William Mills (inventor) Kingdom at The Atlas Works, Bonnersfield. Monkwearmouth. Whilst here he produced some of Britain's earliest aluminium golf clubs: Patent, No 13545. known as Metallic Golfing Instrument Heads. He was a keen golfer and had joined the Wearside Golf Club in around 1892. Apart from his company in Sunderland, Mills also set up a company in Birmingham of the same name, which produced castings for the motor car and aircraft industries. Early in 1915, Mills opened the Mills Munitions Factory in Birmingham, making the Mills Bomb Hand Grenade. Until then, grenades had often proved as deadly to the thrower as to
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