1. About Henry Ford :
Henry Ford was an American industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production.
2. Born on : July 30, 1863 at Springwells Township, Michigan, U.S.
3. Died on : April 7, 1947 at Dearborn, Michigan, U.S.
4. Parent’s Name : Mary Ford and William Ford
5. Spouse Name :Clara Jane Bryant
6. Education : He finished eighth grade at a one-room school, Springwells Middle School and never attended high school; but later took a bookkeeping course at a commercial school.
7. Childhood Interest : Mechanics. At age 15, he used to dismantle and reassemble the pieces of his friends and neighbours, earning the name as the watch repairman.
8. First Career : He became a machinist’s apprentice in Detroit in the shops of James F. Flower and Brothers, and later in the plant of Detroit Dry Dock Company.
9. In 1882, he returned home 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.
10. In 1891, He became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company of Detroit and got promoted as a Chief Engineer in 1893, where he had enough time and money to devote attention to his experiments on gasoline engines which culminated the completion of a self-propelled vehicle in 1896, which he named the Ford Quadricycle.
11. On Aug 19,1899,he resigned from Edison Illuminating company and founded Detroit Automobile Company, which went into bankruptancy about 18 months later.
12. On Jun 16,1903, He and Alexander Y. Malcomson with 12 others invested $28.000 and created Ford Motor Company, where he owned 25.5% of the stock. He Became president and controlling owner in 1906.
13. The Model T debuted on Oct 1, 1908, was easy to operate, maintain and handle on rough roads. It immediately became a huge success and by 1922 half of the cars in America were Model T’s.
14. He turned the presidency of Ford Motor Company over to his son Edsel Ford in December 1918. He occupied that position until his death in 1943.
15. He did not believe in accountants; he amassed one of the world’s largest fortunes without ever having his company audited under his administration.
16. He was also widely known for his pacifism during the first years of World War I, and later for promoting antisemitic content, including The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, through his newspaper The Dearborn Independent, and the book The International Jew.
17. In Sept, 1945, he resigned from the presidency for the second time and recommended his grandson, Henry Ford II, be elected to the position.
18.Ford was a prolific inventor and was awarded 161 U.S. patents.
19. He died at his residence, Fair Lane Estate in Dearborn, at 11:40 pm on Monday, Apr 7, 1947, following a cerebral hemorrhage and was laid to rest in the family cemetery at St. Martha’s Episcopal Church, in Detroit.
20. Honors and Recognition :
- In December 1999, he was among 18 included in Gallup’s List of Widely Admired People of the 20th Century, from a poll conducted of the American people.
- In 1928, he was awarded the Franklin Institute’s Elliott Cresson Medal.
- In 1938, he was awarded Nazi Germany’s Grand Cross of the German Eagle, a medal given to foreigners sympathetic to Nazism.
- The United States Postal Service honored him with a Prominent Americans series (1965–1978) 12¢ postage stamp.
- He was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1946.
- In 1975, he was posthumously inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame.
- In 1985, he was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame.
- He was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1996.
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