Why did henry ford invent the car
At its peak in , the Willow Run plant produced Bs per month, and by Ford was completing each B in eighteen hours, with one rolling off the assembly line every 58 minutes. When Edsel Ford died of cancer in , at age 49, Henry Ford nominally resumed control of the company, but a series of strokes in the late s had left him increasingly debilitated, and his mental ability was fading.
Ford was increasingly sidelined, and others made decisions in his name. Ford grew jealous of the publicity Sorensen received and forced Sorensen out in Nothing happened until when, with bankruptcy a serious risk, Ford's wife Clara and Edsel's widow Eleanor confronted him and demanded he cede control of the company to his grandson Henry Ford II.
They threatened to sell off their stock, which amounted to three quarters of the company's total shares, if he refused. Ford was reportedly infuriated, but he had no choice but to give in. Ford was a conspiracy theorist who drew on a long tradition of false allegations against Jews. Ford claimed that Jewish internationalism posed a threat to traditional American values, which he deeply believed were at risk in the modern world.
In , Ford purchased his hometown newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. Every Ford dealership nationwide was required to carry the paper and distribute it to its customers. Ford later bound the articles into four volumes entitled The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem , which was translated into multiple languages and distributed widely across the US and Europe.
With around , readers of his newspaper, Ford emerged as a "spokesman for right-wing extremism and religious prejudice. In a letter written in , Heinrich Himmler described Ford as "one of our most valuable, important, and witty fighters". Adolf Hitler wrote, "only Ford, [who], to [the Jews'] fury, still maintains full independence Max Wallace has stated, "History records that Ludecke asked Ford for a contribution to the Nazi cause, but was apparently refused.
Ford did, however, give considerable sums of money to Boris Brasol , a member of the Aufbau Vereinigung , an organization linking German Nazis and White Russian emigrants which also financed the Nazi Party. While these articles explicitly condemned pogroms and violence against Jews, they blamed the Jews themselves for provoking them. Friends and business associates said they warned Ford about the contents of the Independent and that he probably never read the articles he claimed he only read the headlines.
A libel lawsuit was brought by San Francisco lawyer and Jewish farm cooperative organizer Aaron Sapiro in response to the antisemitic remarks, and led Ford to close the Independent in December News reports at the time quoted him as saying he was shocked by the content and unaware of its nature. During the trial, the editor of Ford's "Own Page", William Cameron, testified that Ford had nothing to do with the editorials even though they were under his byline.
Cameron testified at the libel trial that he never discussed the content of the pages or sent them to Ford for his approval. Miller, a former Dearborn Independent employee, swore under oath that Ford had told him he intended to expose Sapiro. Michael Barkun observed: "That Cameron would have continued to publish such anti-Semitic material without Ford's explicit instructions seemed unthinkable to those who knew both men.
Stanley Ruddiman, a Ford family intimate, remarked that "I don't think Mr. Cameron ever wrote anything for publication without Mr. Ford's approval. They formed a coalition of Jewish groups for the same purpose and raised constant objections in the Detroit press. Before leaving his presidency early in , Woodrow Wilson joined other leading Americans in a statement that rebuked Ford and others for their antisemitic campaign.
A boycott against Ford products by Jews and liberal Christians also had an impact, and Ford shut down the paper in , recanting his views in a public letter to Sigmund Livingston , president of the ADL. Ford's apology was well received. In July , the German consul in Cleveland gave Ford, on his 75th birthday, the award of the Grand Cross of the German Eagle , the highest medal Nazi Germany could bestow on a foreigner.
On January 7, , Ford wrote another letter to Sigmund Livingston disclaiming direct or indirect support of "any agitation which would promote antagonism toward my Jewish fellow citizens". He concluded the letter with, "My sincere hope that now in this country and throughout the world when the war is finished, hatred of the Jews and hatred against any other racial or religious groups shall cease for all time.
The distribution of The International Jew was halted in through legal action by Ford, despite complications from a lack of . Extremist groups often recycle the material; it still appears on antisemitic and neo-Nazi websites. Testifying at Nuremberg , convicted Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach who, in his role as Gauleiter of Vienna , deported 65, Jews to camps in Poland, stated: "The decisive anti-Semitic book I was reading and the book that influenced my comrades was I read it and became anti-Semitic.
