William Hillman
Encyclopedia
William Hillman was a British bicycle and automobile manufacturer. In partnership with Louis Coatalen
Louis Coatalen
Louis Hervé Coatalen was a Breton automobile engineer.Coatalen was born in the Breton fishing town of Concarneau and went on to study engineering at the Ecole des Arts et Métiers at Cluny ....

 he founded the Hillman-Coatalen Company
Hillman
Hillman is a British automobile marque created by the Hillman Motor Car Company, founded in 1907. The company was based in Ryton-on-Dunsmore, near Coventry, England. Before 1907 the company had built bicycles...

 in 1907, later the Hillman Motor Company after Coatalen's defection to Sunbeam in 1909.

Early life

Hillman was born on 13 November 1848 in Stratford, Essex, where his father, also called William, was a shoemaker; his mother was Sarah Stitchbury. He became an apprentice in the engineering works of John Penn & Co. at Greenwich together with his friend James Starley
James Starley
James Starley was an English inventor and father of the bicycle industry. He was one of the most innovative and successful builders of bicycles and tricycles. His inventions include the differential gear and the perfection of chain-driven bicycles.-Early life:Starley was born in 1831 at Albourne,...

, who became known as "the father of the cycle industry". Hillman and Starley moved to the expanding industrial area of the English Midlands
English Midlands
The Midlands, or the English Midlands, is the traditional name for the area comprising central England that broadly corresponds to the early medieval Kingdom of Mercia. It borders Southern England, Northern England, East Anglia and Wales. Its largest city is Birmingham, and it was an important...

, where they were employed by the Coventry Sewing Machine Company. Sales of sewing machines had declined, and to compensate the company had become the first British manufacturers of bicycles, using designs based on French "boneshakers". The Franco-Prussian War
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...

 of 1870 halted bicycle manufacture in France and led to a boom in British production. Hillman set up his own bicycle manufacturing company in 1875, Auto Machinery, in partnership with W. H. Herbert, who provided the capital.

Career

As well as bicycles Hillman's company made roller-skates, sewing machines, and ball and roller bearings, of which it pioneered the mass production; Hillman was soon operating four factories in Coventry, and by 1896 a fifth in Germany. His success made him a millionaire, and allowed him to move to Abingdon House, an "impressive home" in Stoke Aldermoor
Stoke Aldermoor
Stoke Aldermoor is a suburb in Coventry, West Midlands, England. An area of Stoke Aldermoor consisting of a small estate alongside the northeast of Pinley Fields is called Pinley.-Industry:...

, now a suburb of Coventry.
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