Henry Ford and the Model A, and T

Essay by Phil KelsvenCollege, UndergraduateA, December 1996

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Biography

Henry Ford was born to a farm family near Greenfield, Michigan on July 30th, 1863. Henry

himself did not like farming, but he did like fooling around with machines. Henry liked to fix all

the farm machines, and he was known around the area to be a handyman. So as a youth Henry

fixed various machines for surrounding farmers. This hobby of Henry's made his father angry, he

would neglect all of his farm chores. When Henry was sixteen he ran away to nearby Detroit

and became an apprentice to a machinist, and then a full mechanic (Robbin 36).

When he was about twenty four he married Clara Jane Bryant, and they moved back to the

farm for a while and had one son, Edsel Bryant Ford. But soon Henry became tired of the farm

again and moved back to Detroit. Henry got a job as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating

Company. While he worked there Henry fell in love with the Duryea (the first car built in

America) built by the Duryea brothers. From then on he knew what he wanted to do. In his

spare time he built a small garage in the back of his house. He wanted to build a car of his own,

and despite working twelve hour days at the Edison plant he did build a car of his own. The car

was a strange looking one, it had four bicycle wheels, and had a wooden buggy frame (Robbin

37).

Henry built a few more cars and sold them, but this landed him a job at the Detroit

Automobile Company, he was the chief engineer. Soon that company failed, then he founded

the Ford Automobile Company, and that soon failed. Now it was 1902 and Henry became

interested in just building a...