Henry Ford Biography #fordusa

Henry Ford was an American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company and developed the assembly line system of manufacturing and production. Henry Ford was born in Greenfield, Michigan and after leaving school at 15, he moved to Detroit and became an apprentice in a machine shop. He returned to Greenfield but spent most of his time there trying to build various farm locomotives. He returned to Detroit and after reading about Nicholas Otto's invention of the internal combustion engine, Ford constructed his first petrol-driven car, the Model T Ford, also known as the Tin Lizzy, in 1896. For the next few years Ford had mild success and failure with this and other various models. In 1909 Ford decided to only produce one car, the Model T Ford. His assembly line methods reduced construction time from 14 hours per car to around 90 minutes, which enabled Ford to lower the cost of each car and by 1931 he had sold over 20 million Model T Fords. Ford was a strong opponent of war and organized peace conferences to end the conflicts of the First World War. Despite his objections, he was a strong American patriot and lent his factories during World War II to the war efforts in order to mass-produce planes and other technologies. Ford went on to become one of the richest and most well-known men in the world.