April 7, 1947 Henry Ford passed

Learn Our History Today: On April 7, 1947, pioneer of the automobile, Henry Ford, died at his estate in Dearborn, Michigan. Born on a farm in 1863, Ford, the eldest child of his family, spent much of his teenage years working as an 

apprentice machinist in the city of Detroit. Ford later became an engineer, and during the 1890s, he began experimenting with the internal combustion engine, developing a gas powered, self-propelled vehicle in 1896 that he called the “Quadricycle.” From that point on, Ford was obsessed with coming up with a successful way to manufacture these vehicles cheaply, efficiently, and in large enough numbers that the general public could afford them.

In 1903, after two failed attempts, he founded the Ford Motor Company, which just a few years later came out with the Model T, a cheap, mass produced, easy to drive, easy to maintain vehicle. It was an instant hit. Within ten years, half of the cars on the road were Model Ts. In addition to the automobiles themselves, Ford also revolutionized the factories producing them. His factories featured a moving assembly line where each worker stayed in place and had an assigned part to add to the car. At its peak, the Ford Factory could build an entire car in only 93 minutes. Also, Ford became the first to introduce the minimum wage and the first to establish a set eight-hour workday. Most other auto makers paid half that much and had their employees work a nine-hour day. In the end, Henry Ford’s innovation of the fair wage made it possible for the workers to actually buy the cars they made, creating in part the American middle class as we know it today. 

credit: espired.com