The book made a great influence on myself and my friends because we saw in Henry Ford the representative of success and also the representative of a progressive social policy. Robert Lacey wrote in Ford: The Men and the Machines that a close Willow Run associate of Ford reported that when he was shown newsreel footage of the Nazi concentration camps , he "was confronted with the atrocities which finally and unanswerably laid bare the bestiality of the prejudice to which he contributed, he collapsed with a stroke — his last and most serious.
Ford's philosophy was one of economic independence for the United States. His River Rouge Plant became the world's largest industrial complex, pursuing vertical integration to such an extent that it could produce its own steel. Ford's goal was to produce a vehicle from scratch without reliance on foreign trade. He believed in the global expansion of his company.
He believed that international trade and cooperation led to international peace, and he used the assembly line process and production of the Model T to demonstrate it.
Henry ford invention of automobile
He opened Ford assembly plants in Britain and Canada in , and soon became the biggest automotive producer in those countries. In , Ford cooperated with Giovanni Agnelli of Fiat to launch the first Italian automotive assembly plants. The first plants in Germany were built in the s with the encouragement of Herbert Hoover and the Commerce Department, which agreed with Ford's theory that international trade was essential to world peace and reduced the chance of war.
In , Ford made an agreement with the Soviets to provide technical aid over nine years in building the first Soviet automobile plant GAZ near Nizhny Novgorod Gorky [ ] an additional contract for construction of the plant was signed with The Austin Company on August 23, Ford sent his engineers and technicians to the Soviet Union to help install the equipment and train the workforce, while over a hundred Soviet engineers and technicians were stationed at Ford's plants in Detroit and Dearborn "for the purpose of learning the methods and practice of manufacture and assembly in the Company's plants".
All the world is bound to catch some good from it. By , Ford was manufacturing one-third of the world's automobiles. It set up numerous subsidiaries that sold or assembled the Ford cars and trucks:. Ford's image transfixed Europeans, especially the Germans, arousing the "fear of some, the infatuation of others, and the fascination among all".
They saw the size, tempo, standardization, and philosophy of production demonstrated at the Ford Works as a national service—an "American thing" that represented the culture of the United States. Both supporters and critics insisted that Fordism epitomized American capitalist development, and that the auto industry was the key to understanding economic and social relations in the United States.
As one German explained, "Automobiles have so completely changed the American's mode of life that today one can hardly imagine being without a car. It is difficult to remember what life was like before Mr. Ford began preaching his doctrine of salvation". In My Life and Work , Ford predicted that if greed, racism, and short-sightedness could be overcome, then economic and technological development throughout the world would progress to the point that international trade would no longer be based on what today would be called colonial or neocolonial models and would truly benefit all peoples.
Ford maintained an interest in auto racing from to and began his involvement in the sport as both a constructor and a driver, later turning the wheel over to hired drivers. On October 10, , he defeated Alexander Winton in a race car named "Sweepstakes"; it was through the wins of this car that Ford created the Henry Ford Company.
In , he attempted to enter a reworked Model T in the Indianapolis but was told rules required the addition of another 1, pounds kg to the car before it could qualify. Ford dropped out of the race and soon thereafter exited racing permanently, citing dissatisfaction with the sport's rules, demands on his time by the booming production of the Model T, and his low opinion of racing as a worthwhile activity.
In My Life and Work Ford speaks briefly of racing in a rather dismissive tone, as something that is not at all a good measure of automobiles in general. He describes himself as someone who raced only because in the s through s, one had to race because prevailing ignorance held that racing was the way to prove the worth of an automobile.
Ford did not agree. But he was determined that as long as this was the definition of success flawed though the definition was , then his cars would be the best that there were at racing. Nevertheless, Ford did make an impact on auto racing during his racing years, and he was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in By this point, Ford, nearing 80, had experienced several cardiovascular events variously cited as heart attacks or strokes and was mentally inconsistent, suspicious, and generally no longer fit for such immense responsibilities.
Most of the directors did not want to see him as president. But for the previous 20 years, though he had long been without any official executive title, he had always had de facto control over the company; the board and the management had never seriously defied him, and this time was no different. The directors elected him, [ ] and he served until the end of the war.
The administration of President Franklin Roosevelt had been considering a government takeover of the company in order to ensure continued war production, [ 76 ] but the idea never progressed. He died on April 7, , of a cerebral hemorrhage at Fair Lane , his estate in Dearborn, at the age of A public viewing was held at Greenfield Village where up to 5, people per hour filed past the casket.
