Henry Ford was an industrialist who revolutionized assembly line production for the automobile, making the Model T one of America’s greatest inventions.
(1863-1947)
Who Was Henry Ford?
Henry Ford was an American automobile manufacturer who created the Model T in 1908 and went on to develop the assembly line mode of production, which revolutionized the automotive industry.
As a result, Ford sold millions of cars and became a world-famous business leader. The company later lost its market dominance but had a lasting impact on other technological development, on labor issues and on U.S. infrastructure. Today, Ford is credited for helping to build America's economy during the nation's vulnerable early years and is considered one of America's leading businessmen.
Early Life and Education
Ford was born on July 30, 1863, on his family's farm in Wayne County, near Dearborn, Michigan.
When Ford was 13 years old, his father gifted him a pocket watch, which the young boy promptly took apart and reassembled. Friends and neighbors were impressed and requested that he fix their timepieces too.
Unsatisfied with farm work, Ford left home at the age of 16 to take an apprenticeship as a machinist at a shipbuilding firm in Detroit. In the years that followed, he would learn to skillfully operate and service steam engines and would also study bookkeeping.
In 1888, Ford married Clara Ala Bryant. The couple had a son, Edsel, in 1893.
In 1890, Ford was hired as an engineer for the Detroit Edison Company. In 1893, his natural talents earned him a promotion to chief engineer.
All the while, Ford developed his plans for a horseless carriage. In 1892, Ford built his first gasoline-powered buggy, which had a two-cylinder, four-horsepower engine. In 1896, he constructed his first model car, the Ford Quadricycle.
In the same year, he attended a meeting with Edison executives and found himself presenting his automobile plans to Thomas Edison . The lighting genius encouraged Ford to build a second, better model.
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Ford Motor Company
By 1898, Ford was awarded with his first patent for a carburetor. In 1899, with money raised from investors following the development of a third model car, Ford left Edison Illuminating Company to pursue his car-making business full-time.
After a few trials building cars and companies, Ford established the Ford Motor Company in 1903.
Ford introduced the Model T , the first car to be affordable for most Americans, in October 1908 and continued its construction until 1927. Also known as the “Tin Lizzie,” the car was known for its durability and versatility, quickly making it a huge commercial success.
For several years, Ford Motor Company posted 100 percent gains. Simple to drive and cheap to repair, especially following Ford’s invention of the assembly line, nearly half of all cars in America in 1918 were Model T's.
By 1927, Ford and his son Edsel introduced another successful car, the Model A, and the Ford Motor Company grew into an industrial behemoth.
Henry Ford's Assembly Line
In 1913, Ford launched the first moving assembly line for the mass production of the automobile. This new technique decreased the amount of time it took to build a car from 12 hours to two and a half, which in turn lowered the cost of the Model T from $850 in 1908 to $310 by 1926 for a much-improved model.
In 1914, Ford introduced the $5 wage for an eight-hour workday ($110 in 2011), more than double what workers were previously making on average, as a method of keeping the best workers loyal to his company.
More than for his profits, Ford became renowned for his revolutionary vision: the manufacture of an inexpensive automobile made by skilled workers who earn steady wages and enjoyed a five-day, 40-hour work week.
Philosophy and Philanthropy
Ford was an ardent pacifist and opposed World War I , even funding a peace ship to Europe. Later, in 1936, Ford and his family established the Ford Foundation to provide ongoing grants for research, education and development.
In business, Ford offered profit sharing to select employees who stayed with the company for six months and, most important, who conducted their lives in a respectable manner.
At the same time, the company's "Social Department" looked into an employee’s drinking, gambling and otherwise uncouth activities to determine eligibility for participation.
Henry Ford, Anti-Semite
Despite Ford’s philanthropic leanings, he was a committed anti-Semite. He even went as far as to support a weekly newspaper, The Dearborn Independent , which furthered such views.
Ford published a number of anti-Semitic pamphlets, including a 1921 pamphlet, "The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem.” Ford was awarded the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the most important award Nazis gave to foreigners, by Adolf Hitler in 1938.
In 1998, a lawsuit filed in Newark, New Jersey, accused the Ford Motor Company of profiting from the forced labor of thousands of people at one of its truck factories in Cologne, Germany during World War II . The Ford company, in turn, said the factory was under the control of the Nazis, not the American corporate headquarters.
In 2001, Ford Motor Company released a study which found that the company did not profit from the German subsidiary, at the same time promising to donate $4 million to human rights studies focused on slavery and forced labor.
Ford died on April 7, 1947, of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 83, near his Dearborn estate, Fair Lane.
Henry Ford Museum
Ford was an avid collector of Americana, with a particular interest in technological innovations and the lives of ordinary people: farmers, factory workers, shopkeepers and business people. He decided to create a place where their lives and interests could be celebrated.
