Roland's grenade itself did not become a significant force in warfare though - it was William Mills' simplified take on its principle that did - hence my Model T analogy (IIRC, 33 million Mills were supplied in the course of WWI)
The Roland grenade did become a significant force in warfare in that, as Bonnex states above, it holds the position as being a 'technological or design milestone', a completely novel breakthrough in the functionality and operation of a hand - and rifle - grenade. Without the Roland there would have been no Mills grenade. William Mills turned out to be the right man in the right place, a good mechanical engineer, who developed the Roland into an effective and safe grenade, but had Captain Roland not been captured by the Germans in August 1914, and had been able to pursue his weapon design himself, it is highly probable that he would have implemented very similar improvements to Mills, and history would talk of the Roland Mechanical Grenade rather than the Mills bomb.
56 million Mills grenades (the No.5 and its rifle grenade variants the No.23 Mks I and II) were made between April 1915 and April 1918, and while this is a significant figure, it was an awful item to mass produce. Reject castings ran at around 30%. It was no Model T. That analogy falls more to the No.23 Mk III or No.36 which was a redesign of the Mills bomb by Francis Gibbons and Frederick Vickery. The Vickery-Gibbons bomb (No.36) is arguably as different to the Mills bomb (No.5) as the Mills is to the Roland, but fundamentally neither the No.5 or No.36 would have come about if it had not been for the inspirational design of that Belgian infantry lieutenant back in 1912.
Incidentally 19 million Nos 23 Mk III and 36 were made from August 1917 to March 1919. Then between 1939 and 1946 British War Office orders to British and Commonwealth (Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, South African and Indian) factories topped 60 million, with additional orders from Australia and India for Pacific and Burma theatre requirements. Ignoring small post war UK production, and millions of copies made elsewhere (Israel, India, Pakistan, Somalia, etc), the Vickery-Gibbons No.36 better fits the Model T analogy.
History is unfair: through the circumstances of his capture Roland has received scant recognition for his major contribution to grenade design; for his aggressive ability to promote himself, Mills attained perhaps too much credit, at the expense of Gibbons and Vickery, and Roland.
