Detroit Automobile Company And Henry Ford example essay topic

[Henry Ford: A Man of the Century The 2006 Porsche 911 that I would love to own would not even be in existence were it not for the fortitude and ingenuity of men like Henry Ford who lead the way in the automotive industry. The Ford Motor Company and Henry Ford with his engineer's mind and spirit of inventiveness changed American history. Henry Ford was a man with an interesting private life as well being a man who pushed to make his dreams come true and did not take "no" for an answer which is what a great inventor and business man needs. Henry Ford was responsible for the assembly line way of manufacturing. In the plant that was built in Highland Park, Michigan to produce the Model T the first assembly line was built.

All of the equipment was installed beginning in 1908 and the plant went into production in 1910 the idea was that one person could become very good at doing one thing by doing it over and over and be proud of their work. The assembly line change was what headed the Ford Motor Company to huge sales and profits over the next several years. Charles Sorensen, and Clarence Avery could possibly have been responsible for the idea of the assembly line way of manufacturing, but with Henry Ford's engineering background he was definitely involved in some way along with these top men of his. Many credit him with the idea alone so it isn't known if it was collaboration or not.

Ford didn't promote this first car by announcing that he would provide a public demonstration of the capabilities of the car like Charles B. King did who was the first man to drive a car through Detroit. Ford called the car the "quadricycle" and gave that demonstration on Memorial Day in 1896. Basically, there was not a soul that cared, no newspaper wrote an article and this strange car of his wasn't the first or the best, so back to the drawing board Henry Ford went. Ford's second car was released in 1899, and he even got a little press with the arrival of this one. In the July 29 edition of the Detroit Journal there was not only an interview but also nice pictures of the demonstration. Probably because of the press that he got, there was more interest in whom Henry Ford was and the first company that Henry Ford was associated with in the automotive business was formed.

The company was named the Detroit Automobile Company and Henry Ford was given only a small share of stock in it. During the time Henry Ford was with the company he worked on improvements to his automobiles and raced them instead of selling them. As good as they were, his cars just didn't sell, so in 1902 Henry M. Leland replaced Ford and the company that we know as Cadillac was born. Ford didn't quit though; he had formed an idea that he could race his cars and that would bring him more publicity. He and his group of assistants put their minds together and created a racing car for Ford to drive. When they were done, their masterpiece was a trim 26 horsepower racer that was to be put to the test on October 10, 1901, in a 10-mile race.

No one believed it could happen, but Ford's car won the race against the automobile entered by Alexander Winton who was much the favorite. Winton had moved from bicycle making to automobile manufacturing and he really specialized at getting the press to his events. When Henry won everyone knew about it because of the fact that he beat Winton. He had the attention of the press so he announced that because his car was able to go at an average speed of 43.5 miles per hour in a race, he would work on it and it would be able to reach a mile in a minute. Because Henry Ford got so much attention from winning a race against Winton there were many people who wanted to join him in the automotive game. He and his new partners who were prominent men of Detroit formed the second company that Ford was to be associated with, the Henry Ford Company, in November 1901.

Henry owned one sixth of this new company and he was excited about the prospects of racing even more after he learned there was money to be made at it. He wrote to a brother-in-law about a challenge that he was pushing against a French racer named Henri Fournier. "If I can bring Mr. Fournier in line there is a barrel of money in this business... I don't see why he won't fall in line if he don't I will challenge him until I am black in the face... My Company will kick about me following racing, but they will get the Advertising and I expect to make dollars where I can't make cents at Manufacturing" (Lewis 18). As a result of Ford becoming a race fanatic, the stockholders in his company weren't happy.

They bought him out for $900 and the drawings for his newest racing car. Ford didn't stay down long; he formed a third company with his partner Tom Cooper who was a former bicycling champion. Cooper had the money and a interest in tires coming from his bicycle background and, of course, Ford had the engineering mind. They built two eighty-horsepower cars, the Arrow and the 999.

Both of the men drove the cars and were afraid to race them so they decided that they needed a real driver with more nerve than brains. They contracted with Barney Oldfield who was a bicycle racer without any experience driving cars but he said he would try anything once. The car was entered into the 1902 Grosse Point race on October 25th where there were three other drivers. After Oldfield got the 999 heated up he passed the others like they were standing still.

He finished the race a full lap ahead of the nearest competitor. This was a turning point in Ford's career because he was able to start devoting his time to creating the perfect family car. All of the publicity about the win also helped by creating excitement again about forming a new company for Ford. The Ford Motor Company was incorporated on June 16, 1903. There were ten investors in the company and it began with a sum total of paid-in capital of $28,000. Ford was the holder of 25.5% of the new venture due to the fact that he had the patents, the automobile engine and the knowledge.

Ford got the nickname of a "giant killer" when he stood against a group of car manufacturers that were attempting to keep him out of the car business by trying to enforce a patent that an attorney named George Selden had filed. Sedan had filed for a patent in 1879 for a road vehicle, which he designed but never built it. He continued over a stretch of many years to make changes to the patent without ever building the car. In 1900 Selden filed suits against all the major automobile manufacturers forcing them to defend the suit for the cars they had actually built. Eventually, many of the manufacturers decided it was useless to keep fighting Selden so they formed an association called ALAM or Association of Licensed Manufacturers. There were twenty-six members in the organization by 1903 and they agreed to pay Selden's company the Electric Vehicle Company a royalty of 1.25 percent of the price of each car sold.

Ford at first asked to join the association but when he was treated badly he decided to fight back. He used the media to direct public opinion in his favor. He made himself look like the common man against the privileged. He would respond to adds which threatened every owner of his cars with the fact that they would have to pay a fine when the case was decided in court. He responded by getting press in the paper about his accomplishments like the races he had won in his car and that his car set a speed record in New York in 1903 and he himself had won a major race against Winton at Grosse Pointe track in 1901.

