Henry Ford’s Life Patrick Stroud ...

Henry Ford’s Life

Patrick Stroud
HSS 205
Matt Schaffer













Henry Ford is an inventor who impacted the automobile industry greatly. Ford revolutionized cars and maximized output as a boss and inventor. Ford is credited with the creation the assembly line that modernized and speed up the production of automobiles. Ford was born in Dearborn, Michigan on July 30, 1863. Dearborn is just outside the city of Detroit. He was the first of William and Mary Ford's six children. Ford’s father owned a small but well provided farm that fulfilled the family’s needs. Even at an early age, Henry loved to fiddle with things. He loved to unassembled mechanisms to just see how they worked and if he could put them back together. He believed that machines could ease the life of a farmer by replacing animals and other obsolete equipment. At the age of seventeen Ford left the farm and headed to Detroit to become a Machinist apprentice.
Henry finished his apprenticeship in 1882 and was therefore considered a machinist. Westinghouse Engine Company decided to hire him to demonstrate and operate their steam engines on nearby farms during the summers. During the winters, he stayed on his father's farm continuously working on designing and building a lighter steam engine as the time passed by. Henry soon met Clara Bryant and they married in 1888. At first they decided to stay in Dearborn because Henry's father gave him a large piece of land. Henry built a small house, sawmill, and a workshop to figure in. Henry decided to hang farming up when Clara and he decided to move back to Detroit in 1891. The ignition of electricity fascinated him so he decided to take a job working at the Edison Illuminating Company. After being promoted to Chief Engineer in 1893, Ford gained enough time and money to his personal experiments toward designing internal combustion engines.
At the age thirty-two, on June 4, 1896 Ford completed his first successful horseless carriage, which he called the Quadricycle. He chose the name Quadricycle because it had four large bicycle looking tires. It had two gears; first gear would reach up to ten miles per hour, the second reaching up to twenty miles per hour. His transmission, however, didn’t have a reverse. It came with a three gallon tank of gas. After the Quadricycle, he figured he not only should start working on making even better automobiles but making them for sale also. During the next seven years he had numerous backers. Some of Ford’s supporters formed the Detroit Automobile Company in 1899. However all eventually dumped him in frustration because they wanted a passenger car to put on the market while he insisted always on improving whatever model he was working on. He assembled several racing cars over the course of these years. He left the Henry Ford Company during 1902 which later reorganized as the ...