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The Farmer Boy Who Invented Ford

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In 1879, a 16 year old boy left his father's farm bound for Detroit.
At a time when the only means of transportation were trains or horse carriages
and the first automobiles were mostly seen as racing machines for the rich,
this boy would later open a car company that would change the course of the automobile industry to what we know today.
35 years later after his arrival in Detroit,
half of all the cars on Earth were carrying his name
and that boy - Henry Ford - would become one of the wealthiest men in American history.
This is that story.
Henry Ford was born on his father's farm on the 30th of July 1863
in what is now Dearborn Michigan.
His father, William Ford, owned a farm where everyone in the family lived and worked.
And being the oldest son of six children,
Henry was expected to take over the family's business.
However, he was nothing like his father and was never interested in his business.
At the time, farming was labor-intensive, slow and rigorous.
While Henry did his best to help out on the farm, he hated the sheer idea of it.
"I never had any particular love for the farm, it was the mother on the farm I loved".
Like most kids his age, Henry didn't like going to school and never made it past the eighth grade.
He preferred to learn things on his own terms.
And from a young age, he became very interested in mechanics.
This curiosity for machines led him to study every piece of machinery he came across.
At the age of 12, his father gifted him a pocket watch.
And after playing around with its movements, he learned how to take it apart and put it back together in a matter of minutes
as well as the watches of his friends and relatives.
He later gained a reputation as a watch repairman
and began fixing watches for people in the neighborhood.
When Henry turned 13, he came across a steam engine for the first time in his life
during a school trip to one of Detroit's companies
and that's when his passion for mechanics became an obsession.
And for the next few years, it became his new hobby.
By the time he was 15, he had constructed his first steam engine
but his life took a turn when Henry lost his mother, Mary Ford, to a sudden illness.
Henry had shared a deep bond with his mother and was closer to her than anyone else on the farm.
Devastated by her loss, Henry's hate for the farm intensified.
He began looking for a way to escape his situation
as the farm held too many memories of his dear mother.
After turning 16 and against the wishes of his father,
Henry packed his things and left the village in search of a new direction in life.
At the time, Detroit was rapidly becoming a city of industry thanks to the steam engine
and the city was hungry for young engineers looking for work.
It was here in Detroit where Henry would plunge head first into reinventing himself
by learning everything there was to know about machines.
He took a job at a street car manufacturing company known as Michigan Car Company Works.
Unfortunately, Henry was fired only six days after he began.
After being unemployed for some time,
he found a job as an apprentice at the James Flower And Brothers machine shop
where he earned two dollars and sixty cents per week.
But it wasn't enough to cover his rent so Henry made good use of his childhood obsession.
He found a night job as a jeweler,
cleaning and repairing watches, six hours a night and six days a week
for three dollars weekly.
Despite pulling so many jobs together to make ends meet,
Henry would still study and experiment with machines whenever he had free time.
In 1882, when he turned 19,
Henry Ford decided to return home to Michigan.
He still hated farming so he did very little work there
and spent most of his time playing and experimenting with the machines he found on the farm.
Luckily enough, his father had purchased a portable steam engine
which had quickly become a norm among farmers.
Henry spent most of his time with this machine and became so good with it
that a neighbor at his father's farm paid him three dollars to operate his steam engine for him.
And from there, Ford's talent and gift for machines spread across Michigan.
Word of Henry's talent reached the district representative of the Westinghouse Engine Company of Schenectady from New York
and so the company hired him.
Henry's job was to travel throughout southern Michigan,
setting up and servicing Westinghouse steam tractor engines.
In the year 1885, Henry met Clara Jane Bryant at a New Year's Eve party and got engaged the following year.
As a wedding gift, Henry's father gave his son 40 acres of land.
But rather than turning it into a farmland, Henry had other ideas.
In 1891, Henry and Clara moved to a small apartment in Detroit.
Around this time, Henry came across a British magazine and learned about the gas engine.
This gas engine was being produced in small quantities by a German engineer called Nicholas Otto
and was very different and far more efficient than steam engines.
For one thing, they didn't need 30 minutes to start up
because the engine did all the combustion it needed internally.
Although this new engine was fast becoming really popular in Europe,
only a few people had heard about it in America.
Luckily enough for him, he found someone in the city who owned one.
Henry immediately fell in love with the gas engine but he couldn't understand how it worked
and the fact that the gas engine was powered up by an electric spark made things even worse.
Knowing he had to learn more about this,
Henry applied for work as a night engineer for the Edison Illuminating company
for a salary of $40 a month.
At the time, the company was the biggest electric company in Detroit
and it was generating electricity to 1000 homes in the city using a steam engine.
So this made Henry more than qualified to work there.
His job was to primarily fix the engine whenever it broke or developed a fault.
But when it was working fine he didn't have much else to do.
This gave Henry more than enough time to immerse himself in learning about electricity and how it works.
In 1893, Henry and Clara welcomed their first and only child, Edsel Bryant Ford.
And just three months after his birth, Henry was promoted to the position of chief engineer
at a salary of $100 per week.
That same year, Henry succeeded in creating his first working gas engine
which was the first step in his dream of creating a horseless carriage.
