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Henry Ford was born in Dearborn, Michigan, on July 30, 1863.
Although Henry came from a family of farmers, Henry was a mechanic. He loved
doing anything Henry had many jobs before he started making cars on a permanent basis. After three years in apprentice school, Henry returned home to the family farm to work on machine experiments. A neighboring farmer bought a steam engine and hired Henry to drive it in his fields. Henry was very skilled at repairing and driving the machine. He was eventually hired to travel all over Michigan selling and servicing these steam road-engines. Henry kept dreaming of building a horse-less carriage. He
thought the steam Henry needed to learn more about how electricity worked so he got a job as an engineer at the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit. He was a very smart engineer and helped repair many failures at the plant. His bosses were very impressed with his skill and knowledge. It was after hours at the Edison Company that Henry designed his first gasoline engine in 1893. After three more years of experiments Henry was ready to build a complete automobile. Other inventors had already made horse-less carriages such as Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz. In the United States, Charles and Frank Duryea built their motorcar. Henry completed his Quadricycle in June, 1896. In the middle
of the night, Henry and his friends would test the car going as fast as twenty
miles an hour. People thought Henry was crazy! Henry was very encouraged his
vehicle worked. He |
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mechanical. When Henry or his brothers or sisters received a toy,
Henry would quickly take it apart to see how it worked and put it back together.
When he finished high school, Henry left the family farm to become a machinist.
He went to Detroit to find work as a machine apprentice (someone who is trained
by a professional.) Henry needed to make
more money to pay for his food and housing, so he worked at night as a watch
repairman. He was only sixteen years old! The store owner had him work out of
sight at the back of the store so that his customers wouldn’t see a boy
repairing their watches.
engine would be the best engine to use until he called on a
customer who had a small internal-combustion engine. (Internal combustion
engines get their power from tiny explosions of liquid fuel such as gasoline and
not from steam.) German inventors Eugene Langen and Nikolas Otto had invented
the internal combustion engine. Henry was very excited about the idea that the
engine would run by gasoline but do the work of a horse.
saved his money to continually build better, faster
automobiles. Henry built race cars and would compete with other inventors for
prize money. Henry always won! He would use the money he won to build more cars.
Many people came to watch the races and really liked the idea of the automobile.
Wealthy men would invest their money in Henry to have him build cars. His
partners formed the Detroit Automobile Company in 1899. His partners wanted him
to build expensive cars but Henry wanted the cars to be smaller and cheaper so
that more people could buy them. This company only lasted a year because of
their differences. In 1901, Henry was part of the Henry Ford Company.
Once again
Henry wanted to build something different than his investors so he resigned in
March, 1902.
