Childhood
Henry Ford was born on July 30, 1833. He was the oldest of William and Mary Ford's six children. He grew up on a thriving family farm in what is now Dearborn, Michigan. He was raised in a rural nineteenth century and had a common childhood of the time. He was a educated in a schoolhouse and attended school until he reached the age of 15. At that point, he had developed a dislike for farm life and had a passion for machinery. He was a poor student, failing most of his subjects. He never learned to spell or read very well. He wrote only simple sentences and usually preferred to work on mechanical objects such as watches. He fixed his first watch at the age of 13 and would continue fixing watches for fun for the duration of his lifetime. Even though he didn't like working on the farm, he learned that there was great value in working hard. His father wanted him to be a farmer and even offered him forty acres of the farm. Ford accepted the offer, but instead of using to produce crops, he built a first-class machinist's shop. his father was disappointed, but he used the farm to win him a girl named Clara Bryant.
The Quadricycle
In a brick shed behind his house, Ford built the Quadricycle, a small one-cylinder gasoline model. It first sputtered to life for the first time on his kitchen table. When it was finally street ready, he figured out it was too wide to fit through his door. He wanted so bad to be able to test his vehicle, that he took an ax and busted the wall apart to be able to get it through. On June 4, 1896 at 4 a.m. the Quadricycle hit the streets. It ran for a few blocks then stalled once it hit downtown. He received harsh criticism from bystanders about how he was a failure and would never amount to anything. He shook off the bitter comments and attended a convention in New York City for Edison Illuminating Company, which was his his employer at the time. He met with Thomas Edison and Edison told him to keep up the good work.
Model T and The Assembly Line
The Model T was depicted as an affordable transportation for the common man, it quickly became loved for its low cost, durability, many uses, and needed almost no maintenance. More than 15 million Model T's were built in Detroit and the production of the assembly line cut the time of manufacturing a Model T from a day and a half to ninety minutes. The assembly line that Henry Ford built was probably the first automated assembly line. Ford's first assembly line was one of the most sophisticated and successful examples ever. Ford’s line was one of the first where the work moved to the worker through automated conveyers. The Model T was a modified and more complicated version of the Quadricycle. He tried many times before to perfect the Quadricycle but, the Model T was what he wanted. He wanted the ability of a horse-drawn carriage, but without a horse. He wanted to make it to where you didn't have to have a horse to get around.