Henry Ford

The Life of a
great inventor

By Micula Alin Adrian

Henry Ford
Born

July 30, 1863(1863-07-30)

Greenfield Township, Dearborn,
Michigan, U.S.

Died

April 7, 1947 (aged 83)

Fair Lane, Dearborn, Michigan,
U.S.

Occupation

Business, Engineering

Net Worth

$188.1billion, based on
information from Forbes
February 2008.

Religion

Protestant Episcopal

Wife

Clara Jane Bryant

Children

Edsel Ford

Parents

William Ford and Mary Ford

Signature

Early years
In 1879, sixteen-year-old Ford left home for
the nearby city of Detroit to work as an
apprentice machinist, although he did
occasionally return to help on the farm. He
remained an apprentice for three years and
then returned to Dearborn. During the next
few years, Henry divided his time between
operating or repairing steam engines, finding
occasional work in a Detroit factory, and overhauling his father's farm implements, as well
as lending a reluctant hand with other farm
work. Upon his marriage to Clara Bryant in
1888, Henry supported himself and his wife
by running a sawmill.

The Quadricycle
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.

These experiments culminated in 1896 with the completion of his own

self-propelled vehicle-the Quadricycle. The Quadricycle had four wire wheels
that looked like heavy bicycle wheels, was steered with a tiller like a boat,
and had only two forward speeds with no reverse.

Ford Motor Company

After two unsuccessful
attempts to establish a company to
manufacture automobiles, the Ford
Motor Company was incorporated in
1903 with Henry Ford as vicepresident 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.

Model T
The Model T had the steering wheel
on the left, which every other
company soon copied. The entire
engine and transmission were
enclosed; the four cylinders were
cast in a solid block; the suspension
used two semi-elliptic springs. The
car was very simple to drive, and
easy and cheap to repair. It was so
cheap at $825 in 1908 (the price fell
every year) that by 1918, half of all
cars in America were Model Ts.

The design was fervently promoted and defended by Ford, and production
continued as late as 1927; the final total production was 15,007,034. This record
stood for the next 45 years. This record was achieved in just 19 years flat from
the introduction of the first Model T (1908).

$5 day
Ford astonished the world in 1914 by
offering a $5 per day wage, which more than
doubled the rate of most of his workers. (Using
the consumer price index, this was equivalent to
$111.10 per day in 2010 dollars.) The move
proved extremely profitable; instead of constant
turnover of employees, the best mechanics in
Detroit flocked to Ford, bringing in their human
capital and expertise, raising productivity, and
lowering training costs. Ford called it "wage
motive." The company's use of vertical
integration also proved successful when Ford
built a gigantic factory that shipped in raw
materials and shipped out finished automobiles.

Keeping the company in

the family
Henry Ford turned the presidency of Ford Motor
Company over to his son Edsel Ford in December
1918. Henry, however, retained final decision
authority and sometimes reversed his son. Henry
started another company, Henry Ford and Son, and
made a show of taking himself and his best
employees to the new company; the goal was to scare
the remaining holdout stockholders of the Ford Motor
Company to sell their stakes to him before they lost
most of their value. (He was determined to have full
control over strategic decisions). The ruse worked,
and Henry and Edsel purchased all remaining stock
from the other investors, thus giving the family sole
ownership of the company.

Rouge Plant
The company began construction of the
world's largest industrial complex along the
banks of the Rouge River in Dearborn,
Michigan, during the late 1910s and early
1920s. The massive Rouge Plant included all
the elements needed for automobile
production: a steel mill, glass factory, and
automobile assembly line. Iron ore and coal
were brought in on Great Lakes steamers
and by railroad, and were used to produce
both iron and steel. Rolling mills, forges, and
assembly shops transformed the steel into
springs, axles, and car bodies. Foundries
converted iron into engine blocks and
cylinder heads that were assembled with
other components into engines.
By September 1927, all steps in the
manufacturing process from refining raw
materials to final assembly of the automobile
took place at the vast Rouge Plant,
characterizing Henry Ford's idea of mass
production.

