BSA 750 cc

BSA 750 cc 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