Henry Ford
Henry Ford
Henry Ford (1863–1947) was an American industrialist and the founder of the Ford Motor Company, whose methods of mass production made the automobile affordable to ordinary families. Raised on a farm in Michigan, he showed an early talent for machinery, trained as a machinist in Detroit and later worked as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company, building his first experimental vehicle, the Quadricycle, in 1896. He founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903 and introduced the simple, durable Model T in 1908. His turning point came in 1913, when his Highland Park plant introduced the moving assembly line, cutting the time needed to assemble a Model T chassis from more than twelve hours to about ninety minutes. In 1914 he roughly doubled many workers' pay with the five-dollar day. More than fifteen million Model Ts were built, transforming travel and industry, and his methods shaped manufacturing worldwide.
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Builders of Modern American Industry
Thomas Edison turned invention into an industry at his Menlo Park laboratory. Henry Ford, who once worked as an engineer for an Edison electric company and became Edison's lifelong friend, introduced the moving assembly line in 1913 to build the Model T. Milton Hershey made milk chocolate affordable and founded a school for orphaned children. Ray Kroc expanded McDonald's through franchising, and Howard Hughes set aviation records and built Hughes Aircraft.
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