By the start of the 20th century, gasoline-engined cars were fast, reliable, and exciting. They were also stupidly expensive. In 1893, Karl Benz's simple, Viktoria car had a price tag of £9000 (about £50,000 today) and hardly anyone could afford one—he sold just 45. Car makers stuck with big, expensive cars, so customers stuck with their horses and carts. Then a bold American engineer called Henry Ford (1863-1947) came along and decided things had to be different.
"It was not at all my idea to make cars in any such petty fashion"—Henry Ford, My Life and Work, 1922.
The rise of Henry Ford
Ford was no scientist, but he'd been repairing watches and tinkering with machines since he was a boy. Never afraid of rolling up his sleeves, he loved machinery and understood it instinctively. His first car was little more than a four-wheel motorbike that he called the Quadricycle. When he took it on the streets of Detroit in 1896, horses bolted in all directions.
Photo: Henry Ford was inspired to build his first car after he saw a steam-powered tractor (traction engine) like this one. He realized straight away that engine-powered vehicles were the future.
Ford must have been delighted: he had no time for horses. Aged 14, he'd been thrown from the saddle of a colt, caught his foot in the stirrups, and dragged home along the ground. A few years later, he'd been seriously injured when his bolting horse and cart tried to smash through a fence. Now was the time to settle those scores.
Ford loved machines and hated horses, so he hatched a simple plan: he'd make the simplest possible "horseless carriage" and he'd make it in such enormous quantities, in only one color, that he could sell it cheaply to a huge number of people. It took him 12 years to get things right. In fact, he made eight different models (named A, B, C, F, N, R, S, and K) before he finally came up with a winner, the Model T, launched in 1908—a car everyone could afford. Around 15 million Model T Fords were eventually sold and a delighted (and very rich) Henry Ford scribbled in his notebook: "The horse is DONE".
The Assembly Line
Normally things get more expensive over time—but Ford's pint-sized miracle car, the Model T, dropped in price from $850 when it was launched in 1908 to just $260 in 1925. The secret was mass-production: making the car from simple, easy-to-fit parts in huge quantities. Other car makers used small groups of mechanics to build entire cars very slowly. By 1913, Ford was building cars at his new Highland Park factory in a completely different way using a moving "assembly line". Model Ts were gradually assembled on a conveyor that inched past a series of workers. Each mechanic was trained to do only one job and worked briefly on each car as it passed by. Then the vehicle moved on, someone else did another bit, and the whole car magically came together. The first year Ford used his assembly line, production of the Model T leaped from 82,000 to 189,000. By 1923, Ford's giant River Rouge factory was making 2 million cars a year.
The fall of Henry Ford
Photo: Henry Ford in later life. Photo by courtesy of US Library of Congress.
Henry Ford was a big success and a people's hero: no-one did more to put cars within reach of ordinary people. But he made big mistakes too, probably because he was a mess of contradictions.
Stuck in the past? Ford looked to the future—he grew soybeans to make plastic parts for cars and experimented withbiofuels years before almost anyone else. He famously wrote "History is more or less bunk". But, as he grew older, he set up his own museum, packed it full of nostalgic exhibits, and spent increasing amounts of time there daydreaming of a lost era. He even had visitors driven round on horses and carts.
Nostalgic? His assembly-line methods were widely copied and quickly transformed the United States from a clean and green farm-based nation into a dirty, smoky factory-based one. Yet the more industrialized things became, the more Ford yearned for the rural world he was helping to destroy.
Stubborn? The Model-T Ford was a huge success, but Ford refused to update it: "There is a tendency to keep monkeying with styles and to spoil a good thing by changing it." But other car makers began introducing a new model every year and the Ford Motor Company lost its lead. In 1927, Ford grudgingly abandoned the Model-T and closed down his factories for six months while they converted to making new models.
Arrogant? Ford had strong opinions and never shrank from expressing them. He ran for the US senate, but lost, and even seriously thought of standing for President. Though a brilliant mechanic, he had no qualifications to speak about world affairs.
Racist? Ford bought a newspaper and got into big trouble writing offensive articles about Jewish people. But he was one of the first industrialists to employ black people and treat them fairly.
Pacifist? When World War I broke out, this committed pacifist hired a huge ocean liner and sailed it round the world trying to make peace—earning nothing but ridicule. But during World War II, he turned his factory over to making thousands of bombers.
Spent Force
Ford built his company up from nothing and was determined to keep control. Despite making his son Edsel president in 1919, Ford still made all the big decisions. He belittled Edsel and cruelly undermined his authority. Once, when Edsel ordered new coal ovens for the steel plant at River Rouge, Ford waited till they'd been built before ordering them to be demolished. Though Ford humiliated Edsel, he was devastated when his son died from cancer in 1943, aged only 49. The sparkle vanished from his eyes and he hurtled towards senility. He briefly became president of the Ford Motor Company once more, but couldn't remember what he was supposed to be doing or why. By now, Ford was unquestionably the world's greatest industrialist: he'd made a personal fortune of over $1 billion. But he was deteriorating into what his doctor described as "a pleasant vegetable" and died after a massive stroke in 1947, aged 83.
Source: http://www.explainthatstuff.com/
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