Henry Ford
1863–1947 · Automaker whose Model T and moving assembly line put America on wheels.
Henry Ford grew up on a farm near Dearborn, Michigan, and loved taking apart watches and machines. At sixteen he went to Detroit to work as a machinist, and later became chief engineer at an Edison electric company. In 1896 he built his first car, the Quadricycle. In 1903 he founded the Ford Motor Company, and in 1908 he introduced the Model T, a simple, sturdy car that ordinary families could afford. In 1913 his Highland Park plant began using a moving assembly line, where the car moved past workers who each did one task; the time to build a car fell from about twelve hours to about ninety minutes, and the price kept dropping. In 1914 he doubled most workers' pay to five dollars a day. More than fifteen million Model Ts were sold. Ford fought hard against labor unions, and in the 1920s his newspaper published antisemitic articles, for which he later issued an apology. He also founded Greenfield Village, a museum of American life. He died in 1947.
Henry Ford is also an author in the library: author page and works.
Faith: Raised Episcopalian and attended church as a young man; his newspaper spread religious prejudice against Jews. Source: Wikipedia
Key dates
- 1896 Builds the Quadricycle
- 1903 Founds the Ford Motor Company
- 1908 Model T introduced
- 1913 Moving assembly line
- 1914 Five-dollar day
- 1947 Dies in Dearborn
Record-breaker
Firsts and records, worded as the sources give them ("first known", "at the time").
- Driving a car of his own design on the frozen Lake St. Clair, he set a new land speed record of 91.3 miles per hour, covering a mile in 39.4 seconds. (Source: Henry Ford (Wikipedia))
- From May 22, 1920, Ford's weekly newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, ran an antisemitic front-page series, "The International Jew," based on the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion. After Aaron Sapiro sued Ford for libel, Ford ordered the paper closed; it ceased publication at the end of 1927. (Source: Henry Ford's Anti-Semitism History (The Henry Ford))
- Ford signed a public apology, drafted by the attorney Louis Marshall, expressing his "great regret" at being seen as an enemy of Jewish people; it was published in newspapers on July 8, 1927. (Source: Antisemitism and Henry Ford's "The International Jew" (US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia))
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Grades 3–5
- Who Was Henry Ford? by Michael Burgan (Grosset & Dunlap, 2014; ISBN 9780448479576)
Bookshop.org · Amazon
Grades 9–12
- My Life and Work · In the library
More lives
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