Henry Ford

       Although you may not own a car of your own, you must have heard of Ford cars, one of the oldest make in car history and car industry. The text presents a detailed story about the father of Ford cars and the birth of the world-famous automobiles.

    Henry Ford was born in 1863, on a farm near Detroit. He loved putting machines together as well as taking them apart. He was always dreaming of machines to make his work easier. He could make tools out of odd bits of metal.

    Instead of working on the family farm, young Henry went off to Detroit and became an engine-repairer. At the New Year's dance of 1885, Henry met Clara Jane Bryant, and fell in love with her. Henry built Clara Jane a house with his own hands. They were married and stayed together for fifty-nine years.

    At this time, there were a few "horseless carriages" on the roads, but most of them were driven by electricity or steam. Herr Otto had invented an engine which ran on petrol. Thousands of people paid good money to see the model engine working away by itself. Henry saw it too. At once he imagined an engine like that, on wheels, driving a car or bicycle.

    He knew that he needed an electric spark to light the petrol and start the engine. But he did not know how to produce one. Henry was not the sort of man to let a thing like that stop him. He tried to work everything out for himself and he had to work at night since he had a full-time job with the Edison Electric Company in Detroit. The night before Christmas, 1893, Henry Ford was working in his shed. His first petrol engine was ready—he hoped—to run. Its cylinder was just an old piece of gas-pipe.

    "Lend me a hand , dear," he said to his wife. Clara was preparing for next day's Christmas party, but she wiped her hands and accepted the tin of petrol which her husband handed her. Henry pushed the starting-wheel while Clara put the petrol in. Nothing happened.

    "Try again," said Henry. The engine coughed. Flames shot out of it. And it ran.

    At last, in 1896, the first Ford car was completed. It was like a box placed on four big bicycle wheels. It had an engine with two cylinders and no brakes. If you wanted to go backwards, you had to get out and push. Henry sat on a seat on top, like the driver of a horse-drawn carriage, and steered with a sort of bar.

    At last the great moment came. Clara watched as Henry knocked down part of the shed wall and drove off into the rainy night. It was two o'clock in the morning and Henry had been working for forty-eight hours.He drove his quadricycle, with more noise than speed, through the empty streets. It worked! Indeed, it ran well for several years. But Henry soon lost interest. Already he was planning a bigger and better car.

    In 1898 his new car was finished. The motor car was starting to attract attention and people were beginning to see that "horseless carriages" were not just a joke. Henry Ford accepted a job with the Automobile Company. But the company failed and he started motor racing.

    Racing cars were just becoming popular, and there was money to be made—if you won. For Henry, it was not the money that attracted him, but the chance to test his cars—really test them—in difficult conditions.

    There were new problems all the time, but Henry found answers to them all. For example, he decided he wanted a plug in a porcelain jacket to send the spark through the cylinders of his engine. Who, in Detroit in 1900, could make that? Henry found a helpful dentist, who was used to working with porcelain, making false teeth. The result was the spark-plug as we know it today.

    Henry was determined to get his car ready for Detroit's first motor race on 10 October, 1901. Everyone expected a driver called Alexander Winton to win the race, who had driven his automobile in France, as well as all over the USA. But Henry Ford's lighter car was faster on the corners, and soon Winton was only a short distance ahead. Then Winton's engine began to smoke badly, and Henry went out in front─ and stayed there, winning the race.

    In 1904 he went on to beat the world speed record, which at that time was 77.13 miles an hour. The conditions he did it in were not exactly perfect. He chose a frozen lake, from which farmers swept away the snow to make a track. They put ashes on the track, to stop the wheels from slipping. It was a very cold day, but as usual Henry had no windscreen. He was forty years old—old enough to know better. As the car picked up speed, it slid about on the ice. Sometimes it hit the piles of snow which stood like a wall on either side of the track. But he broke the record at 91.37 miles an hour.

    By now, businessmen were very keen to put their money into building Henry Ford's cars. A company called the Henry Ford Company was started in this way. But Henry himself did not much care about money. He soon dropped out of the business, and opened a car factory himself, with his own staff. He found a man called James Couzens, and together they worked out how to get the parts made in other factories, so that they could just do the actual building of the cars. They sold their first car in 1903. By 1904 the company was doing very well indeed with its Model A Ford.

    There were people in the business, who had lent Henry their money. They felt that Ford should be building the bigger and more expensive automobiles which were then in fashion. But Henry Ford was not interested in fashion. He dreamed about a car for the ordinary man. What he wanted to do was to produce cars in large quantities, all exactly the same, so that a part from one car would fit all the others. That would keep down the cost. As Henry Ford saw it, cheaper cars would lead to more people buying cars, which would lead to better roads. This, in turn, would lead to more people buying cars, which would lead to cheaper cars. He used to say to his workmen, "One day, you will be able to afford a car of your own."

    Henry and Couzens got control of the whole company, to Henry's joy, and in 1908 the first Model T Ford rolled off the production line. It was an ugly little car, but so simple that a child could drive it.

    Roads in those days were really rough; the Model T was built to go on those roads. The roads improved and the Model T remained popular, At first it cost 850 dollars, later only 260 dollars. This was at a time when most cars cost as much as a house and garden.

    Fifteen million Model T Fords were sold all over the world. It made Ford's fortune. But Henry Ford just put all the money back into the business. He was not anxious to get rich; what he wanted was to build automobiles.

    Henry Ford was the first man to organize the work of the assembly-line and in an efficient way. More and more Model Ts rolled off the production line. Henry was worried. He was making too much money. He actually said, "My profits are awful." He cut the price of his cars, but they sold in greater numbers than ever, and profits rose again.

    Then Henry Ford did something which was very unusual in those days. He increased his men's wages and improved their working conditions. Wages at the Ford factories rose from two dollars a day to five, and working hours were shortened from twelve hours a day to eight. The newspapers were full of this news and people crowded into Detroit in search of a job with the Ford Company.

    "We want to make men in this factory, as well as automobiles," said Henry Ford. "I believe I can do the world no greater service than to make jobs for more men, at higher rates of pay."

    Meanwhile, the Model T was selling all over the world. By 1919, the Ford factories were turning out 86 000 cars a month. By November 1922, the figure was 240 000. And he started to buy other businesses too.

    In 1927 the new Model A came on the scene. Crowds rushed to see it. Then, two years later, at the age of sixty-eight, when most men are enjoying a well-earned rest, Henry Ford did it again. He built the big V8 Ford. This powerful car, with its eight-cylinder engine, made sports-car racing popular again.

    Some people say he was the richest man in history. Some say he was the richest man in the world then. But Henry Ford made it possible for ordinary people to go from place to place easily and cheaply.

(1,497 words)

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