Aerial view of the Rouge Plant in 1930.

Number of men on payroll at capacity:
81,000.
Total floor space: 6,952,484 sq. ft. (645,909
sq. meters)
Total cost: $268, 991, 592

Model A
By 1926, flagging sales of the Model T
finally convinced Henry to make a new
model. Henry pursued the project with
a great deal of technical expertise in
design of the engine, chassis, and other
mechanical necessities, while leaving
the body design to his son. Edsel also
managed to prevail over his father's
initial objections in the inclusion of a
sliding-shift transmission.
The result was the successful Ford
Model A, introduced in December 1927
and produced through 1931, with a
total output of more than 4 million.
Subsequently, the Ford company
adopted an annual model change
system similar to that recently
pioneered by its competitor General
Motors.

Labor philosophy
Henry Ford was a pioneer of "welfare
capitalism" designed to improve the lot of his
workers and especially to reduce the heavy
turnover that had many departments hiring
300 men per year to fill 100 slots. Efficiency
meant hiring and keeping the best workers.
Ford announced his $5-per-day program
on January 5, 1914. The revolutionary
program called for a raise in minimum daily
pay from $2.34 to $5 for qualifying workers.
It also set a new, reduced workweek,
although the details vary in different
accounts. Apparently the program started
with Saturdays as workdays and sometime
later made them days off. Ford says that with
this voluntary change, labor turnover in his
plants went from huge to so small that he
stopped bothering to measure it.

Willow Run Plant

The Ford Motor Company played a
pivotal role in the Allied victory during
World War I and World War II. With
Europe under siege, the Ford company's
genius turned to mass production for
the war effort. Specifically, Ford
examined the B-24 Liberator bomber,
still the most-produced Allied bomber in
history, which quickly shifted the
balance of power.
Before Ford, and under optimal
conditions, the aviation industry could
produce one Consolidated Aircraft B-24
Bomber a day at an aircraft plant. Ford
showed the world how to produce one
B-24 an hour at a peak of 600 per
month in 24-hour shifts. Ford's Willow
Run factory broke ground in April 1941.
At the time, it was the largest assembly
plant in the world, with over
3,500,000 square feet (330,000 m2).

B-24s under construction at Ford Motor's

Willow Run plant

The Dearborn Independent

In 1918, Ford's closest aide and private secretary,
Ernest G. Liebold, purchased an obscure weekly
newspaper, The Dearborn Independent for Ford. The
Independent ran for eight years, from 1920 until 1927,
during which Liebold was editor. The newspaper
published "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,"
which was discredited by The Times of London as a
forgery during the Independent's publishing run. The
American Jewish Historical Society described the ideas
presented in the magazine as "anti-immigrant, antilabor, anti-liquor, and anti-Semitic."
A libel lawsuit brought by San Francisco lawyer and
Jewish farm cooperative organizer Aaron Sapiro in
response to anti-Semitic remarks led Ford to close the
Independent in December 1927. News reports at the
time quoted him as being shocked by the content and
having been unaware of its nature. During the trial, the
editor of Ford's "Own Page," William Cameron, testified
that Ford had nothing to do with the editorials even
though they were under his byline.

Miscellaneous

Ford was the winner of the award of Car Entrepreneur of the Century in 1999.

Henry Ford dressed up as Santa Claus and gave sleigh rides to children at
Christmas time on his estate.

Henry Ford was especially fond of Thomas Edison, and on Edison's deathbed, he
demanded Edison's son catch his final breath in a test tube. The test tube can
still be found today in Henry Ford Museum.

Ford financed a pacifist expedition to Europe during WWI.

Ford adopted a paternalistic policy to reform his workers' lives both at home and
at work.

Henry Ford was an unsuccessful candidate for the United States Senate in 1918

Ford sought ways to use agricultural products in industrial production, including

soybean-based plastic automobile components such as this experimental
automobile trunk.

Henry Ford was one of the nation's foremost opponents of labor unions in the
1930s and was the last automobile manufacturer to unionize his work force.