Henry Martin Ford was to be the founder of the Ford Motor Company.

Henry Martin Ford (Dearborn, Michigan, July 30, 1863 – May 7, 1947) was the founder of the Ford Motor Company and is considered the creator of the middle class in American society and the father of production chains modern, used for the mass production of cars.

The introduction of the Ford T in the automobile market meant a revolution in transportation and in the industry of the United States. He was a prolific inventor who reached the number of 161 patents registered in that country. As the sole owner of the Ford company, he became one of the richest known people in the world.

He is credited with Fordism, a system he developed between the end of the 1930s and the beginning of the 1970s and which he created through the manufacture of a large number of low-cost automobiles through chain production resulting in to a key episode in the history of industry and motoring known as The Ford Case. This system involved the use of specialized machinery and a high number of workers in the workforce, with high wages. Although Ford had a rather poor education, he had a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace. His commitment to cost reduction led to a large number of technical and business innovations, including a franchise system that he established with a dealer in every city in North America and in major cities on six continents. Ford made much of his immense fortune to the Ford Foundation, but he also made sure that his family controlled the company permanently.

Henry Ford was born on a farm, in a rural town west of Detroit. His parents were William Ford (1826-1905) and Mary Litogot (1839-1876). They were of English descent, but had lived in Ireland. He had 4 siblings: Margaret (1867-1868), Jane (c1868-1945), William (1871-1917) and Robert (1873-1934).

During the summer of 1873, Henry saw for the first time a self-propelled machine: a stationary steam engine that could be used for agricultural activities. Operator Fred Reden had mounted it on wheels, which he had connected by a chain. Henry was fascinated by the machine and Reden over the next year taught him how to start and run the engine. Ford later said that this experience was what "taught him that he was an engineer by instinct."

Henry brought this passion for engines into his own home. His father gave him a pocket watch in his early teens. By 15 he had a reputation as a clock repairer, having taken apart and reassembled the clocks of friends and neighbors dozens of times.

His mother died in 1876. It was a very hard blow that left him shattered. His father hoped that Henry would eventually take over the family farm, but Henry hated this work. Besides, with his mother dead there was nothing left on the farm to attract him. He later said, "I never had a particular love for the farm. It was the mother on the farm that I loved."

In 1879 he left home and went to Detroit to work as an apprentice machinist, first with James F. Flower & Bros, and later with the Detroit Dry Dock Co. In 1882 he returned to Dearborn to work on the farm and was tasked with the use of the Westinghouse portable steam engine until he became an expert. This led him to be hired by the Westinghouse company to service its steam engines.

During his marriage to Clara Bryant in 1888, Ford supported himself by farming and operating a sawmill. They had an only child: Edsel Bryant Ford (1893-1943).

In 1891, Ford obtained the position of engineer at the Edison company, and after his promotion to chief engineer in 1893 he began to have enough time and money to devote to his own experiments with gasoline engines. These experiments culminated in 1896 with the invention of his own self-propelled vehicle called the quadricycle, which made its first successful test on June 4 of that year, 1896. After several tests, Henry Ford began to develop ideas to improve - him

Detroit Automobile Company and the Henry Ford Company

After his successful start, Ford came to Edison Illuminating in 1899 along with other investors, and they formed the Detroit Automobile Company. The company soon ended up in bankruptcy because Ford continued to improve the prototypes instead of selling cars. He raced between his car and those of other manufacturers to demonstrate the superiority of his design. With this interest in racing cars he created the Henry Ford Company.

During this period he personally drove one of his cars to victory over Alexander Winton on October 10, 1901. In 1902, Ford continued to work on his racing car, to the detriment of his investors. They wanted a model ready for sale, and they brought in Henry M. Leland to make it. Ford resigned at the disparagement of his authority, and later said: "I resigned determined never again to be under anyone's orders." The company was reorganized under the new name of Cadillac.

Henry Ford achieved success in his third business venture, launched in 1903: the Ford Motor Company, founded in 1903 with 11 other investors and with an initial investment of $28,000. In a newly designed automobile, Ford made a demonstration in which the car traveled the distance of one mile on the frozen lake of St. Clair in 39.4 seconds, breaking the land speed record. Convinced by this success, the famous race car driver Barney Oldfield, who named this Ford model "999" after one of the racing vehicles of the time, drove the car across the country, making the new Ford brand was known throughout the United States. Ford was also an early driver of the Indianapolis 500.

Ford shocked the world in 1914 by offering his workers a wage of $5 a day, which at the time was more than double what most of these employees were earning. This tactic proved immensely profitable for him when Detroit's best mechanics began switching to the Ford company, bringing with them all their human capital and experience, increasing productivity and reducing training costs. Ford called it "salary motivation". The use of vertical integration in the company also proved very useful, when Ford built a large factory where raw materials went in and finished automobiles went out. These were some of the aspects of what is known as The Ford Case.

Ford suffered a first attack in 1938, after which he passed the management of his company to Edsel. Edsel's death in 1943 brought Henry Ford out of retirement. However, with his health already quite impaired, he ceded the presidency to his grandson, Henry Ford II, in September 1945, and retired entirely. He died in 1947 of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 83 in Fair Lane, and is buried in Detroit's Ford Cemetery.

On the night of his death, Michigan's Rouge River had flooded the power station and left the Ford home without power, so before going to bed, Henry and his wife lit candles and lights of oil to light the house. Later that night, just before dawn, Henry Ford, the creator of mass production, died in the same atmosphere in which he had been born 83 years earlier, by candlelight.

Source: Wikipedia