Funeral services were held in Detroit's Cathedral Church of St. Paul and he was buried in the Ford Cemetery in Detroit. A compendium of short biographies of famous Freemasons , published by a Freemason lodge, lists Ford as a member. When he received the 33rd degree of the Scottish Rite in , he said, "Masonry is the best balance wheel the United States has.
In , Ford's pastor, and head of his sociology department, Episcopal minister Samuel S. Marquis, claimed that Ford believed, or "once believed," in reincarnation. Ford published an anti-smoking book, circulated to youth in , called The Case Against the Little White Slaver , which documented many dangers of cigarette smoking attested to by many researchers and luminaries.
Henry Ford had a long-held interest in materials science and engineering. Ford also had a long-standing interest in plastics developed from agricultural products, particularly soybeans. He cultivated a relationship with George Washington Carver for this purpose. The project culminated in , when Ford patented an automobile made almost entirely of plastic , attached to a tubular welded frame.
It ran on grain alcohol ethanol instead of gasoline. The design never caught on. Ford was interested in engineered woods "Better wood can be made than is grown" [ ] at this time plywood and particle board were little more than experimental ideas ; corn as a fuel source , via both corn oil and ethanol; [ ] and the potential uses of cotton. His brother-in-law, Edward G.
Kingsford , used wood scraps from the Ford factory to make the briquets. Ford was a prolific inventor and was awarded U. Ford had a vacation residence in Fort Myers, Florida , next to that of Thomas Edison, which he bought in and used until c. It still stands today as a museum. He also had a vacation home known today as the "Ford Plantation" in Richmond Hill , Georgia, which is now a private community.
Ford started buying land in this area and eventually owned 70, acres square miles there. The grand house, made of Savannah-gray brick, had marble steps, air conditioning, and an elevator. It sat on 55 acres 22 ha of manicured lawns and flowering gardens. The house became the center of social gatherings with visitations by the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and the DuPonts.
It remains the centerpiece of The Ford Plantation today. He contributed substantially to the community, building a chapel and schoolhouse and employing numerous local residents. Ford had an interest in Americana. In the s, he began work to turn Sudbury , Massachusetts, into a themed historical village. He moved the schoolhouse supposedly referred to in the " Mary Had a Little Lamb " nursery rhyme from Sterling , Massachusetts, and purchased the historic Wayside Inn.
The historical village plan never came to fruition. He repeated the concept of collecting historic structures with the creation of Greenfield Village in Dearborn , Michigan. It may have inspired the creation of Old Sturbridge Village as well. About the same time, he began collecting materials for his museum , which had a theme of practical technology.
It was opened in as the Edison Institute. The museum has been greatly modernized and is still open today. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read View source View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource Wikidata item. American business magnate — This article is about the American industrialist.
For other people with the same name, see Henry Ford disambiguation. Portrait by Fred Hartsook , c. Springwells Township, Michigan , U. Dearborn, Michigan , U. Engineer industrialist publisher philanthropist. Founding and leading the Ford Motor Company Pioneering a system that launched the mass production and sale of affordable automotives to the public.
Republican — Democratic — Clara Jane Bryant. Model A and Ford's later career. World War I era and peace activism. World War II era and controversies. Edsel's death. Antisemitism and The Dearborn Independent. Main article: Dearborn Independent. Part of Jewish history and discrimination. Antisemitic tropes. Antisemitic publications.
The company foundered, and in was reorganized as the Henry Ford Company. In March , after falling out with his financial backers, Ford left the company with the rights to his name and dollars. Henry Ford turned to an acquaintance, coal dealer Alexander Y. Malcomson , to help finance another automobile company. Malcomson put up the money to start the partnership "Ford and Malcomson" and the pair designed a car and began ordering parts.
However, by February , Ford and Malcomson had gone through more money than expected, and the manufacturing firm of John and Horace Dodge , who had made parts for Ford and Malcomson, was demanding payment. Gray , the president of the German-American Savings Bank and a good friend. Malcomson proposed incorporating Ford and Malcomson to bring in new investors, and wanted Gray to join the company, thinking that Gray's name would attract other investors.
Gray was not interested at first, but Malcomson promised he could withdraw his share at any time, so Gray reluctantly agreed. On June 16, , the Ford Motor Company was incorporated, with 12 investors owning a total of shares. When the total stock ownership was tabulated, shares in the company were: Henry Ford shares , Alexander Y. Malcomson shares , John S.
