Henry Ford

Henry Ford was born in 1863 on a farm in Michigan. From a young age, he disliked farm work but was fascinated by machines. He often took apart watches and put them back together just to see how they worked. As a young man, he left the farm to work as an apprentice machinist in Detroit, eventually becoming a chief engineer at the Edison Illuminating Company. During his free time, he obsessively experimented with gasoline engines, leading to the creation of his first vehicle.

In 1903, he founded the Ford Motor Company with the dream of building a car that the average person could afford. At the time, automobiles were expensive luxury items built one by one. In 1908, he introduced the Model T, a sturdy and reliable car. To meet the massive demand, Ford revolutionized manufacturing in 1913 by introducing the moving assembly line. Instead of workers moving around the car, a conveyor belt brought the car to the workers, with each person performing a single, repetitive task.

This method drastically reduced the time it took to build a car from over 12 hours to just 90 minutes. As production costs plummeted, Ford passed the savings on to customers, making the Model T wildly affordable. He also doubled his workers' wages to $5 a day, which helped create a middle class that could actually buy the products they made. Ford's pioneering of mass production not only transformed the automobile industry but also reshaped modern global manufacturing and urban society.