Born in July 30, 1863 in Detroit, Michigan, Henry Ford was a prominent American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. Ford was able to develop a productively and efficiently system that ended up forming the foundation for the consumer economy. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. As owner of the Ford Motor Company, he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world.
A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.
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7 Interesting Facts You May Not Know About Henry Ford
- At a young age, he started tinkering with watches and other machinery.
- In his spare time while he worded servicing steam engines for Westinghouse and Edison Electric Illuminating Company, he used to experiment with gasoline engines which led him to produce a self-propelled vehicle in 1896, and set up his own business in 1899.
- Ford strove for complete vertical integration (control of all aspects of the business from the supply of raw materials to the retail outlets).
- Ford paid staff $5 a day which helped to decrease employee turnover.
- Ford experimentations led him to create a self-propelled vehicle called the Quadricycle in 1896. It had four wire wheels that looked like heavy bicycle wheels, was steered with a tiller like a boat, and had only two forward speeds with no reverse.
- Unsuccessfully ran for the United States Senate in 1918.
- His industrial methods so impressed Adolf Hitler that a picture of him was in Hitler's office.
Sources: BrainyQuote, HFMGV.org, 100 CEOS, Biography
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