William Mills (inventor) William Mills (inventor) Sir William Mills (24 April 1856 - 1932) of Sunderland was an English engineer, who invented the Mills bomb which was developed and manufactured at his factory in Birmingham, England. The Mills bomb was the hand grenade most widely used by British and Imperial forces during the First World War. He was knighted in 1922. William Mills was born on 26 April 1856 in Wear Street, Southwick, Sunderland. He was the son of David Mills, a shipbuilder, and his wife Sarah Ann Kirkaldy. The Sunderland historian James Watson Corder recorded that David Mills had an interest in
Economy of Birmingham countries around the world. Birmingham was second only to London for the creation of new jobs between 1951 and 1961, and unemployment rarely exceeded 1% between 1948 and 1966. By 1961, household incomes in the West Midlands (county) were 13% above the national average, exceeding even London and the South East. However, the incoming Labour government of 1964 sought to control what it saw as a "threatening situation", most notably by extending the Control of Office Employment Act 1965 to the Birmingham conurbation in 1965. Birmingham's economic landscape had suffered significantly as a result, but since then much of the