Henry Ford

                      Henry Ford                  David Karpov

        Do you know who innovators are? Innovators change things. They take somebody’s new ideas, or their own, then they make it better and then, they promote those ideas until they become a usual part of everyday life. Henry Ford was such innovator in America.

Henry Ford was born in Dearbornville, Michigan on July 30, 1863 into the farming family of William and Mary Ford. He was the oldest out of the eight children.  His father came from Ireland to America in 1847 and settled in Wayne County of Michigan. At the time Henry was born, “Abraham Lincoln was president of the 24 states of the Union, and Jefferson Davis was president of the 11 states of the Confederacy” (Britannica.com).

 Growing up, Henry was a very curious boy.  There is a story about him that when he was thirteen, his father gave him a watch. Henry took it apart just to see how it works.  Then, he reassembled it.  His neighbors were impressed with it and brought him their non-working watches, so he could fix them.   In his childhood, Henry also organized other boys to build simple steam engines and water wheels.  He became friends with the men who ran full-sized steam engines. Henry was captivated and charmed by all different kinds of machines at that day (thehenryford.com).  

When he was sixteen years old, he left his father’s farm to become an apprentice at the Michigan Car Company, who was making railroad cars in Detroit not far from his home.  During the next few years he worked many other jobs like operating and servicing portable steam engines for farmers, or cutting and selling timber wood for his father and studying bookkeeping.  

In 1888, when Henry Ford was 25 years old, he got married with Clara Ala Bryant.  They had only one child, son Edsel.  Three years later, he started working as an engineer for the Edison Illumination Company. Just in two years he was promoted to chief engineer. At one of the meetings with Edison Illuminating Company executives, he showed his first automobile plans to Thomas Edison.  Edison, the inventor of a lot of new things, encouraged Henry Ford to build a better model (biography.com).   It took him a few trials to get a car with better features like adding reverse and more speeds.

Until 1903, Ford opened up two automobile companies, but since he did not know how to run it, both of his companies failed.  Then, Henry risked in building and driving racing cars. Thus, he wanted to attract additional interest in people.  His idea was successful and a lot of other wealthy people started to invest in his company.  So, on June 16, 1903 Ford opened his third automotive company the Ford Motor Company.  

Henry Ford always wanted to improve whatever model he was working on before starting to sell them.  Unfortunately, just five weeks after the opening his company, Henry was threatened by the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers, since the Ford Motor Company was not a licensed manufacturer, they wanted to put him out of business.  The Association had control of a very important patent given to a Rochester’s patent lawyer Selden.  So, over the next six years, Ford gathered evidence and presented it to court hearings, but he lost the case.  But after the appeal he won in 1911.  This victory had enormous and massive effects for the industry. The fight made Ford a popular hero.  

In 1911, Henry established the first assembly plant for the industry in U.S. and opened the company’s first overseas production plant in England. “Henry and his team borrowed concepts from watch makers, gun makers, bicycle makers, and meat packers, mixed them with their own ideas and by late 1913 they had developed a moving assembly line for automobiles.”(thehenryford.org)  Two years later he introduced the world’s first moving assembly line for cars. The workers were staying at one spot and did only a few particular tasks.