Description:Although William Mills is famous as the Birmingham inventor and engineer who developed the hand grenade familiarly known to First World War British soldiers as the 'Mills Bomb', he was born in Sunderland and it was many years before he made his home in Edgbaston. In his youth Mills joined a local marine engineering firm, before a spell at sea from 1870 to 1884, when he was awarded a first class certificate as a marine engineer (this period is recorded in his diaries deposited at Birmingham Library's Archives and Heritage Service). As an assistant outdoor manager with a Sunderland shipbuilder he designed the award-winning instantaneous engaging-disengaging gear, the first safe and reliable method of efficiently releasing lifeboats. The invention was quickly approved by the Board of Trade and came into worldwide use in both naval and merchant vessels.
Mills became the first engineer to successfully manufacture products using aluminium and in 1885 he established the first British aluminium foundry in Sunderland. There he patented aluminium golf clubs, which were marketed under the Standard Golf Company trade name. He later set up another aluminium factory in Birmingham, where he began to produce castings for parts needed in the new car and aircraft industries. He also invented a telescopic walking stick with a patent leather seat and took out the first British patent on a windscreen wiper.
Shortly after the outbreak of war in 1915 Mills was engaged by the Army as a consultant to improve the design and functionality of the 'Roland Grenade', which was then in use. He obtained several patents for his inventions, such as Specification No. 3559, which relieved the pressure around the ignition mechanism to prevent premature explosions. Early in 1915 Mills converted the Atlas Aluminium Works at Grove Street and Bridge Street West, Birmingham into the Mills Munitions Factory. He was not given an exclusive production contract but the factory made about four million of the seventy-five million supplied to the British and Allied armies throughout the war.
Photographs in Mills' albums at Birmingham Archives & Heritage show him with his beloved Triumph motorcycle or his car or with his wife and guests at his home in Church Road, Edgbaston, where he collected antique Royal Worcester porcelain, pictures and furniture. Newspaper obituaries indicate that Mills played an active role in local business life and that he was a member of the Executive of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and Chairman of the James Watt Centenary Trust. Mills received a knighthood from King George V in 1922 for his services to the war effort, received £27,750 from the government, although he failed to obtain tax exemption for this fee and, apparently, ‘was wont to declare that he had lost money by the grenade'.<small><sup>1</sup></small>
<font color="#666633"><small><sup>1</sup> Biographical details extracted from the scrapbook of Mills' press notices and obituaries
[BA&H: MS 675]</small></font>