Henry Ford

Ford, Henry (1863–1947), U.S. automobile production pioneer. He produced his first automobile in 1896 and established the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Mich., in 1903. By adopting mass-assembly methods, and introducing the moving assembly line in 1913, Ford revolutionized automobile production. Ford saw that mass-produced cars could sell at a price within reach of the average U.S. family. Between 1908 and 1926 he sold 15 million Model T's. Ford was a paradoxical and often controversial character. Al-though a proud anti-intellectual, he set up several museums and the famous Ford Foundation. A violent antiunionist, he reduced the average working week, and introduced profit sharing and the highest minimum daily wage of his time. In 1938 he accepted a Nazi decoration and became a leading isolationist. At the outbreak of war, however, he built the world's largest assembly plant, to produce B-24 bombers.