FREE ESSAY ON HENRY FORD

HENRY FORD

Henry Ford was the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and the driving force behind the
firm and its products, who made an extraordinary impact on the American industry. Henry
made many accomplishments, which include the Quadricycle and the Model-T car. As a young
kid Henry was really into the mechanical industry, which helped him in life to develop
all of the cars that he created during his years at the head of Ford and as he worked in
his younger days at a Detroit factory. (2:23) Also when Henry was married to Clara Bryant
in 1888, he ran a sawmill, which helped him make some money to get his family started.
(6:1) The Model-T car was very cheap and this made it available for every man or woman
who wanted to get a car. This vehicle initiated a new era in personal transportation. The
Model-T was easy to operate, maintain, and handle on almost any road conditions, which
immediately made it a huge success. Henry Ford was a huge success in the boom of the
economy in the early 1900's. (4:2)
Henry Ford was born on July 30, 1863 and he was the first of William and Mary Ford's six
children. (2:3) He was born on a farm near what is now called Dearborn, Michigan. As a
young boy Henry Ford enjoyed a normal young life of the rural nineteenth century. (3:4)
He spent most of his youthful days in a very small school and doing chores on his
family's small farm. When Henry was in the early stages of childhood, he showed a lot of
interest in mechanical things because he did not like doing farm work. (5:8) In 1879,
when Henry Ford was sixteen years old, he left home to the city of Detroit to go to work
as a mechanic's helper. Even though he left home for Detroit, since the cities were close
together, he often came home to help out on the farm. Henry worked as a mechanics
apprentice for three years then he returned back home to Dearborn. (2:25) The next couple
years of his life Henry was dedicated to dividing his time between using many different
types of machines, otherwise he spent his time fixing up steam engines and he
occasionally worked in a Detroit factory. (5:2) Henry also spent a lot of his time
helping on his dad's farm apparatuses, in addition to doing other hands on farm work. In
1891, Ford became an engineer at the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit, Michigan.
(6:1) This was a very important role in Fords life that signified a choice for the quest
of his industrial life. He received a promotion in 1893 to Chief Engineer, which left him
with enough time to work on his personal engines. (4:3) With all of this time off Henry
Ford was able to complete his first self-propelled vehicle he called the Quadricycle. He
also offered each of his workers a wage of a least $5.00 per day, which was a lot of
money for a worker to make back then. (3:2) 
This vehicle that Henry Ford developed, which was Quadricycle was a gasoline-powered
automobile. The Quadricycle was made on June 4, 1896 in a very small shop in the back of
his house. (2:35) Henry named it the Quadricycle because it had four wheels. This car
also had a steel frame, no body. It had a little bit of wood and a box seat. There was
also a bell and a light. The back of the seat had a special plate that said: (3:25) 
U.S.& FOREIGN
PATENTS PENDING
ON THE WORKING
PART & DESIGN
OF THIS MACHINE The only thing wrong with this car was that it looked like a big bike and
it steered like a giant boat. Another bad thing was the car had only two speeds. The
problem with this was that they were both forward speeds so; if you needed to go into
reverse you had to push it. (2:3) This car helped Ford start the Ford Motor Company in
1903 because it was self-propelled and very easy to work with.
The most important car that Henry Ford built was the Model-T automobile. Henry Ford was
once heard saying that, "You can paint it any color just as long as it's black." This
quote has survived for over 75 years. (6:4) This was a car that had a lot of speed for
those times, which were 20-horse power and four cylinders. It could reach top speeds of
35-40 mph. This bad boy had reverse and two sets of brakes. Last it consisted of a
10-gallon tank of gas and side oil lamps, tail lamp and a horn. (6:4) Another feature
that this car had was a steering apparatus on the left side of the vehicle. He also had a
three-point engine mounting, which was an important feature because it avoided distortion
in the engine base, which was common for vehicles back then. A few glitches that they had
with this car back then were in the transmission because the linings in the bands came
out a lot. Another bad thing was that the bearings in the rear axel were not made very
well so you had to replace them a lot. The last problem with the Model-T was that the
wheels were different sizes so you had to carry extra of both sizes of you had a flat.
(5:22) A great feature that Ford made on this car was that it was almost unbreakable
because you could hit it with anything and it will just bounce off. The last problem that
you could have with this automobile would be going up hills. The problem with this is
that if you didn't have enough speed the forward gears didn't have enough power so you
couldn't make it up the hill. A way to get up the hill would be to go in reverse because
it had a higher gear and if you were low on gas, going into reverse would place the gas
higher in the carburetor, which intern would give you some power. This was caused because
the lube system in the car was not effective at all angles. Also he placed the gas tank
so it would eliminate the chance of the oil starvation, which will blow the engine in
your car. (5:23) The car sold for $850 and in 19 years they sold over 15,000,000 of them
at the Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit. (4:3)
Henry Ford failed twice trying to establish the Ford Motor Company, but in 1903 he was
able to start the company and became vice-president and chief engineer. (1:1) This small,
new company started out making a couple cars a day in the plant on Mack Avenue, Detroit.
He had a couple groups of two men per group working on the cars each day. After a little
while, Ford realized that in order to produce the car that every man wanted he had to
make the car a reasonable price, reliable and efficient. (3:2) Due to the high commands
of this car, Ford had to open another factory in Highland Park, Michigan in 1910. (6:3)
In 1918, the number one car that every man had or wanted in the U.S. was the Model-T.
(6:4) To make these cars so nice Henry had to combine precision manufacturing,
standardization and interchangeable parts. He also started a division of labor and the
assembly line. (5:3) In an assembly line, the workers stayed in the same place, while
adding a piece to a car as the car moved on past them. To deliver the parts from place to
place was a giant conveyer belt, which was the key to the assembly line because it had to
have the right speed and it had to move smoothly and efficiently. (3:36) The launching of
the assembly line revolutionized automobile industry by significantly reducing the time
it takes to make each of the vehicles. (1:1) This ended up lowering the cost per car,
which made the customers happy. Henry Ford's production of the model T's made his company
the largest automobile manufacturer in the whole entire world. (4:3) This great company
began with the building of the world's largest industrial complex on the Rouge River in
Dearborn, Michigan during the late 1910's. This massive Rouge Plant included all the
necessity's for his cars, which was: a steel mill, glass factory, and an automobile
assembly line. (4:4) This plant could hold 81,000 workers, it had a total area of
6,952,484 square feet, and it cost $268,991,592.07. Iron ore and coal were brought on by
the Great Lake steamers and by railroad tracks. (2:10) These rolling mills, forges, and
assembly shops transformed the steel into springs, axles, and the bodies for the
automobiles. The foundries also converted iron into the engine blocks and cylinder heads
that were assembled with the other engine parts. (2:11) By the year 1927, Ford had
assembled the steps in the manufacturing process from refining the raw materials to the
final assembly of an automobile. Henry had characterized the ideas of mass production.
(2:12)
In conclusion, Henry Ford turned out to be the spark plug of the automobile industry. He
was the man who started to use the assembly line and he also produced all of his own
materials so they were cheaper, which intern aloud Henry to sell his cars more affordable
to the consumers. (4:1) The Model-T automobile was one of the best cars of all time
because it was affordable, and it came in a wonderful color of black, which was very
nice. Henry Ford had a split personality, on some occasions he could be mean, selfish and
he sometimes had a cruel streak. Yet at times Henry could be generous, compassionate and
kind. Also he was narrow minded, and stubborn. But then he would come back and have
remarkable insight, vision and open-mindedness. Most of his associates said that it was
hard to understand Ford's chameleon like personality but he was still a good guy. (1:1)