Henry Ford

Henry Ford, born on 30 July 1863, was the first of six children of William and Mary Ford. He grew up in a prosperous farming family in what is now Dearborn, Michigan. His childhood was typical of a nineteenth-century country boy: attending a small school and helping his parents on the farm. Yet at an early age, he discovered a dislike of farming and began to show an interest in mechanics.

In 1879, sixteen-year-old Henry left home for nearby Detroit to work as an apprentice machinist, although he returned from time to time to help his family on the farm. His apprenticeship lasted three years, after which he returned to Dearborn. Over the following years, he divided his time between operating and repairing steam engines, occasional work at a Detroit factory and work on his father’s farm. After marrying Clara Bryant in 1888, he supported himself and his wife by running a sawmill.

In 1891, Henry Ford became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company. This marked his conscious decision to devote his life to industry. His promotion to chief engineer in 1893 gave him enough time and money to pursue his own experiments with internal combustion engines.

Those experiments culminated in 1896, when he built his own self-propelled vehicle, the Quadricycle. It had four wire-spoked wheels resembling heavy bicycle wheels, was steered with a tiller like a boat and had only two forward gears, with no reverse. Although Ford was not the first to build a petrol-powered self-propelled vehicle, he was one of the automotive pioneers who helped turn the country into a nation of motorists.

After two unsuccessful attempts to establish a car manufacturing company, he finally founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903, becoming its vice-president and chief engineer. The new company produced only a few cars a day at its Mack Avenue factory in Detroit. Teams of two or three people worked on each car, assembling it from parts made to order by other companies.

Henry Ford realised his dream of producing truly reliable, affordable cars with the introduction of the Model T in 1908. It marked the beginning of a new era in personal transport. Easy to drive and stable on rough roads, the car immediately brought the company enormous success.

By 1918, half of all cars in America were Model Ts. To meet growing demand, the company opened a large factory in Highland Park, Michigan, in 1910. Here, Ford combined precision manufacturing, standardised interchangeable parts and division of labour, finally introducing moving assembly-line production in 1913. Workers now remained at their stations, each adding a part to the car as it passed along the line. The delivery of components to workers was carefully timed, allowing assembly to proceed smoothly and efficiently. The moving assembly line revolutionised the automotive industry, substantially reducing assembly time and consequently cutting costs.

Production of the Model T made Ford the world’s largest car manufacturer.