It wasn't until June 4th 1896, at exactly 1:30 am,
when he finally completed his experimental car using a gas engine.
He called it the Quadricycle.
The Quadricycle was essentially a crude contraption that consisted of two bicycles placed side by side
and was powered by a gasoline engine.
While the experiment was successful, it had a few issues of its own.
This experimental car had two gears and neither one was for going in reverse or going forward.
But the biggest problem was that it had no cooling system
and so, the car was prone to overheating after running for a while.
Henry made multiple adjustments to the car but the most notable one was adding a cooling system to the vehicle.
He later sold the vehicle for $200 and used the money for another big project.
With the support of the Detroit mayor,
Henry began to build his second experimental car and completed it by July 1899.
This new car was larger, sturdier and heavier than the previous one.
One morning Henry took a wealthy lumber merchant by the name of William Murphy for a test drive in his new vehicle.
By the time the test drive was finished, William wanted to be part of Henry's business venture
and soon after they shook hands together.
And on August 5th 1899, the Detroit Automobile Company was born.
Unfortunately, the company failed only a year later because of several reasons.
Henry's ideas about improving the car he worked on were not in line with the stakeholders ideas
who were pressuring him to make passenger cars.
Another reason was because most of the parts that were required to make his cars were produced by different companies
and as a result of this, whenever a delivery was late,
the whole factory had to sit back and wait for the delivery.
This slowed production by a significant amount of time.
His first car, which he called the delivery wagon, took six months to make
and only 20 of them were made during the company's first two year existence.
As a result of all this, Henry was fired from his position.
But even though his first company had failed, he remained optimistic.
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
Henry was actually relieved when he was sacked
because there was less pressure on him and now he could focus on other things.
Henry decided to turn his attention to racing cars.
The reason was simple, racing cars had become a very popular sport in the United States
and Henry wanted a platform to showcase his cars and their quality.
And besides, despite knowing a lot of very popular people in the city,
not many of them would be willing to invest in his ideas
after what happened with the Detroit automobile company.
A year later, Ford's newly designed racing car defeated the vehicle of Cleveland automaker Alexander Winton
as well as the nation's leading national racing driver Grosse Pointe.
Henry's 26 horsepower vehicle became the talk of the town
and that kind of popularity gave investors the confidence they needed to back Henry the second time.
The result was the birth of the Ford Motor Company with Henry as the chief engineer.
Not too long after, Henry's position was again hanging on a thin thread.
The reason was because Henry continued to work making race cars which infuriated his investors.
They wanted him to create passenger cars they could sell to the masses
and so they brought in another Henry - Henry Martyn Leland - to do their bidding.
Ford was annoyed they had brought in someone else to take over his place and so he left the company.
In his autobiography, Henry is quoted saying
"I resigned determined never again to put myself under orders".
Henry Leland, on the other hand, followed the wishes of his investors
and went on to create what today we know as the Cadillac.
With Henry Ford gone, the name of the company was changed from Ford Motor Company to the Cadillac Motor Company.
Henry and a former racing cyclist by the name of Tom Cooper continued building racing cars.
In 1902, they produced the Ford 999,
an 80 horsepower car, that was driven by Barney Oldfield,
a former bicycle racer who had never driven an automobile in his life, surpassing Winton's car again.
By 1904, Henry's new car broke all the American records
driving at a top speed of 91.4 miles per hour.
With these records and victories, Henry had established himself as the best American designer for racing cars.
With that kind of reputation, he knew he would be backed again by investors
whenever he was ready to start up his third company.
With the support and financial backing of 11 investors,
especially a coal dealer from Detroit, Alexander Young Malcomson,
Henry's third company came to life.
The company was initially called Ford and Malcomson limited
but was later changed to the Ford motor company in 1902.
After failing in his first two attempts, he was determined not to fail again.
Ford turned his attention to creating a vehicle that was affordable for the common men.
You see, at the time, owning a vehicle was a luxury that could only be afforded by the wealthy ones.
The reason being these vehicles were made by extremely skilled engineers
and most of the cars made were strictly for racing.
At the start of his new company, Henry made a statement to his associates and investors:
"I will build a motor car for the great multitude constructed of the best materials by the best men to be hired".
"After the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise"
"so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one."
Ford had a knack for identifying and attracting the brightest talents in the business.
He hired many impressive young men who shared and believed in his vision.
As for the design of the car, Henry made over 20 of them before he got one that finally worked.
He called it the model A.
For the next five years, Henry kept improving the model A
which was followed by the model N
but in those five years, what really changed wasn't the improvements of his designs but how they were being made.
One of the things Henry learned from his failed businesses
was the importance of having one manufacturer responsible for supplying most of the parts he needed to build his cars.
And so, he found a machine shop in Detroit to do just that.
One day, during a trip to Chicago, Henry witnessed the assembly line concept at a slaughterhouse
and that's when a bright idea came to him.
If he could incorporate the same idea into building his cars,
he could make more cars in a day.
You see, at the time, Ford and many other car makers put together one car at a time
and the production was slow.
So in 1904, Henry raised more money and built his own factory.
