This year ELEY celebrates 180 years of manufacturing high quality ammunition. The British company was established in 1828 by William and Charles Eley and has a long and proud tradition in the manufacture of rimfire ammuni......This year ELEY celebrates 180 years of manufacturing high quality ammunition. The British company was established in 1828 by William and Charles Eley and has a long and proud tradition in the manufacture of rimfire ammunition. Specializing in .22 calibre cartridges, Eley is widely regarded as the world leader with its flagship product TENEX, sold in more than 130 countries. The name C Eley first claimed public attention through an advertisement in the London Morning Chronicle of 10 July 1828, the advert promotes the opening of an extensive manufactory who can supply patent cartridges, superior to anything else and hailed as the greatest improvements ever produced in gunnery. Later evidence suggests that the proprietors were two brothers, William and Charles Eley who were adventurous and courageous in developing this infant industry. William Eley had three sons who inherited the business from him in 1842. They vigorously developed the business in the second half of the nineteenth century, which included a major expansion in 1874 through the sale of shares to the public. During this period ELEY won many awards for the quality of its products throughout the world, the most prestigious being the Grand Prix which was bestowed on the company at the Paris Exhibitions of 1898 and 1900. The early 1900s saw a major development when ELEY became one of the founding members of Nobel Industries alongside the world renowned Kynoch Company. In 1928 the business moved to the Witton site in Birmingham as a subsidiary of what is now Imperial Metal Industries plc, a major publicly quoted multinational engineering conglomerate. Major ammunition developments that have come from ELEY include a joint patent with Samuel Colt for Colt revolver cartridges, in 1855 Britains first centerfire cartridge, produced in 1857 fundamental patents during the 1860s in the development of the Boxer primer system development of the first bottleneck rifle cartridges, in 1869 and thin-brass totally waterproof shotshell cartridges, in 1882. During the American Civil War, ELEY was a major supplier of ammunition to the Confederacy. Its first .22 rimfire cartridges were produced in 1860, but the move toward ELEY present world rimfire prominence really didnt begin until 1951 with the introduction of the first generation of Tenex.