1In 1879, a 16 year old boy left his father's farm bound for Detroit.
2At a time when the only means of transportation were trains or horse carriages
3and the first automobiles were mostly seen as racing machines for the rich,
4this boy would later open a car company that would change the course of the automobile industry to what we know today.
535 years later after his arrival in Detroit,
6half of all the cars on Earth were carrying his name
7and that boy - Henry Ford - would become one of the wealthiest men in American history.
8This is that story.
9Henry Ford was born on his father's farm on the 30th of July 1863
10in what is now Dearborn Michigan.
11His father, William Ford, owned a farm where everyone in the family lived and worked.
12And being the oldest son of six children,
13Henry was expected to take over the family's business.
14However, he was nothing like his father and was never interested in his business.
15At the time, farming was labor-intensive, slow and rigorous.
16While Henry did his best to help out on the farm, he hated the sheer idea of it.
17"I never had any particular love for the farm, it was the mother on the farm I loved".
18Like most kids his age, Henry didn't like going to school and never made it past the eighth grade.
19He preferred to learn things on his own terms.
20And from a young age, he became very interested in mechanics.
21This curiosity for machines led him to study every piece of machinery he came across.
22At the age of 12, his father gifted him a pocket watch.
23And after playing around with its movements, he learned how to take it apart and put it back together in a matter of minutes
24as well as the watches of his friends and relatives.
25He later gained a reputation as a watch repairman
26and began fixing watches for people in the neighborhood.
27When Henry turned 13, he came across a steam engine for the first time in his life
28during a school trip to one of Detroit's companies
29and that's when his passion for mechanics became an obsession.
30And for the next few years, it became his new hobby.
31By the time he was 15, he had constructed his first steam engine
32but his life took a turn when Henry lost his mother, Mary Ford, to a sudden illness.
33Henry had shared a deep bond with his mother and was closer to her than anyone else on the farm.
34Devastated by her loss, Henry's hate for the farm intensified.
35He began looking for a way to escape his situation
36as the farm held too many memories of his dear mother.
37After turning 16 and against the wishes of his father,
38Henry packed his things and left the village in search of a new direction in life.
39At the time, Detroit was rapidly becoming a city of industry thanks to the steam engine
40and the city was hungry for young engineers looking for work.
41It was here in Detroit where Henry would plunge head first into reinventing himself
42by learning everything there was to know about machines.
43He took a job at a street car manufacturing company known as Michigan Car Company Works.
44Unfortunately, Henry was fired only six days after he began.
45After being unemployed for some time,
46he found a job as an apprentice at the James Flower And Brothers machine shop
47where he earned two dollars and sixty cents per week.
48But it wasn't enough to cover his rent so Henry made good use of his childhood obsession.
49He found a night job as a jeweler,
50cleaning and repairing watches, six hours a night and six days a week
51for three dollars weekly.
52Despite pulling so many jobs together to make ends meet,
53Henry would still study and experiment with machines whenever he had free time.
54In 1882, when he turned 19,
55Henry Ford decided to return home to Michigan.
56He still hated farming so he did very little work there
57and spent most of his time playing and experimenting with the machines he found on the farm.
58Luckily enough, his father had purchased a portable steam engine
59which had quickly become a norm among farmers.
60Henry spent most of his time with this machine and became so good with it
61that a neighbor at his father's farm paid him three dollars to operate his steam engine for him.
62And from there, Ford's talent and gift for machines spread across Michigan.
63Word of Henry's talent reached the district representative of the Westinghouse Engine Company of Schenectady from New York
64and so the company hired him.
65Henry's job was to travel throughout southern Michigan,
66setting up and servicing Westinghouse steam tractor engines.
67In the year 1885, Henry met Clara Jane Bryant at a New Year's Eve party and got engaged the following year.
68As a wedding gift, Henry's father gave his son 40 acres of land.
69But rather than turning it into a farmland, Henry had other ideas.
70In 1891, Henry and Clara moved to a small apartment in Detroit.
71Around this time, Henry came across a British magazine and learned about the gas engine.
