owned by the Chinese company Geely). ==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.〔Taylerson, A. W. F. (1983). pages 469–472. in Pollard, Hugh B. C. and Blair, Claude (eds.). ''Pollard's History of Firearms''. Feltham, Middlesex: Country Life Books. ISBN 0-600-33154-7〕 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 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 manifested the principle of the inter-changeability of parts.〔W.B. Stephens (Editor), ''A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 7: The City of Birmingham''. Victoria County History, 1964〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Birmingham Small Arms Company」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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