July 30 marked the 160th anniversary of the birth of Henry Ford, a man who became not only a symbol of motorization, but also changed the world with its help. Let’s remember how it all began

Who is Henry Ford

Henry Ford (1863-1947) is an outstanding American entrepreneur, the initiator of the mass automotive industry, who contributed to the development of this industry in the USSR, the creator of the still existing transnational company Ford Motor. At the same time, Henry Ford was a man of very contradictory, including absolutely politically incorrect, by the standards of our time, socio-political views.

Brief biography of Henry Ford

Henry Ford, born on July 30, 1863, was the firstborn in a large family of an immigrant farmer who kept a farm near the city of Detroit (Michigan, USA). William Ford, the father of the future entrepreneur, belonged to a family that moved from England to Ireland in the XVI century, and his mother, Mary, had Belgian roots.

Henry, who was burdened by farm labor that did not bring much income, had a difficult relationship with his father, who wanted to transfer his business to his eldest son. But it was William Ford, perhaps unwittingly, who addicted Henry to mechanics, giving him a pocket watch, which the teenager immediately began to disassemble and reassemble.

Curiosity went hand in hand with what would now be called a business approach, and Henry opened a local watch repair shop. “Sick” with more complex mechanisms at the age of 13 was forced by a meeting on the road with a steam car from Nichols and Shepard. Also in 1876, Henry’s mother died. After becoming famous, he wrote: “I never had much craving for farming, but my mother, whom I loved, worked on the farm.”

After the sad event, leaving his father’s house was only a matter of time. It came when Henry was 15. Then the young man went to Detroit to undergo “practical training” at several factories … and return to his father’s farm. The reason was the desire to marry Clara Bryant, whose parents, also farmers, would not consent to marry a penniless man. And then just William Ford, promised the prodigal eldest son for the return of a plot of 40 acres … The deal seemed worthwhile to Henry.

In 1888, he married Clara, whom he impressed not only with her ability to dance perfectly, but also with a negative attitude towards alcohol, which was rare in the American outback, and of course, as a watchmaker. It was a lifelong marriage, aided by Clara’s ability to take an interest in her husband’s affairs without interfering in them. Henry appreciated this, and once when asked by reporters if he wanted to live another life, he replied: “Only if you can marry Clara again.”

On the farm, Henry was mainly engaged in the design of various mechanisms, including a steam tractor, but at the same time he was looking for an alternative to the bulky and heavy steam engine. The option with electric traction was also considered, but the laying of overhead current transmission lines turned out to be too expensive, and there were no sufficiently light batteries with suitable characteristics at that time.

As a result, Henry opted for a gasoline engine. It was with them that he would equip a grain threshing machine, the patent for which he would sell to the famous inventor Thomas Edison, and in 1891 he invited him to his company, which was engaged in the arrangement of the city lighting system in Detroit.

Already in 1893, Henry will become its chief engineer … without having a higher education. A highly paid position allowed the development of a self-propelled carriage with an internal combustion engine to continue, which resulted in the appearance in 1896 of the Ford Quadricycle, which will be discussed in more detail below.

At some stage, Ford had to choose between job duties and hobbies, but the choice in favor of the latter was made thanks to the moral support of his wife and the finances of William Murphy, a Detroit tycoon who made a fortune in the lumber industry. So, on August 5, 1899, the Detroit Automobile Company was formed, a pilot automobile plant in the future “city of engines”, managed by Henry Ford. But the first pancake came out lumpy. Having produced only 20 cars that did not differ in quality at a fairly high price, the company went bankrupt in January 1901.

However, this failure gave Ford not only the experience of managing production, but also gave an extremely valuable acquaintance with a professional engineer Harold Wills for a person who did not know how (and then never learned) to read drawings. The result of the cooperation of this duo was the appearance of a successful model with a 26-horsepower engine, which attracted the attention of sponsors, and the creation of the Henry Ford Company on November 30, 1901, where Henry took the post of chief engineer.

And the side effect was the occurrence of … Cadillac. After being invited by investors as a consultant to engineer Henry Leland, the wounded Ford left the company that bore his name, after which it was named the Cadillac Automobile Company. A serious blow to self-esteem!

But Henry professed the principle “Honest failure is not humiliating, the fear of failure is humiliating”, and after the vicissitudes with the search for new sponsors, in parallel with the design of the successful racing car No. 999, he became a co-founder of the Ford Motor Company formed on June 16, 1903, and in 1905 the owner of a controlling stake and president of the company, which is still led by the heirs of the founder today. So, the chairman of the board of directors is his great-grandson, William Clay “Bill” Ford Jr.

