Ford, Henry

US car manufacturer. He built his first car in 1896 and founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903 with 11 investors. Ford held 25.5% of the stock, and it was three years before he took a controlling interest and was named president. His first car, the Model A, was sold in 1903. He was a pioneer of large-scale manufacture and his Model T (1908–27) was the first car to be constructed solely by assembly-line methods; 15 million had been sold by the time production ceased. Ford's innovative policies, such as a daily minimum wage and a five-day working week, revolutionized employment practices, but he staunchly opposed and impeded the introduction of trade unions.

Ford launched the Model T (or ‘Tin Lizzie’) in 1908. Having disagreed with his backers that only cars for the rich were profitable, he marketed it as a reasonably priced and efficient car. To meet growing demand, he opened the Highland Park factory in 1910 and in 1913 developed a moving assembly line, which drastically reduced production time for a car to 93 minutes. He set up a dealer franchise system to sell and service cars and by the 1920s there were 7,000 Ford dealers across the USA. In 1914 Ford introduced his minimum wage scheme and reduced the working shifts by an hour to increase productivity. By 1927 he had built a huge, self-sufficient industrial facility on the River Rouge at Dearborn, Michigan, employing over 100,000 staff.