The Rise of The Ford Motor kingdom

HenryFord (July 30, 1863 -- April 8, 1947) was an American automotive engineer and entrepreneur who founded the ford motor company. He was also the first person in the world to mass-produce a car using an assembly line. His method of production made the automobile a mass product, which not only revolutionized industrial production but also had a huge impact on modern society and culture. Henry Ford is the only entrepreneur on the list of 100 People Who Have Influenced the Course of Human History, a book by American scholar Mike Hart.

200 anniversary of the founding of the people in the United States and founded by king Henry Ford car company, in a selection of "American independence 20 events in one hundred" the opinion polls, was named the 10 events, Apollo spacecraft and astronauts landing on the moon, such as atomic bomb success, for the attention of the world. What is not known is that the first car made by the father of automobiles in 1896 was a monster equipped with four bicycle wheels, driven by a chain, and with no brakes, which could only go in and out. Yet it was here that the rise of the Ford motor kingdom began.

An event that will affect his life

When Ford was twelve years old, his mother died suddenly in the spring. But one of his mother's words remained in Ford's heart forever and became the tenet of his entrepreneurial spirit throughout his life: "You must do the unpleasant things life gives you. You can pity others, but you must not pity yourself."

It was also in the summer of that year that an event occurred that would affect his life. One day in July, he went to Detroit with his father in a horse-drawn carriage. All the way there was a steady stream of wagons and carts drawn by men. Suddenly, a huge creature appeared in front of his eyes and let out a great roar. It was the first time in his life that he had seen a steam-powered car on the road. He almost jumped with surprise.

As the road was narrow, the steam car stopped to allow the carriage to pass. Ford jumped out at once and looked closely. The steam car had a large iron front wheel, with thick chains around its chariot-like tracks; Over the front wheels there was a large boiler, which blew out steam, and thus turned the engine; The rear wheels were high, and the trailer carrying the water tank and coal pulled behind it, making it look like a steam locomotive walking on flat ground. Curious, he asked the driver for advice. The genial driver took great pains to explain the car's features and handling methods and invited Ford to his home to practice driving the steam car. They became good friends. Since then, he has been dreaming to build a car that can run on its engine.

Soon after, my father returned from a visit to the 1876 World's Fair in Philadelphia, where he told Ford about the Machinery Pavilion. In the center of the pavilion is a Cowlis steam car with a 12-meter high steam engine and 1,600 horsepower. The behemoth roared and puffed steam in the hall. In addition, there are steam drills, steam lathes, and steam ground cleaning machines in the venue, so that the audience can feast their eyes.

Listening to his father's words, Ford felt that "the age of the machine has finally arrived." As he grew older, his love of machinery became more and more obsessive, and his desire to get out of the farm and into the machinery business grew stronger. At 16, against his father's wishes, he left the farm and moved to nearby Detroit.

Making It in Detroit

Detroit in 1879 was a burgeoning industrial city of 100,000 people with plenty of job opportunities. Ford soon got a $1.10-a-day job as a trainee at the city's largest factory, the Michigan Railcar Factory, but quit after only six days. The people were jealous and resentful of Ford's ability to easily fix machines that older workers could not fix. Then he went to the Frawa Machinery Factory. Because his salary was so low that he could not even pay the rent, he had to work at night at a clock dealer for 50 cents a night. Nine months later, he quit again because his thirst for knowledge was no longer satisfied.

Ford's third job was at the Detroit Shipyard. The weekly pay was lower, $2 a week, but you could learn a little. To pay the rent, he eats peanuts and raisins. He was advised, "Like an engine, a man needs fuel." So he came up with a way to "eat weeds": he bought bread made from cheap soybeans and stuffed it with mashed milkweed leaves to make weed sandwiches as his staple. Ford lived his entire life without serious illness and lived to the age of 84. His long and healthy life may have something to do with his boyhood experience of eating weeds.

In the shipyard, he was lucky to be assigned to work in the engine shop, was recognized by the boss, and was soon promoted from a trainee to a regular employee.

Besides work, he pays attention to studying. One day, he borrowed a copy of the World Journal of Science from a colleague. An article about the invention of the gasoline engine by Dr. Oate in Britain caught his great interest. Site is the developer of the internal combustion engine and has contributed significantly to the improvement of the internal combustion engine. At the Paris Exposition of 1867, Oort was famous for its four-stroke cycle free-piston engine. He felt that steam engines were too big and that internal combustion engines had to be developed for small factories. Ford was so impressed that he came up with the idea that internal combustion engines should also be used in vehicles.

