Henry Ford was the american founder of the Ford Motor company. He was also the father of modern assembly lines and mass production. As the owner of Ford motor company he became one of the richest and best known people in the world. He is also known for creating "Fordism" which was the mass production of large numbers of inexpensive automobiles using the assembly line. Also high wages for his workers.Ford had a vision that consumerism would lead to peace, he developed one of the world's largest fortunes without ever having his company audited under his administration. Ford`s fight to lower to costs resulted in many technical and business innovations, which included a franchise system that put a dealership in every city in North America, and in major cities on six continents. When Henry Ford died he left mosr of his wealth to the Ford Foundation which is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford. The Ford foundation focuses on strengthening democratic values, community and economic development, education, media, arts and culture, and human rights.Henry Ford was born on a farm just outside Detroit, Michigan in 1863. His father was born in Ireland and his mother was the youngest child of Belgian immigrants, he had four other siblings. Ford was devastated when his mother died in 1876. His father expected him to take over the family farm but Henry despised farm work. He told his father, "I never had any particular love for the farm it was the mother on the farm I loved." In 1879 he left home to work as an apprentice machinist in the city of Detroit, first with James F. Flower & Bros., and later with the Detroit Dry Dock Co. In 1882, he returned home to work on the family farm and began operating the Westinghouse portable steam engine. He was later hired by Westinghouse company to service their steam engines.In 1891, Ford became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company, and after his promotion to Chief Engineer in 1893, he had enough time and money to devote attention to his personal experiments on gasoline engines. These experiments paid off in 1896 with the completion of his own self-propelled vehicle named the Ford Quadricycle, which he test drove on June 4. After test driving the vehicle he still thought it wasn`t good enough so he still made changes to improve it.On June 16, 1903 Henry Ford and Alexander Y. Malcomson created Ford Motor company with a $28,000 capital. The original investors for the company were Ford and Malcomson, the Dodge brothers, Malcomson's uncle John S. Gray, Horace Rackham, and James Couzens. The Model T was introduced on October 1, 1908. It had the steering wheel on the left, which every other company soon copied. The entire engine and transmission were enclosed; the four cylinders were cast in a solid block; the suspension used two semi-elliptic springs. By 1926, flagging sales of the Model T finally convinced Henry to make a new model in which he made the Model A.Ford announced his $5-per-day program on January 5, 1914. The changing program called for a raise in minimum daily pay from $2.34 to $5 for qualifying workers. It also set a new, reduced workweek, although the details vary in different accounts. Ford and Crowther in 1922 it was six 8-hour days, giving a 48-hour week, While in 1926 they set it as five 8-hour days, giving a 40-hour week.
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