FORD

FORD

The Ford family has had a major impact on the development of the US automobile industry. Henry Ford was the son of William Ford who has emigrated from Ireland in 1847 and settled on a farm in Dearborn, Mich. Henry dislike farm life and had natural aptitude for machinery. When he was fifteen, he went to Detroit and hired as mechinist.
Henry Ford began to experiment with horseless carriage about 1890 and completed his first car, the Guard Cycle in 1896. It was the sixth American built gasoline powered car. During the following years he tried unsuccessfully to get it into production. During this period he built racing cars ang became a well-known racing driver in 1903. He launched the Ford Motor Company with capital of $100,00 of which $28.000 was in cash. By this time he had formulated his ideal of production. The way to make automobile is to make one automobile like another automobile to make them alike.
He achieved spectacular success with the model T-ford introduced in 1908 and eventually produced (1913) on a moving assembly line. Henry Ford was the major figure in the world’s automobile industry for the next fifteen years. His production methods were intensively studied in Germany. Ford thus became a figure of legend, the native genius who could work miracles. He had considerable mechanical ability, but his conclusions were reached intuitively rather than logically. He was basically uneducated.
Henry Ford became a victim of his own sucecss in that he clung to the T-model too long, refusing the rocognize that his popularity was fading and consequently lost first place in the automobile industry the general motor in 1926.