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
History of trade and industry in Birmingham History of trade and industry in Birmingham Birmingham was a flourishing medieval market town. A settlement of Birmingham appears in Domesday Book, but there is nothing to indicate that it was anything but a rural manor. one of many in the area that had been subinfueded by William Fitz Osbern, Lord of Dudley. In lawsuits of 1285 and 1308 it was claimed that the Birmingham market has been held without interruption since before the Norman conquest. However no more contemporary evidence of such a market exists. The key moment in the transformation of Birmingham from the purely rural manor recorded