72This gas engine was being produced in small quantities by a German engineer called Nicholas Otto
73and was very different and far more efficient than steam engines.
74For one thing, they didn't need 30 minutes to start up
75because the engine did all the combustion it needed internally.
76Although this new engine was fast becoming really popular in Europe,
77only a few people had heard about it in America.
78Luckily enough for him, he found someone in the city who owned one.
79Henry immediately fell in love with the gas engine but he couldn't understand how it worked
80and the fact that the gas engine was powered up by an electric spark made things even worse.
81Knowing he had to learn more about this,
82Henry applied for work as a night engineer for the Edison Illuminating company
83for a salary of $40 a month.
84At the time, the company was the biggest electric company in Detroit
85and it was generating electricity to 1000 homes in the city using a steam engine.
86So this made Henry more than qualified to work there.
87His job was to primarily fix the engine whenever it broke or developed a fault.
88But when it was working fine he didn't have much else to do.
89This gave Henry more than enough time to immerse himself in learning about electricity and how it works.
90In 1893, Henry and Clara welcomed their first and only child, Edsel Bryant Ford.
91And just three months after his birth, Henry was promoted to the position of chief engineer
92at a salary of $100 per week.
93That same year, Henry succeeded in creating his first working gas engine
94which was the first step in his dream of creating a horseless carriage.
95It wasn't until June 4th 1896, at exactly 1:30 am,
96when he finally completed his experimental car using a gas engine.
97He called it the Quadricycle.
98The Quadricycle was essentially a crude contraption that consisted of two bicycles placed side by side
99and was powered by a gasoline engine.
100While the experiment was successful, it had a few issues of its own.
101This experimental car had two gears and neither one was for going in reverse or going forward.
102But the biggest problem was that it had no cooling system
103and so, the car was prone to overheating after running for a while.
104Henry made multiple adjustments to the car but the most notable one was adding a cooling system to the vehicle.
105He later sold the vehicle for $200 and used the money for another big project.
106With the support of the Detroit mayor,
107Henry began to build his second experimental car and completed it by July 1899.
108This new car was larger, sturdier and heavier than the previous one.
109One morning Henry took a wealthy lumber merchant by the name of William Murphy for a test drive in his new vehicle.
110By the time the test drive was finished, William wanted to be part of Henry's business venture
111and soon after they shook hands together.
112And on August 5th 1899, the Detroit Automobile Company was born.
113Unfortunately, the company failed only a year later because of several reasons.
114Henry's ideas about improving the car he worked on were not in line with the stakeholders ideas
115who were pressuring him to make passenger cars.
116Another reason was because most of the parts that were required to make his cars were produced by different companies
117and as a result of this, whenever a delivery was late,
118the whole factory had to sit back and wait for the delivery.
119This slowed production by a significant amount of time.
120His first car, which he called the delivery wagon, took six months to make
121and only 20 of them were made during the company's first two year existence.
122As a result of all this, Henry was fired from his position.
123But even though his first company had failed, he remained optimistic.
124Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
125Henry was actually relieved when he was sacked
126because there was less pressure on him and now he could focus on other things.
127Henry decided to turn his attention to racing cars.
128The reason was simple, racing cars had become a very popular sport in the United States
129and Henry wanted a platform to showcase his cars and their quality.
130And besides, despite knowing a lot of very popular people in the city,
131not many of them would be willing to invest in his ideas
132after what happened with the Detroit automobile company.
133A year later, Ford's newly designed racing car defeated the vehicle of Cleveland automaker Alexander Winton
134as well as the nation's leading national racing driver Grosse Pointe.
135Henry's 26 horsepower vehicle became the talk of the town
136and that kind of popularity gave investors the confidence they needed to back Henry the second time.
137The result was the birth of the Ford Motor Company with Henry as the chief engineer.
138Not too long after, Henry's position was again hanging on a thin thread.
139The reason was because Henry continued to work making race cars which infuriated his investors.
140They wanted him to create passenger cars they could sell to the masses
141and so they brought in another Henry - Henry Martyn Leland - to do their bidding.