It took until 1911 for an appellate court to hand down a decision that was in Ford's favor but by this time he stood alone against the ALAM group so the stories about him had reached epic proportion as not only the "Giant Killer" but also as "Ford the Fighter" (Lewis 24). The Model T was commonly called the Tin Lizzie but Ford didn't like the nickname. The nickname came from Lizzie a name that often was given to a horse and so the Model T was a tin version of a horse. Whatever we want to call it the car was very popular in rural America in the farm culture that existed at the time with farm equipment dealers selling cars along with farm equipment according to the book Henry Ford Grass-Roots America.

With the release of the car in 1908 there was a new era dawning for the small towns of America. Most people learned how to maintain the car for themselves easily in rural areas because they had been using steam engines and then gasoline engines to help them with farm work. They came up with various ways to get the cars started on cold winter mornings including pouring a kettle of water hot off the stove onto the carburetor. A farmer wrote to Edsel Ford these words. "Henry Ford has done more than any man who had ever lived to free farm families from monotony and isolation. Until your father provided low-cost transportation the vast majority of these families had scarcely been five miles from home.

I can truthfully say that every time such a family group met my eyes, I would reverently say, God Bless Henry Ford. With curtains flying they went along, happy, jolly, and wholesome". He was referring to the first days of the Model T out in the country when farmers in working clothes could be seen driving down the road with their wives beside them and five or six children in the back seat. There was another side of Ford that many people may not know as much about because this was his private life.

He was a man who did many seemingly opposite things like he hated Jews yet helped the Blacks. He didn't believe in giving money to charities but he would give money to things that he believed in when he wanted. Of course, he had all the luxuries of living the lifestyle of a rich man but what exactly did that entail, maybe not what he wanted the most? He said the one thing he missed the most was that his wife quit cooking. He was fortunate to marry a woman who totally believed in him named Clara Bryant who came from the same hometown of Dearborn, Michigan. They were married in 1888 and the marriage lasted 59 years.

Mr. Ford called her "The Believer". There were only two times that she spoke up about things regarding his business. Once, when Ford refused to settle a strike with labor, she told him to get it done, and again, when her husband was 82 years old she asked him to hand over the reigns of the company to his grandson. A man who believes himself to be Ford's illegitimate son tells another side of Ford. His name is John Cote Dahlinger. He grew up calling Ford "Mister".

(Dahlinger 1). This mister insisted that his christening gown be found and used for John and he provided the home that his family lived in as well as the jobs they had. Mr. Ford built the school that John went to and he even insisted that the desk that he used in his youth be the one that John used. According to John, his mother, Evangeline and the man who raised him Ray Malinger were allowed to live a nice life in a home that was built on the Ford estate for them. John was lucky enough to have a small car from England when he was 4 or 5 that Mr. Ford bought him.

It had a motor and everything just like the large version. This was something that he kept instead of giving it to the Ford Museum. When John was only 6 or 7 he was given the car that won the Indy 500. John was born in 1923 so he was of the same generation of the grandchildren of Mr. Ford and they were brought over to play with him often according to Dahlinger. In his book Dahlinger describes that the home that his family lived in was built for them and then sold to them for the sum of $1 they bought 150 acres to make the transaction legal. This estate has always been known as the Dahlinger estate including a gate barn with a 24-hour guard, a Kentucky show barn, a working barn, a single-story stall barn with corrals, a blacksmith's shop a lake with skating house, a quarter mile cinder track, a 6-car garage, a beautiful middle sized house, a greenhouse with servants quarters, a boathouse, a farmhouse with 3 garages and a main house.

Because his mother, Mrs. Dahlinger, was in love with fireplaces there were nine in the main house. According to John Dahlinger it was the plan of Ford that whatever money was in a safe at the Ford's main house would be theirs upon his passing. There were only a few people with the combination and they had been told that another person was entitled to half of the money there but, after Ford's death the safe was cleaned out. John Dahlinger has memories of Ford reminiscing about the things in life that he wanted to accomplish and what he did accomplish. He said that he wanted to make the world better, in some way, and he did. He also wanted to improve farm conditions, which he did as well because he thought that they should have something that would put them on a par with the rich man.

He also experimented with substituting plant material for the basic materials that were used to manufacture like iron, steel and rubber. We all owe men, like Ford, who didn't know the meaning of quit as they have shown the way for our inventors of today. Without the men who had a passion that something was even a possibility we would not have the automobile that we have today. Ford was a man who started out from little and by working hard and believing in his dream accomplished much. He did have a somewhat colorful private life as well being a man who lived rather simply but went after what he was interested in and kept trying until he accomplished the goal. Much of what Henry Ford had accomplished in his lifetime is worth looking into because it can be of value to any of us if we open our minds to learn.

It seems like I have just scratched the surface of the life of this brilliant man. We can't forget the advancements that have been possible because of the automobile and the jobs that have been provided in this industry and their importance to our country. This is why we should always be grateful to Henry Ford. Ford R. Bryan.

Beyond the Model T the Other Ventures of Henry Ford. Wayne State Press, 1997 John Cote Dahlinger. The Secret Life of Henry Ford. Indianapolis: Boobs-Merrill, 1978 David L. Lewis.

The Public Image of Henry Ford. Detroit: Wayne State Press, 1976. John B. Rae. American Automobile Manufacturers The First Forty Years. Philadelphia: Chilton, 1959 Reynolds M. Wik. Henry Ford and Grassroots America.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972.