Two years later, he joined the Westinghouse Engine Company as a skilled technician. As a demonstration operator of mobile engines, he learned a lot about engines.

The newly married move makes the wife cry

In 1887, after eight years in his chosen profession, Ford returned to his father's farm. His father gave him a threshing machine and 40 acres of land, but Ford's interest was not in farming. He wanted to develop the forest on the land and use the money from wood sales to fund his research into internal combustion engines. He built his laboratory and studio in a clearing near the forest to do his research. He had built a steam locomotive, which moved, but very slowly, and could travel only twelve meters.

By this time, American industry had made great progress in various fields. The steel industry began to develop, the railroads were extended again and again, the refining technology of petroleum advanced rapidly, the electric light and the telephone came out one after another, and the advantages of the gasoline engine had been recognized by everyone.

Under the heat of The Times, Ford could not hold back any longer. He was not content to live a leisurely life in the country. He wanted to be a manager, a company, a boss, and do something unprecedented.

One day, he revealed his plan to his new wife, Clara, to build a car with a gasoline engine and no horses. He drew the shape of the car on the back of a sheet of music and showed it to her. The wise and virtuous Clara firmly supported her husband's plan and was convinced that he would succeed. Ford told his wife that knowledge of electricity was necessary to carry out his plan. He went to work for the Edison Lighting Company in Detroit. Of course, the family has to move, too.

It came out of the blue. Clara, who had never left her hometown, was on the verge of crying, but understanding her husband, she soon held back and said she would go ahead with his plan to move the family to Detroit.

On September 25, 1891, Ford and his young wife left home and their family for Detroit. They rented a shabby apartment in a poor area. Ford was officially hired by the Edison Company as a night shift engineer. Two years later, he was promoted to the chief technician.

"A horse-less cart"

Every day after work, Ford went to the coal yard behind his house and immersed himself in experiments with gasoline engines.

Just as Ford succeeded in producing a gasoline engine and began experimenting with a "horseless car," the first gasoline car in Detroit was built by Marine engineer King. King was a friend of Ford's. One evening in March 1896, when King made his first secret test run of a gasoline car, he invited Ford to join him. It was the first time Ford had seen a gasoline car. On the streets of Detroit at night, King plods along at eight kilometers an hour in his horseless cart. Ford followed closely on his bicycle, watching how the car moved until he understood it all.

Three months later, at three o 'clock in the morning on June 4, 1896, Ford completed the first "horseless carriage". The yard was in the little brick room at the back of the house, where coal had been piled. There were small Windows and a narrow door, just enough space in the middle for Ford's cars.

"It worked! Ford and his two assistants clapped on the last rivet, Shouting excitedly. They high-fived each other like triumphant athletes. Ford was eager to test the car outside, but it was so much bigger than the door that it could not be pushed out. He ran home at once, retrieved an axe, raised it, and struck it against the wall on either side of the little door.

Clara jumped out of bed, still awake, and the neighbors, who had already been asleep, were awakened by the sound of the banging on the wall and rushed out to see what was going on.

A light rain was falling outside and it was pitch black. Clara, wearing a cloak, brought an umbrella to shelter her husband from the rain.

An assistant rides a bicycle as a guide to get milk wagons and pedestrians out of the way in time. Ford jumped behind the wheel of his first car and drove it out into the street.

The gas-engine "quadricycle", a modified carriage with four bicycle wheels on its chassis, is much smaller and lighter than King's car. The engine is 4 horsepower and has two speeds, 15 km/h and 30 km/h. Power transmission is carried out by a bicycle chain that connects the engine to the rear wheels. There is no

Brake. You must stop the engine completely to stop. The car can only go in, not back, if you want to reverse, you have to get out and push.

The car broke down some way because of a faulty ignition. People staying at a nearby hotel flocked to see the fun. They pointed and shouted, "What a monster! Who has wasted time and money on it?" "It's Mad Henry. He's been uncovering this drum thing all day and all night."

Ignoring the jeers, Ford quickly fixed the problem and drove on triumphantly. Neither the onlookers nor Ford himself could have imagined that a famous entrepreneur who shortened the distance of the world was on his way to success.

It wasn't long before Ford finally managed to drive his "four-wheeler" 13 kilometers to the town of Dipont to visit his sister Margaery.

"The Invention of Genesis"

Thomas Thomas was the inventor of the electric light, the phonograph, and the mobile camera. Edison praised Ford's success in developing the car with an internal combustion engine, even going so far as to call it an "invention of Genesis" that surpassed his electric car.