Opening in 1933, the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, displays the thousands of objects Ford collected and many more-recent additions, such as clocks and watches, an Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, presidential limousines and other exhibits.
Also on display in the expansive outdoor Greenfield Village are operational railroad roundhouses and engines, the Wright Brothers bicycle shop, a replica of Thomas Edison's Menlo Park laboratory and Ford's relocated birthplace.
Ford's vision for the museum was stated as, "When we are through, we shall have reproduced American life as lived; and that, I think, is the best way of preserving at least a part of our history and tradition."
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QUICK FACTS
- Name: Henry Ford
- Birth Year: 1863
- Birth date: July 30, 1863
- Birth State: Michigan
- Birth City: Wayne County
- Birth Country: United States
- Gender: Male
- Best Known For: Henry Ford was an industrialist who revolutionized assembly line production for the automobile, making the Model T one of America’s greatest inventions.
- Business and Industry
- Astrological Sign: Leo
- Goldsmith, Bryant & Stratton Business College in Detroit
- Interesting Facts
- Upon Thomas Edison's blessing, Henry Ford sought to make a better car model and eventually started his own company.
- Ford became renowned for his revolutionary vision: the manufacture of an inexpensive automobile made by skilled workers who earn steady wages.
- Despite his pacifism and philanthropy, Ford was strongly anti-Semitic.
- Death Year: 1947
- Death date: April 7, 1947
- Death State: Michigan
- Death City: Dearborn
- Death Country: United States
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CITATION INFORMATION
- Article Title: Henry Ford Biography
- Author: Biography.com Editors
- Website Name: The Biography.com website
- Url: https://www.biography.com/business-leaders/henry-ford
- Access Date:
- Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
- Last Updated: September 5, 2019
- Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
- The only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.
- Failure is simply an opportunity to begin again; this time more intelligently.
- The only real mistake is one from which we learn nothing.
- If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said, 'Faster horses.'
- Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars.
- Vision without execution is just hallucination.
- A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.
- You don't have to hold a position in order to be a leader.
- Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.
- Don't find fault, find a remedy.
- Whether you think you can, or you think you can't—you're right.
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Biography of Henry Ford, American Industrialist and Inventor
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Henry Ford (July 30, 1863–April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist and business magnate best known for founding the Ford Motor Company and promoting the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. A prolific innovator and shrewd businessman, Ford was responsible for the Model T and Model A automobiles, as well as the popular Fordson farm tractor, the V8 engine, a submarine chaser, and the Ford Tri-Motor "Tin Goose" passenger airplane. No stranger to controversy, the often outspoken Ford was also known for promoting anti-Semitism .
Fast Facts: Henry Ford
- Known For: American industrialist, founder of the Ford Motor Company
- Born: July 30, 1863 in Dearborn, Michigan
- Parents: Mary Litogot Ahern Ford and William Ford
- Died: April 7, 1947 in Dearborn, Michigan
- Education: Goldsmith, Bryant & Stratton Business University 1888—1890
- Published Works: My Life and Work
- Spouse: Clara Jane Bryant
- Children: Edsel Ford (November 6, 1893–May 26, 1943)
- Notable Quote: “The only true test of values, either of men or of things, is that of their ability to make the world a better place in which to live.”
Henry Ford was born on July 30, 1863 to William Ford and Mary Litogot Ahern on the family’s farm near Dearborn, Michigan. He was the eldest of six children in a family of four boys and two girls. His father William was a native of County Cork, Ireland, who fled the Irish potato famine with two borrowed IR£ pounds and a set of carpentry tools to come to the United States in 1847. His mother Mary, the youngest child of Belgian immigrants, was born in Michigan. When Henry Ford was born, the United States was in the midst of the Civil War .
Ford completed first through eighth grades in two one-room schoolhouses, the Scottish Settlement School and the Miller School. The Scottish Settlement School building was eventually moved to Ford's Greenfield Village and opened to tourists. Ford was particularly devoted to his mother, and when she died in 1876, his father expected Henry to run the family farm. However, he hated farm work, later recalling, “I never had any particular love for the farm—it was the mother on the farm I loved.”
After the 1878 harvest, Ford abruptly left the farm, walking off without permission to Detroit, where he stayed with his father's sister Rebecca. He took a job at the streetcar manufacturer Michigan Car Company Works, but was fired after six days and had to return home.
In 1879, William got Henry an apprenticeship at the James Flower and Brothers Machine shop in Detroit, where he lasted nine months. He left that job for a position at the Detroit Dry Dock Company, which was a pioneer in iron ships and Bessemer steel. Neither job paid him enough to cover his rent, so he took a night job with a jeweler, cleaning and repairing watches.
