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N0KFQ > TODAY 07.04.16 15:56l 54 Lines 2346 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 89923_N0KFQ
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Subj: Today in History - Apr 7
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Sent: 160407/1352Z 89923@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.4.65
1947
Auto pioneer Henry Ford dies
On this day in 1947, Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor
Company, which developed the first affordable, mass-produced
car-the Model T-and also helped pioneer assembly-line
manufacturing, dies at his estate in Dearborn, Michigan, at the
age of 83.
Ford was born July 30, 1863, on a farm located in present-day
Dearborn. The eldest of six children, he was educated in a
one-room schoolhouse and as a teenager trained as an apprentice
machinist in Detroit. During the 1890s, while working as an
engineer, Ford experimented with internal combustion engines and
in 1896 built his first self-propelled, gas-engine vehicle, known
as the Quadricycle.
Ford made two failed attempts at establishing a successful auto
manufacturing company before incorporating the Ford Motor Company
in 1903. Though Henry Ford was interested in mass-producing an
affordable car, his Detroit-based company initially made just a
few cars per day. Then in 1908, Ford introduced the Model T,
which was easy to drive and maintain and sold for around $850;
the vehicle quickly became a huge success. Within 10 years, half
of all cars in the U.S. were Model Ts and by 1927, when the last
Model T came off the assembly line, more than 15 million had been
sold.
By 1913, Ford's factory in Highland, Michigan, featured a
continuous moving assembly line: Workers remained in place, each
adding a standardized part to the vehicle as it proceeded along
the line. The cost-efficient process, which soon enabled a new
car to be churned out every 93 minutes, revolutionized the
industry. Ford's other innovations included the introduction, in
1914, of the $5 per day minimum wage and the eight-hour workday,
at a time when most auto industry workers earned less than half
that amount for a nine-hour day. Ford's fair wage made it
possible for ordinary factory workers to buy the cars they built
and helped, in part, to create the American middle class.
Despite Henry Ford's vision and success, his company was
criticized for not responding fast enough to consumer demands for
new models in the 1920s, which allowed General Motors to pull
ahead and become the world's biggest automaker until 2008, when
it was surpassed by Japan-based Toyota.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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