The middle of 2013 commemorates the 150th anniversary of an entrepreneur who forever changed the face of the auto industry. Brilliant and controversial, he remains one of the greats of the auto world.
Brilliant and insufferable. Visionary and obnoxious. Progressive and conservative. The legend of Henry Ford, whose 150th anniversary was celebrated earlier this year, has gathered along the way enough contradictions, inconsistencies and paradoxes that it has thrown all those who’ve tried to tell his life and works in the most chaotic and confusing endeavour. On one thing, however, they all agree – Ford was a man who, along with the other great innovators of history (from the Wright brothers to Benjamin Franklin, from Gutemberg to Edison, from Bell to Marconi), knew how to change lives, transforming an object like the car, initially meant only for the elite, into a product for the masses and by so doing forever revolutionising industrial enterprise.
He did so by following an intuition considered suicidal by many at the time: an all-out investment on the internal combustion engine – he, who was working for Edison at a time in which electric cars seemed destined for a radiant future. Later, following up on a statement made in 1903: “The only way to produce automobiles is to make them exactly alike, to make them come out of the manufacturing plant like pins identical to all other pins out of a factory of pins”. The first attempt at standardization was the Model N of 1906. But it was with the Model T, which came out in October 1908, that Henry performed his masterpiece.
The great idea of 1913
Not exactly beautiful, the car costs a mere 825 dollars. The Americans want a vehicle capable of accommodating the expansionist desire of a nation with an eye perennially set on travelling, adventure, and conquest and the success was immediate. Between 1909 and 1910 18,664 units are sold, 34,528 are sold between 1910 and 1911; and 78,440 in 1911-1912. But Ford wanted more. He began overhauling the assembly line. The first move was the setting up of interchangeable parts with a maximum tolerance of one ten thousandth of an inch. Then he turned to the thrust rationalization of the assembly line, drawing inspiration from the ideas materialized a decade before by Ransom Olds. The production of the T begins in classical fashion: the assembly teams move from one frame to the next while the attendants bring along tools and parts. With this method, the assembly time dropped to 12.5 hours/man. Efficiency improves spectacularly when the self-propelled assembly line is introduced: a cable helps move the frame forward while the assemblers follow it while “fishing” for required parts in bins located along the way. Despite the unit still proceeding irregularly, the average assembly time drops to 6 hours per man. At that point, and by now we’ve reached 1913, Henry conceives the idea that was destined to change the destiny of industrial production: workers remain still and each team is entrusted with a single operation while the frames pass by them and the pieces arrive by trolleys and inclined planes. The result is that an entire T is produced in 93 minutes. The model remains identical while the manufacturing costs are enormously lower. Henry could now increase his profits, but he prefers to pass the savings onto his clients. In 1926, the base model of the Model T costs 360 dollars thus leading to a soar in sales. In 1927 production ends with a balance of 15,007,034 cars sold. Modern industry is born.
At the same time, perhaps also to placate the critics of worker alienation, welfare capitalism comes into being. In 1924, a year after the introduction of the moving assembly line, Ford raises the wages of blue collar workers to 5 dollars a day, double what any of the other automakers in Detroit were offering, while describing the move as a redistribution of earnings rather than an unconditional raising of wages, while at the same time inaugurating a social welfare programme for his own employees (the same blueprint was followed by Fiat and Valletta in the 50’s). A move by an enlightened entrepreneur in stark contrast to the ultraconservative spirit of his private side: ferociously anti-Semitic, fierce proponent of the futility of unions (often the disputes were settled with baseball bats), he even ended up instituting an office in charge of vigilating the morality of his employees outside work – all human weaknesses of an entrepreneur gifted with genius.
One of the pioneers
Born in a family of farmers, Ford begins his career working for Edison, but soon dedicated himself to automobiles. The first quadricycle is born in 1896. On the 16th of June 1903, following a series of short-lived and turmoil-ridden companies, the Ford Motor Company is born.
The first modern factory
Ford was born in Dearborn, Michigan, where he would later open his own automobile plant which saw the birth of the self-propelled assembly line.
He searched out new horizons
An unexpected luddite gesture?
No. Henry Ford demonstrates the resistance of the Hemp, a prototype with a plastic body launched in 1941, by hitting it with a baseball bat.
ANECDOTES AND CURIOSITIES SURROUNDING A LEGENDARY FIGURE
• Ford’s first company was the Detroit Automobile Company born in 1899; shortly afterwards the Henry Ford Company came into being, which the founder later abandoned due to disagreements with his partner Henry Leland, who would go on to found Cadillac.
• Among the members of the Ford Motor Company there were also the Dodge brothers who later allied themselves with Chrysler.
• Henry Ford was the first industrial man in Detroit to hire non-Caucasians in his business along with foreigners and ex-convicts; and also the first to sell his cars to his employees at substantial discounts.
• Despite such broad-mindedness, he cultivated a strong hatred for Jews to the extent of publishing a magazine of clear anti-Semitic tendency.
• Unsurprisingly one of his great admirers was Adolf Hitler, who referenced him in “Mein Kampf” as a paragon of modern industry. In 1938 he was awarded the great cross of the German Eagle.
© Riproduzione riservata
Write your Comment