Henry Ford returned to the farm in 1882, where he operated a small portable steam threshing machine—the Westinghouse Agricultural Engine—for a neighbor. He was very good at it, and over the summers of 1883 and 1884, he was hired by the company to operate and repair engines made and sold in Michigan and northern Ohio.
In December 1885, Ford met Clara Jane Bryant (1866–1950) at a New Year's Eve party and they married on April 11, 1888. The couple would have one son, Edsel Bryant Ford (1893–1943).
Ford continued to work the farm—his father gave him an acreage—but his heart was in tinkering. He clearly had a business in mind. Over the winters of 1888 through 1890, Henry Ford enrolled in Goldsmith, Bryant & Stratton Business University in Detroit, where he likely took penmanship, bookkeeping, mechanical drawing, and general business practices.
The Road to the Model T
By the early 1890s, Ford was convinced that he could construct a horseless carriage. He didn't know enough about electricity, however, so in September 1891 he took a job with the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit. After his first and only son Edsel was born on November 6, 1893, Ford was promoted to chief engineer. By 1896, Ford had built his first working horseless carriage, which he named a quadricycle. He sold it in order to finance work on an improved model—a delivery wagon.
On April 17, 1897, Ford applied for a patent for a carburetor, and on August 5, 1899, the Detroit Automobile Company was formed. Ten days later, Ford quit the Edison Illuminating Company. And on January 12, 1900, the Detroit Automobile Company released the delivery wagon as its first commercial automobile, designed by Henry Ford.
Ford Motor Company and the Model T
Ford incorporated the Ford Motor Company in 1903, proclaiming, "I will build a car for the great multitude." In October 1908, he did so, as the first Model T rolled off the assembly line. Ford numbered his models by the letters of the alphabet, although not all of them made it to production. First priced at $950, the Model T eventually dipped as low as $280 during its 19 years of production. Nearly 15,000,000 were sold in the United States alone, a record that would stand for the next 45 years. The Model T heralded the beginning of the Motor Age. Ford's innovation was a car that evolved from a luxury item for the wealthy to an essential form of transportation for the “ordinary man,” which that ordinary man could afford and maintain by himself.
Thanks to Ford’s nationwide publicity effort, half of all cars in the United States were Model Ts by 1918. Every new Model T was black. In his autobiography, Ford famously wrote, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.”
Ford, who distrusted accountants, managed to amass one of the world's largest fortunes without ever having his company audited. Without an accounting department, Ford reportedly guessed how much money was being taken in and spent each month by separating the company's bills and invoices and weighing them on a scale. The company would continue to be privately-owned by the Ford family until 1956, when the first shares of Ford Motor Company stock were issued.
While Ford did not invent the assembly line , he championed it and used it to revolutionize manufacturing processes in the United States. By 1914, his Highland Park, Michigan, plant used innovative production techniques to turn out a complete chassis every 93 minutes. This was a stunning improvement over the earlier production time of 728 minutes. Using a constantly-moving assembly line, a subdivision of labor, and careful coordination of operations, Ford realized huge gains in productivity and personal wealth.
In 1914, Ford began paying his employees $5 a day, nearly doubling the wages offered by other manufacturers. He cut the workday from nine to eight hours in order to convert the factory to a three-shift workday. Ford's mass-production techniques would eventually allow for the manufacture of a Model T every 24 seconds. His innovations made him an international celebrity.
By 1926, faltering sales of the Model T finally convinced Ford a new model was needed. Even as production of the Ford Model T ended on May 27, 1927, Ford was working on its replacement, the Model A.
The Model A, the V8, and the Tri-Motor
In designing the Model A, Ford focused on the engine, chassis, and other mechanical necessities, while his son Edsel designed the body. With little formal training in mechanical engineering himself, Ford turned much of the actual design of the Model A to a talented team of engineers working under his direction and close supervision.
The first successful Ford Model A was introduced in December 1927. By the time production ended in 1931, more than 4 million Model As had rolled off the assembly line. It was at this point Ford decided to follow the marketing lead of his main competitor General Motors in presenting annual model enhancements as a means of boosting sales. During the 1930s, the Ford-owned Universal Credit Corporation became a major car-financing operation.
As the company’s design change for 1932, Ford set the auto industry on its ear with the revolutionary flathead Ford V8, the first low-price eight-cylinder engine. Variants of the flathead V8 would be used in Ford vehicles for 20 years, with its power and dependability leaving it an iconic engine among hot-rod builders and car collectors.
As a lifelong pacifist, Ford refused to produce arms for either world wars, but he did make engines suitable for aircraft, jeeps, and ambulances. Made by the Ford Airplane Company, the Ford Tri-Motor, or "Tin Goose," was the mainstay of the earliest airplane passenger service between the late 1920s and early 1930s. Even though only 199 were ever built, Ford's all-metal construction, 15-passenger capacity planes suited the needs of almost all of the early airlines until newer, larger, and faster planes from Boeing and Douglas became available.