The last years of Henry Ford’s life were marred by the death of his only son, Edsel, president of the company from cancer in 1919-1943, a series of strokes and the pre-bankruptcy state of Ford Motor in 1945, which prompted his closest relatives, including his wife Clara, to demand an ultimatum to transfer authority to his eldest grandson, Henry Ford II.

 

As for the socio-political views of Henry Ford, they look incredibly contradictory, but at the same time they are always pronounced:

At the beginning of the First World War, Henry Ford became part of a group of pacifists who arrived in Europe on the ship “Oscar-2” to convince the warring parties to end the conflict. This initiative, to put it mildly, did not find understanding, and after the United States entered the war in the spring of 1917, Henry Ford joined in the implementation of military orders, promising to return to the state all the profits received from them.

Whether this actually happened, history is silent, but the PR move of the industrialist received a wide public response.
Henry Ford, long before Stalin, realized that cadres decide everything, but to combat the turnover of specialists, he used not draconian methods, but a system of incentives. In 1914, the rates of most of the company’s employees were more than doubled, a shortened working week was introduced, first 48-hour, and then 40-hour (5 days of 8 hours). In addition, those who worked in the company for more than six months received the right to participate in the profits, which allowed, for example, to purchase cars produced by the company.

Such a privilege was deprived of those seen in alcohol abuse, gambling, non-payment of alimony and other unseemly acts, which until 1922 was monitored by a special “public department” of the company. At the same time, Henry Ford was an ardent opponent of the creation of trade unions in his fiefdom, the activities of which, as he believed, were detrimental to the profitability of the company. It was only under intense pressure that Ford changed his position in 1941.

Already in the early 1920s, Henry Ford began to cooperate with the USSR, where they first organized the localized production of Ford tractors, and then cars and trucks at a specially built automobile plant in the early 1930s in Nizhny Novgorod / Gorky.

At the same time, Henry Ford sympathized with the Nazi movement in Germany, and for his anti-Semitic views he was awarded – the only American – a laudatory mention in the book Mein Kampf. A portrait of Ford hung above the Fuhrer’s desk, and on the occasion of the 75th anniversary, the entrepreneur was awarded the highest award of the Third Reich for foreigners, the Order of Merit for the German Eagle, which he gratefully accepted.

After the outbreak of World War II, Ford factories in German-occupied Europe produced products for the Wehrmacht. Prior to the U.S. entry into the war in December 1941, Ford was a prominent figure in the isolationist ranks, arguing that the conflict was the result of a conspiracy of “greedy financiers profiting from human misery.” However, then Ford factories were actively involved in the production of various equipment and weapons for the US Army and its allies in the anti-Hitler coalition.

Henry Ford from the end of the XIX century was a member of Masonic organizations, and in 1940, at the ceremony of elevation to the highest, 33rd degree of the Scottish Rite, becoming the Grand Sovereign Inspector General, he declared: “Freemasonry is the best balancing wheel that exists in the United States.”

The result of two years of experiments was the appearance in 1896 of Henry Ford’s first car, the Quadricycle. The car received this name because it was mounted on four bicycle wheels driven by a chain. The two-cylinder gasoline engine transmitted power of 4 hp. to a two-speed gearbox that did not have a reverse gear. The maximum speed of the horseless carriage was 32 km / h. The original Quadricycle is now stored in the Henry Ford Museum in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, where the headquarters of the Ford Motor Concern is located.

Henry Ford’s achievements

It is not only the cars produced by his company that make Henry Ford great.

Destroyed the patent monopoly in the automotive industry
After an eight-year trial, Henry Ford emerged victorious in a confrontation with the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers (ALAM), which paid royalties to George Seldon, an American inventor, patent lawyer and schemer, who received a patent on November 5, 1895, for a general concept of a road vehicle with an internal combustion engine.

The total volume of the case file was 14,000 pages. In 1911, after winning the case after appealing the original judgment in favor of Seldon, Henry Ford stated: “It is safe to say that George Seldon never did anything concrete for the development of the automobile industry … And perhaps she would have progressed further than she is now if he had never been born.” This victory led to the collapse of the monopoly association ALAM, and Henry Ford earned a reputation as a fighter for the interests of consumers.

He was the first to implement the concept of a mass car

Henry Ford broke the system in which the automobile was the plaything of the upper strata of society, making it accessible to the middle class by rationalizing design and maximizing production efficiency. This concept was fully realized in the production of the Ford T model, designed by the already mentioned Harold Wills. The Model T is the first car in the world to be produced in millions of copies (about 15 million from 1908 to 1927), and the first global model produced by Ford plants not only in the United States, but also in several European countries, as well as in Australia. “I am quite sure that it is much more profitable to sell a large number of cars at a reasonably low price than a small number at an inflated price,” wrote Henry Ford in his autobiographical book My Life, My Achievements.