Ford was emboldened by the praise of the world's greatest inventor. In early 1899, his car No. 2 was born. Compared with the first car, there are great changes in the shape of the car, the body, and wheels are also enlarged and can take two people. Accessories have been added, and padded back seats, copper lights, and nice fenders; The weight is reduced, the engine makes less noise, and the car shakes less. This car is comparable to any advanced car of the time.

In the summer of that year, the Detroit Motor Company, the first automobile manufacturing company to be established in Detroit, was announced with Ford as its director. But it was unceremoniously disbanded after producing 12 cars in 1900.

Looking back on his failure, Ford came up with a plan to kill two birds with one stone. He tried to use his car to race and win so that he could build a better car and gain support from others, which would help his career succeed sooner. At that time, Europe and the United States popular car racing, who want to win in the car, who can succeed in one stroke. So he set out to build the strongest and fastest racing car in the world.

By the summer of 1901, his first racing car was built. It has 25 horsepower, and is light and fast, reaching a mile per minute on straights. On October 10th of that year, the Detroit Auto race began. Ford was competing in a gas-powered 10-mile race against Winton, the Cleveland automaker that had dominated the industry with its racing activities.

It was a day that would decide the fate of Ford and his car. At the sound of the signal "action", the two cars rushed out at the same time. As the car came around the corner, Ford had to slow down and Winton took advantage. But when he got to the straight track, Ford put on all the steam to catch up, to loud cheers from the crowd. Then Winton's car suddenly spewed blue smoke from the back of the car. It was obviously out of order and had to slow down. As the crowd cheered, Ford quickly passed Winton and won the championship by a landslide.

Ford and his cars became famous and attracted a lot of investors. Soon Ford formed a second company and became its manager. But the directors were so keen on making expensive cars and so bad at running them that the Ford Motor Company, as it had done before, was dissolved in 1902 after only a few months.

Ushering in the "Age of Ford"

Two successive defeats did not discourage Ford. In June 1903, Ford and a partner, for the third time set up the Ford Motor Company and hired an expert Kurzens as sales manager.

Ford keenly sensed that the age of the automobile had come. He wanted to be the man of the day, ushering in a "Ford era."

Learning from the past, he decided to give priority to the cheap VW under any circumstances. He developed new engines that were durable and reliable and produced A convertible that could travel at 50 kilometers per hour, which he named the Model A. At a price of just $850, it was very popular and sold 650 units in less than a year. In the following three months, the number soared to more than 1,100. By the third year, it was churning out 360 cars a month. The Ford Motor Company became the largest company in Detroit.

To further expand the market, in 1908 Ford introduced a new Model T car. The Model T was more than a car, it was a calling that would take the automobile industry into promising, promising, practical areas. It was affordable enough for the average wage earner to buy and became the first car to enter a peasant household. Orders for the "cheap car" flooded in, with Ford producing 19,000 that year and 78,000 the next.

Ford realized that a product that was cheap and reliable had to be mass-produced by a flow-line process. To do so, he hired the man known as "the genius of mechanization," Walter Wilson. A friend built the world's first automobile assembly line, reducing the production time for each car from 22 hours and 18 minutes to 93 minutes, increasing productivity by dozens of times. As a result, Model T production skyrocketed. In 1914, it reached the speed of one car every 24 seconds, and the annual production reached 730,000 cars.

Since the Model T came out in 1908, it produced more than 15 million cars in 19 years until 1927, creating an unprecedented miracle. Since the end of World War I, half the cars on the planet have been Model Ts. At this point, the Ford company finally became the world's largest car company, and Ford himself also won the title of "car king".

On the night of April 7, 1947, Henry D. Ford died at home after suffering a sudden cerebral hemorrhage. Although the life of the "father of the automobile" in the United States is over, his legendary experience from a talented young technician to a car king, as well as his design of the Volkswagen Model T and the way of mass production, have also left a brilliant page in the history of the world automobile industry. Today, under the leadership of the third generation of the Ford family, Ford Motor Company is still a leading company in the world automobile industry. In 1994, Ford produced 4.49 million cars, the global net income reached 5.3 billion US dollars, and the sales revenue totaled 128.4 billion US dollars, second only to General Motors, ranked second in the world's top ten automobile manufacturers.

Ford's operating principles

First, not nostalgic for the past and not afraid of the future. Failure simply gives people the opportunity to start over and act smarter.

Second, don't deliberately compete. Who manages well, and who can win the competition? It is a crime for companies to take business from others, and it is also a crime for those who try to manage with force rather than wisdom.

Third, to make a profit, you must first serve.

Fourth, manufacturing is not buying low and selling high. Risk-taking, speculation, and cheating can only hinder the development of production.