Gray shares , John W. Anderson 50 shares , Horace Rackham 50 shares , Horace E. Dodge 50 shares , John F. Dodge 50 shares , Charles T. Bennett 50 shares , Vernon C. Woodall 10 shares. At the first stockholder meeting on June 18, Gray was elected president, Ford vice-president, and James Couzens secretary. However, there were internal frictions in the company that Gray was nominally in charge of.
Most of the investors, both Malcomson and Gray included, had their own businesses to attend to; only Ford and Couzens worked full-time at the company. The issue came to a head when the principal stockholders, Ford and Malcomson, quarreled over the future direction of the company. Gray sided with Ford. Gray died unexpectedly in , and his position as Ford's president was taken over by Ford himself soon afterward.
Ford was subject to lawsuits or threats from the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers early in its history. The association claimed patent rights to most gasoline-powered automobiles. After several years of legal wrangling, the association eventually dropped its case against Ford in During its early years, the company produced a range of vehicles designated, chronologically, from the Ford Model A to the Model K and Model S Ford's last right-hand steering model [ 10 ] of In , Henry Ford introduced the Model T.
Earlier models were produced at a rate of only a few a day at a rented factory on Mack Avenue in Detroit , Michigan and later at the Piquette Avenue Plant the first company-owned factory , with groups of two or three men working on each car from components made to order by other companies what would come to be called an "assembled car".
The first Model Ts were built at the Piquette Avenue Plant and in the car's first full year of production, , just over 10, Model Ts were built. As demand for the car grew, the company moved production to the much larger Highland Park Plant in In , 69, [ 15 ] Model Ts were produced, with , in These innovations were hard on employees, and turnover of workers was very high, while increased productivity reduced labor demand.
Ford cut prices again and again and invented the system of franchised dealers who were loyal to his brand name. Wall Street had criticized Ford's generous labor practices when he began paying workers enough to buy the products they made.
While Ford attained international status in with the founding of Ford of Canada , it was in the company began to rapidly expand overseas, with the opening of assembly plants in Ireland , England and France, followed by Denmark , Germany , Austria , [ 15 ] and Argentina The low price also killed the cyclecar in the U. Of U. It also transformed technology.
Henry Ford is reported to have said, "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black. Now, paint had become a production bottleneck; only Japan Black dried quickly enough, and not until Duco lacquer appeared in would other colors reappear on the T. In , Henry Ford went on a peace mission to Europe aboard a ship, joining other pacifists in efforts to stop World War I.
This led to an increase in his personal popularity. Ford would subsequently go on to support the war effort with the Model T becoming the underpinnings for Allied military vehicles, like the Ford 3-Ton M tank, and the ambulance. Ford Motor Company. The decision was then upheld in the appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court which stated that: [ citation needed ].
A business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders. The powers of the directors are to be employed for that end.
Alessandro volta invention: While working as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit, Henry Ford () built his first gasoline-powered horseless carriage, the Quadricycle, in the shed behind his.
The discretion of directors is to be exercised in the choice of means to attain that end, and does not extend to a change in the end itself, to the reduction of profits, or to the non-distribution of profits among stockholders in order to devote them to other purposes In response Henry Ford determined to buy out the remaining shareholders.
To encourage this, he threatened to leave and set up a rival company, offering to buy out the minority shareholders, at varying prices. While prices were kept low through highly efficient engineering, the company and neglected consumer demand for improved vehicles. So, while four-wheel brakes were invented by Arrol-Johnson and were used on the Argyll , [ 15 ] they did not appear on a Ford until , [ 15 ] only a year before Chevrolet.
Ford steadily lost market share to GM and Chrysler , as these and other domestic and foreign competitors began offering fresher automobiles with more innovative features and luxury options. GM had a range of models from relatively cheap to luxury, tapping all price points in the spectrum, while less wealthy people purchased used Model Ts.
The competitors also opened up new markets by extending credit for purchases, so consumers could buy these expensive automobiles with monthly payments.
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Ford initially resisted this approach, insisting such debts would ultimately hurt the consumer and the general economy. Ford eventually relented and started offering the same terms in December , when Ford unveiled the redesigned Model A , and retired the Model T after producing 15 million units. An early version of the Ford script in the oval badge was first used on the Model A; the Ford script had been created in by Childe Harold Wills , and the oval trademark in On February 4, , Ford expanded its reach into the luxury auto market through its acquisition of the Lincoln Motor Company from Henry M.
