Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist and business magnate. He was the founder of Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. Ford created the first automobile that middle-class Americans could afford, and his conversion of the automobile from an expensive luxury into an accessible conveyance profoundly impacted the landscape of the 20th century.
Henry Ford was born July 30, 1863, on a farm in Springwells Township, Michigan. His father, William Ford (1826–1905), was born in County Cork, Ireland, to a family that had emigrated from Somerset, England in the 16th century. His mother, Mary Ford (née Litogot; 1839–1876), was born in Michigan as the youngest child of Belgian immigrants; her parents died when she was a child and she was adopted by neighbors, the O'Herns. Ford finished eighth grade at a one room school, Springwells Middle School. He never attended high school; he later took a bookkeeping course at a commercial school. Ford stated two significant events occurred in 1875 when he was 12. He received the watch, and he witnessed the operation of a Nichols and Shepard road engine, "...the first vehicle other than horse-drawn that I had ever seen". In his farm workshop, Ford built a "steam wagon or tractor" and a steam car, but thought "steam was not suitable for light vehicles," as "the boiler was dangerous." Ford also said that he "did not see the use of experimenting with electricity, due to the expense of trolley wires, and "no storage battery was in sight of a weight that was practical." In 1885, Ford repaired an Otto engine, and in 1887 he built a four-cycle model with a one-inch bore and a three-inch stroke. In 1890, Ford started work on a two-cylinder engine. In 1879, Ford left home to work as an apprentice machinist in Detroit, first with James F. Flower & Bros., and later with the Detroit Dry Dock Co. In 1882, he returned to Dearborn to work on the family farm, where he became adept at operating the Westinghouse portable steam engine. He was later hired by Westinghouse to service their steam engines.
Ford is an American multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. They sells automobiles and commercial vehicles under the Ford brand, and luxury cars under its Lincoln luxury brand. Ford also owns Brazilian SUV manufacturer Troller, an 8% stake in Aston Martin of the United Kingdom and a 32% stake in China's Jiangling Motors. It also has joint ventures in China (Changan Ford), Taiwan (Ford Lio Ho), Thailand (AutoAlliance Thailand), and Turkey (Ford Otosan).
The Ford Motor Company team decided to try to implement the moving assembly line in the automobile manufacturing process. After much trial and error, in 1913 Henry Ford and his employees successfully began using this innovation at Highland Park assembly plant.
The Battle of the Overpass was an incident on May 26, 1937, in which Walter Reuther and members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) clashed with Ford Motor Company security guards at the River Rouge Plant complex in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. After images of the incident were released to the public, support for Henry Ford and his company greatly decreased.
The International Jew is a four-volume set of antisemitic booklets or pamphlets originally published and distributed in the early 1920s by the Dearborn Publishing Company, an outlet owned by Henry Ford, the American industrialist and automobile manufacturer.