Henry Ford was born on July 30th, 1863 in Dearborn, Michigan. He was the first of William and Mary Fords six children. At an early age he showed a great interest for mechanical things and a dislike for farm work.
At the age of sixteen (1879) he left home to go to Detroit to work as an apprentic machinist. He stayed there in three years and then returned to Dearborn. In 1888 he married Clara Bryan and supported the family by running a sawmill.
In 1891 he became an engineer with Edison illenumating company in Detroit. His promotion in1893 gave him enough time and money to experiment with inferned combustion engines. He succeed and he completed his own self-propelled vehicle -the quadricycle.
In 1903 he established the Ford Motor Company with the help of investors. first they only produced a few cars a day with 2-3 men working on each car.
In 1908 he realised his dream if making a reasonably priced, reliable and efficient multi purpoes car -the T-Ford. By 1918 half of all cars in America were a Model T and by 1927 fifteen million Model-T's had been made. He managed this by introducing the assembly line as an industrial standard. He emplyed thousands of people standing at the side of the assembly line adding a small bit until a finished Model T came out. He produced one car every few seconds!
Fords imperium has been thought to be a symbol of the American industrial succsess of the 1920s. Not only because the mass production of cars was a revolution in itself, but also because it led to the growth of other industries such as steel, rubber, road-making, oil and petrol.
He died in 1947 at the age of 83. |
