"A Ford Song,"
Quartet or Chorus for Men's Voices,
A. Flivver, composer,
1918.
Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-190
Henry Ford leaving the White House after calling on the president,
National Photo Company Collection,
1927.
Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929
Automobile manufacturer Henry Ford was born July 30, 1863, on his family's farm in what is present-day Dearborn, Michigan. From the time that he was a young boy, Ford enjoyed tinkering with machines and automobile parts. Farm automobile work and a job in a Detroit machine shop afforded him ample opportunities to experiment. He worked successively as an apprentice automobile machinist, a part-time employee for the Westinghouse Automobile Engine Company, and an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company. By then, he was earning enough money to experiment on building an internal automobile combustion engine.
By 1896, Ford had constructed his first horseless carriage, a gasoline-powered automobile parts motor car that he named the Quadricycle because it ran on four bicycle tires. He sold that automobile vehicle, which was built on a steel frame and had a seat but no body, in order to finance work on an improved model.
Ford incorporated the Ford Motor Company in 1903, proclaiming, "I will build a car parts for the great multitude." In October 1908, he did so, offering the Model T for $850. In the Model T's nineteen years of auto mobile production, its price dipped as low as $260—without extras. More than 15 million automobile cars were sold in the United States alone. The Model T heralds the beginning of the Automobile Motor Age; the car parts evolved from luxury item for the well-to-do to essential Auto transportation for the ordinary man.
