Henry Ford(1863-1947)

Father of Mass Production
-HENRY FORD-

Henry Ford, born July 30, 1863, was the first of William and Mary Ford's six children.

In 1891, Ford became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit. This event signified a conscious decision on Ford's part to dedicate his life to industrial pursuits. His promotion to Chief Engineer in 1893 gave him enough time and money to devote attention to his personal experiments on internal combustion engines.

After two unsuccessful attempts to establish a company to manufacture automobiles, the Ford Motor Company was incorporated in 1903 with Henry Ford as vice-president and chief engineer. The infant company produced only a few cars a day at the Ford factory on Mack Avenue in Detroit. Groups of two or three men worked on each car from components made to order by other companies.

Henry Ford realized his dream of producing an automobile that was reasonably priced, reliable, and efficient with the introduction of the Model T in 1908. This vehicle initiated a new era in personal transportation. It was easy to operate, maintain, and handle on rough roads, immediately becoming a huge success.

By 1918, half of all cars in America were Model Ts. To meet the growing demand for the Model T, the company opened a large factory at Highland Park, Michigan, in 1910. Here, Henry Ford combined precision manufacturing, standardized and interchangeable parts, a division of labor, and, in 1913, a continuous moving assembly line. Workers remained in place, adding one component to each automobile as it moved past them on the line. Delivery of parts by conveyor belt to the workers was carefully timed to keep the assembly line moving smoothly and efficiently. The introduction of the moving assembly line revolutionized automobile production by significantly reducing assembly time per vehicle, thus lowering costs. Ford's production of Model Ts made his company the largest automobile manufacturer in the world.

The father of the Model T, the automobile assembly line, and commercial aviation was a crafty, workaholic businessman and an iron-fisted autocrat, who did things as he saw fit. He also was a social philanthropist, noted naturalist, and eminent folklorist. Henry Ford is so complex and so elusive that more than one hundred biographies have tried to delineate his character, shedding light on his facets while obscuring the hole.

What we do know is that Henry Ford the businessman and Henry Ford the man are not necessarily one and the same. He had very serious interests beyond automobiles, including global politics, industrial politics, industrial uses for agricultural products, environmental conservation, and positive change in human behavior through work.

The assembly line reduced production costs for cars by reducing assembly time. Ford's famous Model T was assembled in ninety-three minutes. Ford made his first car, called the "Quadricycle," in June, 1896. However, success came after he formed the Ford Motor Company in 1903. This was the third car manufacturing company formed to produce the cars he designed. He introduced the Model T in 1908 and it was a success. After installing the moving assembly lines in his factory in 1913, Ford became the world's biggest car manufacturer. By 1927, 15 million Model Ts had been manufactured.

Another victory won by Henry Ford was patent battle with George B. Selden. Selden, who had never built an automobile, held a patent on a "road engine", on that basis Selden was paid royalties by all American car manufacturers. Ford overturned Selden's patent and opened the American car market for the building of inexpensive cars.

Sources:

‘THE FORD CENTURY’ -Ford Motor Company and the Innovations That Shaped The World- By Russ Banham Foreword, By Paul Newman.

‘MY FORTY YEARS with FORD’ By Charles E. Sorensen.

http://www.thehenryford.org