Henry Ford Created the Ford Motor Company, and Revolutionized the Automobile Industry

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Others made cars; he made better cars.

ANNOUNCER:

PEOPLE IN AMERICA -- a program in Special English on the VOICE of America.

Every week at this time, we tell the story of a person was important in the history of the United States. Today Steve Ember and Frank Oliver begin the story of industrialist Henry Ford.

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VOICE ONE: 
 

Henry Ford

Many people believe Henry Ford invented the automobile. But Henry Ford did not start to build his first car until eighteen ninety-six. That was eleven years after two Germans -- Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz -- developed the first gasoline-powered automobile.

Many people believe Henry Ford invented the factory system that moved a car's parts to the worker, instead of making the worker move to the parts. That is not true, either. Many manufacturers used this system before Ford.

What Henry Ford did was to use other people's ideas and make them better.

Others made cars. Henry Ford made better cars. And he sold them for less money. Others built car factories. Henry Ford built the biggest factory of its time. And he made the whole factory a moving production line.

Henry Ford had great skills in making machines work. He also had great skills as an organizer. His efforts produced a huge manufacturing company. But those same efforts almost ruined the company he built.

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VOICE TWO:

Henry Ford was born on a farm in the state of Michigan on July thirtieth, eighteen sixty-three. The farm was near the city of Detroit.

Henry was always interested in machines. He was always experimenting with them. He enjoyed fixing clocks. And he helped repair farm equipment. When Henry was sixteen years old, he left the family farm. He went to Detroit to learn more about machines.

In eighteen seventy-nine, when Henry began work in Detroit, the city was a center of industrial development. Travelers could tell they were near Detroit by the cloud of smoke that hung over the city. Detroit was a center of iron and steel making. Nearby mines of lead and salt brought chemical companies to the city. And Detroit's copper and brass business was the largest in the world.

ONE thing Henry Ford learned in Detroit was to have the right tool to do the job. It was something he would never forget.

VOICE ONE :

After three years in Detroit, Henry returned to his family farm. He remained on the farm until he was thirty years old. But he was not a real farmer. He was a machine man. A nearby farmer, for example, had bought a small steam engine to be used in farming. The machine did not work correctly. Henry agreed to try to fix it. At the end of just one day, Henry knew everything about the machine. And he made it work again.

Henry remembered that time as the happiest in his life. He said: "I was paid three dollars a day, and had eighty-three days of steady work. I have never been better satisfied with myself. "

Another thing that made those days happy was meeting a young woman. Her name was Clara Jane Bryant. Years later Henry said: "I knew in half an hour she was the one for me. " They were married in eighteen eighty-eight, on Clara's twenty-second birthday.

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VOICE TWO:

Henry and Clara lived on a farm near Detroit. But, still, Henry was not a real farmer. He grew some food in a small garden. And he kept a few animals. But he made money mostly by selling trees from his farm. And he continued to fix farm equipment. It was really machines that he loved.

In eighteen ninety-one, Henry visited Detroit. There he saw a machine called the "silent otto. " It was a device powered by gasoline. It had been developed by a German, Nikolaus August Otto. He was one of the men who had worked with Gottlieb Daimler, who developed the first gasoline-powered automobile.

The silent otto did not move. But Henry saw immediately that if the machine could be put on wheels, it would move by itself.

He returned home to Clara with an idea to build such a machine. He was sure he could do it. But the machine would need electricity to make the engine work. And Henry had not learned enough about electricity. So he took a job with an electric power company in Detroit. Henry, his wife Clara, and his young son Edsel moved to the city.

VOICE ONE:

While Henry worked for the power company, he and a few other men developed a small engine. In June, eighteen ninety-six, Henry had his first automobile. He called it a "quadricycle. " It looked like two bicycles, side by side. It had thin tires like a bicycle. And it had a bicycle seat.

In eighteen ninety-nine, Henry resigned from the power company to work on his automobile. He won the support of a small group of rich men who formed the Detroit automobile company. By the start of nineteen-oh-one, however, the company had failed.

Another man might have decided that the automobile business was not the best business for him. He might have stopped. Henry Ford was just getting started.

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VOICE TWO:

In the early days of the automobile, almost every car-maker raced his cars. It was the best way of gaining p