He was the first to organize large-scale conveyor production

Contrary to popular belief, Henry Ford did not invent the assembly line method and was not even the first to use it in the automotive industry (Ransom Eli Olds did this in 1901 in the production of the Oldsmobile Curved Dash model), but he improved this technology and introduced it really on a large scale, which was crucial for reducing the cost of production, increasing its volumes (the assembly time of one car was reduced by about six times) and reducing the selling price Car.

So, if the Model T in 1908 cost 850 dollars, then after the launch of the first conveyor line at the Ford Highland Park plant in 1913, it was already 550 dollars, in 1916 it was 360 dollars, and in 1926 it was another 70 dollars cheaper. This is partly due to the reduction by 1914 of the color scheme of all Ford models produced in the United States to a single version. Henry Ford famously said, “The buyer can choose a car of any color, as long as it is black.” It is much less known that such a restriction has a completely rational justification: after numerous tests, it turned out that it took two days for the black paint to dry against about two weeks in the case of alternative options. The color variety returned to the range of the Ford Motor Company, which gained power, only in the second half of the 1920s.

Actively studied the possibility of using new technologies

Already in the 1930s, soy-based plastics were used in the production of a number of components of Ford models. And in 1942, Henry Ford patented a car with a plastic body mounted on a steel tubular frame. Ford was also interested in the possibility of using chipboard and corn in the automotive industry for the production of biofuels. In total, Henry Ford has 161 US patents for various inventions.

Contributed to the development of passenger air transportation in the United States

Created in 1925, the company’s aviation division designed the Ford 4AT Trimotor, the most successful passenger aircraft in the United States until the appearance of the Douglas DC1930 and the legendary DC2 in the mid-3s. In 1984, Henry Ford was posthumously inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame for services to the industry.

Successfully participated in auto racing

In the initial period of his career, Henry Ford participated in auto racing for advertising purposes and for the sake of receiving prize money, however, as a pilot only once. In 1901, Ford emerged victorious against Alexander Winton, the most famous American racing driver of the time, at the Grosse Point Oval in Detroit. Up until 1911, hired drivers on Ford models set a number of records and won the transcontinental race “From Ocean to Ocean” (1909). In 1913,

Henry Ford tried to claim a Model T for the 500 miles of Indianapolis, but, having received an order to make the car heavier by 1000 pounds (about 450 kg), refused to continue participating in competitions with the words “We build racing cars, not trucks.” Later in his memoirs, Henry Ford spoke very briefly and disparagingly about motorsport, because, in his opinion, victories in competitions can serve as a measure of the value of the design of a car only for the ignorant.

However, in 1996, Henry Ford was inducted into the American Motorsports Hall of Fame, half a century and 19 years after being inducted into the National Automobile Hall of Fame and the U.S. Business Hall of Fame, respectively.

Automobile concern Ford Motor Company

In 2022, Ford Motor Company, the world’s fourth-largest car manufacturer in terms of production over the entire period of its existence, was ranked 500rd among the largest companies in the world in the Fortune Global 53 list. Ford Motor has been controlled by the Ford family for more than a century. At the same time, Ford Motor Company is a public company whose shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Henry Ford built his empire on two key principles. On the one hand, to ensure tight control over the cost of production, huge vertically integrated structures were created, such as the River Rouge full-cycle plant in Dearborn. On the other hand, Ford created production facilities outside the United States, believing that international trade and cooperation would contribute to the establishment of a lasting peace.

The first foreign enterprise of Ford Motor was opened in August 1904 plant in Canada, and by 1929 the empire of Henry Ford had branches on all continents except Antarctica. In the early 1930s, almost every third car in the world was produced at Ford factories.

Today, the company is divided into three structures on a geographical basis: Ford North America, Ford Asia Pacific and Ford of Europe. In 2022, 3,438,272 Ford cars were sold worldwide. Another 163,747 were sold by Lincoln’s luxury division, which became part of Ford Motor in 1922.

The top 10 countries in terms of Ford sales are as follows:

USA — 1837915 pcs.
Great Britain — 234097 pcs.
Canada — 233114 pcs.
China — 224172 pcs.
Germany – 168108 pcs.
Italy — 95004 pcs.
France — 67559 pcs.
Australia — 60463 pcs.
Turkey — 56430 pcs.
Spain — 41422 pcs.

Ford’s best-selling model last year was the full-size F-Series pickup truck (778,269) by a wide margin.