Leland who had founded and named the company in for Abraham Lincoln whom Henry Leland admired. The Mercury division was established later in to serve the mid-price auto market between the Ford and Lincoln brands. Henry Ford would go on to acquire Abraham Lincoln's chair, which he was assassinated in, from the owners of Ford's Theatre.
Abraham Lincoln's chair would be displayed along with John F. Kennedy's limousine was leased to the White House by Ford. In , Henry Ford negotiated a deal with the government of Brazil for a plot of land in the Amazon Rainforest. There, Ford attempted to cultivate rubber for use in the company's automobiles. After considerable labor unrest, social experimentation, and a failure to produce rubber, and after the invention of synthetic rubber , the settlement was sold in and abandoned.
During the Great Depression in the United States , Ford in common with other manufacturers, responded to the collapse in motor sales by reducing the scale of their operations and laying off workers. Although Ford did assist a small number of distressed families with loans and parcels of land to work, the majority of the thousands of unskilled workers who were laid off were left to cope on their own.
However, Henry Ford angered many by making public statements that the unemployed should do more to find work for themselves. On March 7, , some 3,—5, unemployed workers assembled in West Detroit to march on Ford's River Rouge plant to deliver a petition demanding more support. As the march moved up Miller Road and approached Gate 3 the protest turned ugly.
The police fired tear gas into the crowd and fire trucks were used to soak the protesters with icy water. When the protesters responded by throwing rocks, the violence escalated rapidly and culminated in the police and plant security guards firing live rounds through the gates of the plant at the unarmed protesters. Four men were killed outright and a fifth died later in the hospital.
Up to 60 more were seriously injured.
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A few American workers stayed on after the plant's completion, and eventually became victims of Stalin's Great Terror , either shot [ 28 ] or exiled to Soviet gulags. Both these Ford models were immediately adopted for military use. By the late s production at Gorki was 80,, "Russian Ford" vehicles per year. With its original Ford-designed vehicles supplemented by imports and domestic copies of imported equipment, the Gorki operations eventually produced a range of automobiles, trucks, and military vehicles.
Chamber of Commerce stating that Henry Ford was "one of the world's greatest industrialists". Ford insisted that peaceful trade was the best way to avoid war. Ford had a subsidiary in Germany. In , a Ford executive visiting Germany was informed by a Nazi official that Ford's Cologne plant manager was a Jew he had one grandparent who was Jewish , prompting discussions at Ford offices in both Germany and the U.
Heinrich Albert, Ford's Germany-U. The manager was replaced by Robert Schmidt, who would play an important role in Germany's war effort. Henry Ford had said war was a waste of time, and did not want to profit from it. Ford nevertheless established a close collaboration with Germany's Nazi government before the war—so close, in fact, that Ford received, in July , the Grand Cross of the German Eagle medal from the regime.
Ford factories contributed significantly to the buildup of Germany's armed forces. Ford negotiated a resource-sharing agreement that allowed the German military to access scarce supplies, particularly rubber. During this same period, Ford was hesitant to participate in the Allied military effort. We strive for accuracy and fairness.
If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Prince Harry. Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales. Jimmy Carter. Aaron Judge. Dolly Parton. Michael J. Alec Baldwin. Tyler Childers. Prince William. Michelle Obama. Watch Next. At the time, only a few cars were assembled per day, and groups of two or three workers built them by hand from parts that were ordered from other companies.
Ford was dedicated to the production of an efficient and reliable automobile that would be affordable for everyone; the result was the Model T , which made its debut in October As a result, he put into practice techniques of mass production that would revolutionize American industry, including the use of large production plants; standardized, interchangeable parts; and the moving assembly line.
Mass production significantly cut down on the time required to produce an automobile, which allowed costs to stay low. Even as production went up, demand for the Tin Lizzie remained high, and by , half of all cars in America were Model Ts. After a court battle with his stockholders, led by brothers Horace and John Dodge, Henry Ford bought out all minority stockholders by In , Ford moved production to a massive industrial complex he had built along the banks of the River Rouge in Dearborn, Michigan.
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The plant included a glass factory, steel mill, assembly line and all other necessary components of automotive production. That same year, Ford ceased production of the Model T, and introduced the new Model A, which featured better horsepower and brakes, among other improvements. By that time, the company had produced some 15 million Model Ts, and Ford Motor Company was the largest automotive manufacturer in the world.