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Grandpa Pencil Henry Ford |
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was the founder of the Ford Motor Company and is credited with contributing to the creation of a middle class in American society. He was one of the first to apply assembly line manufacturing to the mass production of affordable motor cars. This achievement not only revolutionized industrial production in the United States and the rest of the world, but also had such tremendous influence over modern culture that many social theorists identify this phase of economic and social history as "Fordism." Ford was born on a prosperous farm in Springwells Township (now in the city of Dearborn, Michigan) that was owned by his parents, William and Mary Ford, immigrants from County Cork, Ireland. He was the eldest of six children. As a child, Henry was passionate about mechanics, preferring to tinker in his father's shop over doing farm chores and at 13, he saw a self-propelled vehicle, a steam powered thresher, for the first time. In 1879, he left home for the nearby city of Detroit to work as an apprentice machinist, first with James F.Flower & Bros., and later with the Detroit Dry Dock Co. In 1882, he returned to Dearborn to work on the family farm where he became adept at operating the Westinghouse portable steam engine. As a result he was hired by Westinghouse company to service their steam engines. He married Clara Bryant in 1888and supported himself by farming and running a sawmill. In 1891, Ford became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company, and after his promotion to Chief Engineer in 1893, he had enough time and money to devote his attention to personal experiments on internal combustion engines. These experiments culminated in 1896 with the completion of his own self-propelled vehicle named the Quadricycle, which he test-drove on June 4 of that year. After this initial success, Ford left Edison Illuminating and, with other investors, formed the Detroit Automobile Company. The Detroit Automobile Company went bankrupt soon afterward because Ford continued to improve the design, rather than selling cars. Ford raced his vehicles against those of other manufacturers to show the superiority of his designs. |
With his interest in race cars, he formed a second company, the Henry Ford Company. During this period, he personally drove his Quadricycle to victory in a race against Alexander Winton, a well-known driver and the heavy favorite on October 10, 1901. Ford was forced out of the company by the investors in 1902, and the company was reorganized as Cadillac. Henry Ford, with eleven other investors and $28,000 in capital, incorporated the Ford Motor Company in 1903. In a newly-designed car, Ford drove an exhibition in which the car covered the distance of a mile on the ice of Lake St. Clair in 39.4 seconds, which was a new land speed record. Ford was also one of the early backers of the Indianapolis 500. It was in 1913 that Henry Ford introduced the moving assembly belts into his plants, which enabled an enormous increase in production. Although Ford is often credited with the idea, contemporary sources indicate that the concept and its development came from employees Clarence Avery, P.E. "Ed" Martin, Charles E. Sorensen, and C.H. Wills. By 1918, half of all cars in America were Model Ts. The design, strongly promoted and defended by Henry Ford, would continue through 1927 (well after its popularity had faded), with a final total production of fifteen million vehicles. This was a record which would stand for the next 45 years. Ford said, "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black." In 1919, after unsuccessfully seeking a seat in the United States Senate, Henry Ford turned the presidency of Ford Motor Company over to his son Edsel, although still maintaining a firm hand in its management—few company by Henry, At this time, Henry and Edsel purchased all remaining stock from other investors, thus becoming sole owners of the company whichremained privately held by the family until 1956, when the family allowed a public offering of a portion of the company without ceding control. Ford often hired handicapped people because he felt that they really wanted to work and were often not as distracted as other employees. |
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