Other Projects
Although best known for the Model T, Ford was a restless man and had a substantial number of side projects. One of his most successful was a farm tractor, called the Fordson, which he began developing in 1906. It was built on a Model B engine with a large water tank in place of a standard radiator. By 1916, he had built working prototypes, and when World War I started, he produced them internationally. The Fordson continued to be made in the U.S. until 1928; his factories in Cork, Ireland, and Dagenham, England, made Fordsons throughout World War II.
During World War I, he designed the "Eagle," a submarine chaser powered by a steam turbine. It carried an advanced submarine detection device. Sixty were put into service by 1919, but the costs of development were much higher than original estimates—for one thing, Ford had to excavate canals near his plants to test and transport the new ships.
Ford also built hydroelectric plants, eventually constructing 30 of them, including two for the U.S. government: one on the Hudson River near Troy, New York, and one on the Mississippi River at Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. He had a project called Ford Estates, in which he would buy up properties and rehab them for other purposes. In 1931, he bought the 18th-century manor Boreham House in Essex, England, and a surrounding 2,000 acres of land. He never lived there but set up Boreham House as an Institute of Agricultural Engineering to train men and women on new technologies. Another Ford Estates project was cooperative farming properties in several rural areas in the U.S. and U.K., where people lived in cottages and raised crops and animals.
After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, Ford became one of the major U.S. military contractors, supplying airplanes, engines, jeeps, and tanks throughout World War II.
Later Career and Death
When Ford’s son Edsel, then president of Ford Motor Company, died of cancer in May 1943, the elderly and ailing Henry Ford decided to reassume the presidency. Now nearly 80 years old, Ford had already suffered several possible heart attacks or strokes, and was described as having become mentally unstable, unpredictable, suspicious, and generally no longer fit to lead the company. However, having had de facto control of the company for the last 20 years, Ford convinced the board of directors to elect him. With Ford serving until the end of World War II, Ford Motor Company declined sharply, losing more than $10 million a month—nearly $150 million today.
In September 1945, with his health failing, Ford retired and ceded the presidency of the company to his grandson, Henry Ford II. Henry Ford died at age 83 on April 7, 1947, of a cerebral hemorrhage at his Fair Lane estate in Dearborn, Michigan. More than 5,000 people per hour filed past his casket at a public viewing held at Greenfield Village. Funeral services were held in Detroit's Cathedral Church of St. Paul, after which Ford was buried in the Ford Cemetery in Detroit.
Legacy and Controversy
Ford's affordable Model T irrevocably altered American society. As more Americans owned cars, urbanization patterns changed. The United States saw the growth of suburbia, the creation of a national highway system, and a population entranced with the possibility of going anywhere anytime. Ford witnessed many of these changes during his lifetime, all the while personally longing for the agrarian lifestyle of his youth.
Unfortunately, Ford was also criticized as an anti-Semite. In 1918, Ford purchased a then-obscure weekly newspaper called The Dearborn Independent, in which he regularly expressed his strongly anti-Semitic views. Ford required all of his auto dealerships nationwide to carry the Independent and distribute it to its customers. Ford's anti-Semitic articles were also published in Germany, prompting Nazi Party leader Heinrich Himmler to describe him as “one of our most valuable, important, and witty fighters.”
In Ford’s defense, however, his Ford Motor Company was one of the few major corporations known for actively hiring Black workers during the early 1900s, and was never accused of discriminating against Jewish workers. In addition, Ford was among the first companies of the day to regularly hire women and handicapped persons.
Sources and Further References
- Bryan, Ford Richardson. "Beyond the Model T: The Other Ventures of Henry Ford." 2nd ed. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997.
- Bryan, Ford R. "Clara: Mrs. Henry Ford.” Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2013.
- Ford, Henry and Crowther, Samuel (1922). "My Life and Work." CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014.
- Lewis, David L. "The Public Image of Henry Ford: An American Folk Hero and His Company." Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1976.
- Swigger, Jessica. "History Is Bunk: Historical Memories at Henry Ford's Greenfield Village." University of Texas , 2008.
- Weiss, David A. "The Saga of the Tin Goose: The Story of the Ford Tri-Motor." 3rd ed. Trafford, 2013.
- Wik, Reynold M. "Henry Ford and Grass-roots America." Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1973.
- Glock, Charles Y. and Quinley, Harold E. “Anti-Semitism in America.” Transaction Publishers, 1983.
- Allen, Michael Thad. “The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps.” University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
- Wood, John Cunningham and Michael C. Wood (eds). "Henry Ford: Critical Evaluations in Business and Management, Volume 1." London: Routledge, 2003.
Updated by Robert Longley .
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