142Ford was annoyed they had brought in someone else to take over his place and so he left the company.
143In his autobiography, Henry is quoted saying
144"I resigned determined never again to put myself under orders".
145Henry Leland, on the other hand, followed the wishes of his investors
146and went on to create what today we know as the Cadillac.
147With Henry Ford gone, the name of the company was changed from Ford Motor Company to the Cadillac Motor Company.
148Henry and a former racing cyclist by the name of Tom Cooper continued building racing cars.
149In 1902, they produced the Ford 999,
150an 80 horsepower car, that was driven by Barney Oldfield,
151a former bicycle racer who had never driven an automobile in his life, surpassing Winton's car again.
152By 1904, Henry's new car broke all the American records
153driving at a top speed of 91.4 miles per hour.
154With these records and victories, Henry had established himself as the best American designer for racing cars.
155With that kind of reputation, he knew he would be backed again by investors
156whenever he was ready to start up his third company.
157With the support and financial backing of 11 investors,
158especially a coal dealer from Detroit, Alexander Young Malcomson,
159Henry's third company came to life.
160The company was initially called Ford and Malcomson limited
161but was later changed to the Ford motor company in 1902.
162After failing in his first two attempts, he was determined not to fail again.
163Ford turned his attention to creating a vehicle that was affordable for the common men.
164You see, at the time, owning a vehicle was a luxury that could only be afforded by the wealthy ones.
165The reason being these vehicles were made by extremely skilled engineers
166and most of the cars made were strictly for racing.
167At the start of his new company, Henry made a statement to his associates and investors:
168"I will build a motor car for the great multitude constructed of the best materials by the best men to be hired".
169"After the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise"
170"so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one."
171Ford had a knack for identifying and attracting the brightest talents in the business.
172He hired many impressive young men who shared and believed in his vision.
173As for the design of the car, Henry made over 20 of them before he got one that finally worked.
174He called it the model A.
175For the next five years, Henry kept improving the model A
176which was followed by the model N
177but in those five years, what really changed wasn't the improvements of his designs but how they were being made.
178One of the things Henry learned from his failed businesses
179was the importance of having one manufacturer responsible for supplying most of the parts he needed to build his cars.
180And so, he found a machine shop in Detroit to do just that.
181One day, during a trip to Chicago, Henry witnessed the assembly line concept at a slaughterhouse
182and that's when a bright idea came to him.
183If he could incorporate the same idea into building his cars,
184he could make more cars in a day.
185You see, at the time, Ford and many other car makers put together one car at a time
186and the production was slow.
187So in 1904, Henry raised more money and built his own factory.
188He employed over 300 workers and began experimenting with the assembly line inside his new factory.
189It wasn't until 1906, when the production of the model N would really first make use of the assembly line.
190But even then, the assembly line was still a work in progress.
191However it did increase the level of production by five times
192and his new model became the best selling car in the US.
193But Henry had set his sights on even greater things.
194Henry built his own manufacturing company in 1905
195to start making his own engines, transmissions and everything else needed for the production of his cars.
196Around this time, Henry also discovered vanadium steel
197and it was this discovery that really paved the way to a new era for the automobile industry.
198Vanadium steel was about three times stronger than the previous steel and much lighter.
199Henry used this new steel for his new model
200that would later become one of the most successful cars in human history - the model T.
201"A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits,"
202"they will be embarrassingly large."
203Henry Ford dreamed of making automobiles for the common men and for everyday use
204and the Model T was the answer to that dream.
205When it was first released, it was one of the most expensive cars Henry had ever made.
206The price for the Model T was set at $850
207which would be something around $21,000 in today's currency.
208But despite its price, it quickly became a fan favorite in the us.
209In a matter of days after its release, 15,000 orders were placed
210and the Ford motor company soon became the number one car company in America.
211What else could he want?
212Henry realized he needed a bigger factory to produce over 100 Model Ts a day.
213And so in 1910, he built a new plant in Highland Park, Michigan.
