Auto pioneer Henry Ford dies

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.