The entrepreneur who revolutionized the American way of life!

Henry Ford made available to the ordinary citizen the power of the internal combustion engine, improving the assembly line in such a way that his Model T car could be produced at low cost. Achievement also impose the idea that the car is not a luxury but a necessity.

Ford was not the inventor of the car or the assembly line, but managed to reshape both and master a new era. Certainly, no other person so completely transformed the way of life of the United States during the present century.

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Henry Ford was born in 1863 in Dearborn, Michigan, on the farm of his father, an Irishman, and his mother, of Dutch descent. As a child, Henry showed aptitude as an inventor, which he applied to make machines that would reduce work on the farm.

At age 13 he saw a steam engine fueled by coal moving heavily on a road in the countryside and that aroused his fascination with the machines. At 16 he started his first job as an apprentice mechanic and for the next 12 years he moved steadily to become the chief engineer of the Edison Illuminating Company.

Ford followed in search of his dream. At that time the cars were promoted on the race tracks and Henry did not intend to stay behind. In 1903, I formed the company Ford Motor Company in association with 12 investors.

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When they founded the company, they only had patents and a prototype built with the help of C. Harold Willis that was not finished. Its partners brothers John and Horace Dodge, made the first successes. The Dodges were inclined to a luxury model and high price and Ford wanted completely the opposite, a simple car, popular and economical. These differences caused Ford to buy half of the shares. Fruit of this is the Ford T that goes on sale in 1908.

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His most successful model, the Ford T, a really ugly car, color invariably black, but very resistant, easy to maintain and above all, very, very cheap. Until 1927, when it stopped doing almost no changes, sold 15 million units, costing only 300 dollars. It was said that Ford factory workers were the best living throughout the country. This could be true because of Ford's paternalistic personality. He liked to protect his employees, since he considered them potential buyers of their cars.

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When the last Model T left the assembly line, it was not the end of an era but just the dawn of that initiated by the small car. Automobiles, more than half T Models, had penetrated the American culture. They filled the streets of the big cities in the east and ran along the new roads of southern California. They were adapted to carry everything, mail, weapons, coffins or school. Automobiles represented the opportunity to change practically anything. They also became a crucial element for the construction of the growing economy. Henry Ford had created a car for the crowds, and that automobile originated the foundations of the automotive culture that was adopted by the following generations.

In 1918 one of Ford's collaborators and his personal secretary bought a weekly newspaper for Ford to express his views. His publications had a great influence on Nazi Germany, Hitler read and admired them, even hung the picture of Henry on the wall.

  His character went sour over time, because he hated any interference in their business affairs, coming to hate the unions and large macro companies that absorbed everything. When the crisis of 1929 came, they all predicted that their big company would collapse, but thanks to the Second World War, they could transform their car industry into one of tanks and cannons, once again afloat.

  Ford suffered his first heart attack in 1938, and he gave his company to his son Edsel. Edsel died in 1943 and gave the presidency to his grandson Henry Ford II in 1945 and retired completely. The businessman died in 1947 of a brain hemorrhage at 83 years.

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The analysts of the Ford phenomenon differ that for some the secret of Ford was that he understood that the dream of every American was to have a vehicle, for others it was to make available to anyone the possibility of buying a car.

They will have to spend a hundred years to know if he helped or hurt us, but he certainly did not leave us where he found us. Will Rogers.

What do you think?

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