214After several experiments, the assembly line was officially in working order by 1913.
215This allowed work to be taken to the workers rather than the workers moving in and around the vehicle.
216The vehicle was pulled down the line, building it step by step
217and the new process reduced the time of production from 12 hours to 90 minutes.
218By 1914, their production rate of over 300,000 vehicles
219was more than all the cars produced by other car manufacturers combined.
220Between 1910 to 1916,
221the number of Model Ts being produced moved from 20,000 to almost a million.
222By then, about half of all the cars on earth were Fords.
223Henry had another brilliant game plan that would make him stand out in the automobile market.
224Every year, the number of the Model Ts production output increased so he reduced the price of the car.
225In fact, by 1916, the price of the model T that once sold for $850 was now selling for less than 400.
226But that wasn't the only brilliant strategy Henry adopted.
227You see, despite Henry pioneering the age of the automobile in America with the assembly line,
228a lot of his workers weren't happy with this innovation.
229Many workers found doing the same thing over and over again boring
230and the skilled craftsmen among them found their new job insulting
231as they were tasked with just two duties instead of building a whole car.
232As a result, workers began to leave Ford to work for other companies.
233To combat this, Henry doubled the worker's wage, raising it to $5 a day,
234many companies laughed at this move, believing it would quickly bankrupt the company but it did the opposite.
235Mechanics from all over the country flew to Detroit in search of higher wages.
236""We believe in making 25,000 men prosperous and contented"
237"rather than following the plan of making a few slave drivers in our multi-millionaire establishments."
238Not only did Henry Ford increase the wages of the mechanics who now worked for him
239but he also gave them an hour off from the number of hours they were required to work.
240The change in shift allowed Ford to hire a new set of workers for a third shift
241and create a 24-hour operation.
242Soon enough, many other car businesses had to do the same in fear of losing their workers to Ford.
243Henry had changed the business and manufacturing world across the USA.
244There is one rule for the industrialist and that is make the best quality goods possible
245at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.
246In 1919, Henry Ford grew tired of the interference from other investors in the company
247and decided to buy them all out.
248The result was several millionaires in Detroit
249but it also made Henry Ford the sole owner of the largest automobile company in the world.
250Later, Henry made Edsel Ford, his 26 year old son, the president of his company
251but it was Henry who really ran the show.
252However, absolute power over the company came with a price that even the richest man in America couldn't ignore.
253Henry continued to believe the Model T was the car most people wanted.
254He ignored the growing popularity of the more expensive but stylish and comfortable cars like Chevrolet.
255Being the stubborn and stiff-necked man that he was,
256he refused to listen to other Ford executives or even his own son Edsel
257when they said it was time for a new model.
258By the late 1920s, Henry could no longer ignore the declining sales figures
259so he finally decided to shut down the Model T assembly line
260and began designing an all-new car.
261The new Model A was released in 1927
262but this new car was no longer produced at Highland Park
263but at a bigger factory along the rogue river in Michigan.
264In his new factory, Henry wanted to include all the steps involved in the manufacturing process
265from refining raw materials to the final assembly of the automobile which he accomplished.
266It became the world's largest factory making steel, glass tires
267and other components that went into building the cars.
268However, Ford's one-man control over the decision-making was no longer the formula for success
269and by 1936, Ford motor company had fallen to third place in the US market
270behind General Motors and the Chrysler Corporation.
271Even with Henry's latest innovative design of the v8 engine, it wasn't enough.
272Things only went from bad to worse and with the rise of the great depression,
273Ford was forced to lay off workers and lower his rates.
274In 1943, Henry's son died of stomach cancer
275and so he kept running the company for two more years
276before turning over his control of the Ford Motor Company to his grandson, Henry II.
277Henry retired to his estate and later died of a cerebral hemorrhage on April the 7th, 1947.
278"Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger."
279"Even though sometimes it is hard to realize this."
280"For the world was built to develop character"
281"and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward."
282Today Ford Motors company owns a market cap of around 70 billion dollars
283and remains as one of the biggest car companies in the world.