He employed over 300 workers and began experimenting with the assembly line inside his new factory.
It wasn't until 1906, when the production of the model N would really first make use of the assembly line.
But even then, the assembly line was still a work in progress.
However it did increase the level of production by five times
and his new model became the best selling car in the US.
But Henry had set his sights on even greater things.
Henry built his own manufacturing company in 1905
to start making his own engines, transmissions and everything else needed for the production of his cars.
Around this time, Henry also discovered vanadium steel
and it was this discovery that really paved the way to a new era for the automobile industry.
Vanadium steel was about three times stronger than the previous steel and much lighter.
Henry used this new steel for his new model
that would later become one of the most successful cars in human history - the model T.
"A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits,"
"they will be embarrassingly large."
Henry Ford dreamed of making automobiles for the common men and for everyday use
and the Model T was the answer to that dream.
When it was first released, it was one of the most expensive cars Henry had ever made.
The price for the Model T was set at $850
which would be something around $21,000 in today's currency.
But despite its price, it quickly became a fan favorite in the us.
In a matter of days after its release, 15,000 orders were placed
and the Ford motor company soon became the number one car company in America.
What else could he want?
Henry realized he needed a bigger factory to produce over 100 Model Ts a day.
And so in 1910, he built a new plant in Highland Park, Michigan.
After several experiments, the assembly line was officially in working order by 1913.
This allowed work to be taken to the workers rather than the workers moving in and around the vehicle.
The vehicle was pulled down the line, building it step by step
and the new process reduced the time of production from 12 hours to 90 minutes.
By 1914, their production rate of over 300,000 vehicles
was more than all the cars produced by other car manufacturers combined.
Between 1910 to 1916,
the number of Model Ts being produced moved from 20,000 to almost a million.
By then, about half of all the cars on earth were Fords.
Henry had another brilliant game plan that would make him stand out in the automobile market.
Every year, the number of the Model Ts production output increased so he reduced the price of the car.
In fact, by 1916, the price of the model T that once sold for $850 was now selling for less than 400.
But that wasn't the only brilliant strategy Henry adopted.
You see, despite Henry pioneering the age of the automobile in America with the assembly line,
a lot of his workers weren't happy with this innovation.
Many workers found doing the same thing over and over again boring
and the skilled craftsmen among them found their new job insulting
as they were tasked with just two duties instead of building a whole car.
As a result, workers began to leave Ford to work for other companies.
To combat this, Henry doubled the worker's wage, raising it to $5 a day,
many companies laughed at this move, believing it would quickly bankrupt the company but it did the opposite.
Mechanics from all over the country flew to Detroit in search of higher wages.
""We believe in making 25,000 men prosperous and contented"
"rather than following the plan of making a few slave drivers in our multi-millionaire establishments."
Not only did Henry Ford increase the wages of the mechanics who now worked for him
but he also gave them an hour off from the number of hours they were required to work.
The change in shift allowed Ford to hire a new set of workers for a third shift
and create a 24-hour operation.
Soon enough, many other car businesses had to do the same in fear of losing their workers to Ford.
Henry had changed the business and manufacturing world across the USA.
There is one rule for the industrialist and that is make the best quality goods possible
at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.
In 1919, Henry Ford grew tired of the interference from other investors in the company
and decided to buy them all out.
The result was several millionaires in Detroit
but it also made Henry Ford the sole owner of the largest automobile company in the world.
Later, Henry made Edsel Ford, his 26 year old son, the president of his company
but it was Henry who really ran the show.
However, absolute power over the company came with a price that even the richest man in America couldn't ignore.
Henry continued to believe the Model T was the car most people wanted.
He ignored the growing popularity of the more expensive but stylish and comfortable cars like Chevrolet.
Being the stubborn and stiff-necked man that he was,
he refused to listen to other Ford executives or even his own son Edsel
when they said it was time for a new model.
By the late 1920s, Henry could no longer ignore the declining sales figures
so he finally decided to shut down the Model T assembly line
and began designing an all-new car.
The new Model A was released in 1927
but this new car was no longer produced at Highland Park
but at a bigger factory along the rogue river in Michigan.
In his new factory, Henry wanted to include all the steps involved in the manufacturing process
from refining raw materials to the final assembly of the automobile which he accomplished.
It became the world's largest factory making steel, glass tires
and other components that went into building the cars.
However, Ford's one-man control over the decision-making was no longer the formula for success
and by 1936, Ford motor company had fallen to third place in the US market
behind General Motors and the Chrysler Corporation.
Even with Henry's latest innovative design of the v8 engine, it wasn't enough.
Things only went from bad to worse and with the rise of the great depression,
Ford was forced to lay off workers and lower his rates.
In 1943, Henry's son died of stomach cancer
and so he kept running the company for two more years
before turning over his control of the Ford Motor Company to his grandson, Henry II.
Henry retired to his estate and later died of a cerebral hemorrhage on April the 7th, 1947.
"Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger."
"Even though sometimes it is hard to realize this."
"For the world was built to develop character"
"and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward."
Today Ford Motors company owns a market cap of around 70 billion dollars
and remains as one of the biggest car companies in the world.