The Invention Of The Assembly Line

Other manufacturers were content to target the wealthy American could buy, not even considering the middle or lower class. Ford developed a design and a method of making the cars that steadily and continuously reduced the cost of the car, the car being the Model T. Instead of pocketing the money from the cars Ford used it to make better and more efficient ways to build a car. As a result, Ford Motor Company sold more cars and steadily increased its earnings. Henry Ford somehow managed to change people from the looking at an automobile as a luxury, and more like a convenience

With the success of the assembly line, Ford was very please however he had a bigger goal set. Ford wanted to produce cheap cars for the common people to use. Ford made many different types of cars and experimented with each of them. They were all good but not good enough. After many different models, Ford achieved his goal with his invention of the Ford Model T. The Model T was a fully functional compact automobile with a good transmission and torque as well as comfort and size. Apart from that, the most important aspect of the Model T was that is was extremely cheap. As Sobel states,”...the model T was only worth $290 in 1924.” This was a huge

Ford’s dream was to produce a moderate priced, reliable, and efficient automobile, which came with the Model T in 1908.3 A company that started out small, now had over half of the car owners in America driving the Model T.1 It was easy to operate and maintain, it also handled good on rough roads. It was the most popular automobile in history, and over fifteen million were sold. With the Model T, Ford achieved his goal to make reasonable priced cars for the average person. 2

The model T was the first affordable car for all people in America. It was a huge step in the advancements of Americans and allowed people to get things done a lot faster than the old ways of

1. Great Migration The Great Migration is when African Americans moved from the rural South to the cities up in the North, Midwest and West. The event was important because it began to build a new public life for African Americans which leads to creating a new black urban culture that would influence the United States later on. 2.

The Ford assembly line is a system used to make manufacturing and putting together items in a quicker and more efficient manner. To put together it took eighty four separate steps to assemble the Model T car.#7 Henry Ford is credited as inventor of the assembly line. Henry Ford was born in 1863 on a farm in Springfield Township, Michigan, about ten miles

During the 1920’s the United States began to experience the beginning of the second Industrial Revolution. This was a time where companies began to put all of their energy into the production of highly sought after products that had typically been too expensive in the past. Things such as vacuums, watches, and even electricity were starting to become affordable for the average American. Many of these items and their low prices were made possible because of a new innovation called the assembly line. The concept of the assembly line turned out to be one of the most important revolutionary inventions used in the world of consumerism.

In the 1913’s Henry Ford invented the assembly line that was the turning point in the United States and the automobile industry. The purpose of the assembly line was to make production faster and cheaper. The assembly line was so successful that it had a tremendous effect on automobile industry because it helped save time and money. For instance before

In October of 1908 Henry Ford proclaimed “I will build a motor car for the common man, and that’s when the Model T was born. In the 19 years of the Model T’s existence, Ford built more than 15 million of the Model T and they were sold around the world. In fact in their time Model

“With one workman doing a complete job he could turn out from thirty-five to forty pieces in a nine-hour day, or about twenty minutes to an assembly. What he did alone was then spread into twenty-nine operations; that cut down the assembly time to thirteen minutes” (Ford, 45). Ford had nearly cut the production time of one Ford Model T in half, allowing for more automobiles to be produced in a day. The Ford Motor Company was able to produce 150 Ford Model Ts every day and eventually reached nearly 10,000 Model Ts a day by 1925 (Sandler, 21). Each worker would contribute his skill at assembling a single part of the Model T, and once he completed his task he would pass the Model T on to the next worker in line along the assembly line, similar to the meat production factory in which Ford envisioned his idea. His idea soon caught on and became an idealistic way to mass produce products in America which soon caught on to other industries and continued to inspire the ways Americans would produce goods even to this day.

Analysis When Henry Ford first developed the idea of the assembly line he was heralded as one of the most forward thinking men of his time, and without the assembly line we would no doubt not be as powerful a nation as we are today. The assembly line principle as it matured in industrial society however, proved to destroy workers creativity and stifle the very essence of human life. Growth and change. On an assembly line workers are degraded to automatons, performing the same tasks over and over and over.

In the early 1900’s there were very few car manufacturers in the United States and only the very wealthy owned a car. Henry Ford saw this as an opportunity to produce an affordable vehicle

Henry Ford created the Model T with the goal of producing a car that could be marketed to the middle class. Up until this point the average car produced cost around $2,000, which exceeded the price range of most Americans. Ford saw the middle class as an economic opportunity, a chance to create more costumers while still manufacturing the same product. His decision was not based exclusively on the lucrative market of the middle class though, but also on his humanitarian belief that citizens deserved the opportunity to purchase a car, as it would allow them to “enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces." Not surprisingly, when Ford created the Model T the working class flooded factories with

Henry Ford’s legacy began early whenever he created a self propelled wagon, but his work began to get notoriety in October of 1908 with the introduction of the Model T. This car was the first of its kind, and was fully manufactured by Ford in the United States. Henry’s goal was to produce a car that was affordable to every household income. “The Model T made its debut in 1908 with a purchase price of $825.00. Over ten thousand were sold in its first year, establishing a new record. Four years later the price dropped to $575.00 and sales soared. By 1914, Ford could claim a 48% share of the automobile market.” (Sorenson, "Henry Ford Changes the World, 1908.") The original price was in the average household’s budget, but when the price dropped four years later there was a ten times increase in the amount of Model T’s sold. Another great idol in the worlds eyes began his trek to success one century later, and has innovated his industry such as Ford did. Steve Jobs, “The Father of Apple Inc.”,

This synthesised, scientifically managed workflow was meant to improve labour productivity and economic efficiency. And thirdly, rather than having machinery at the centre of the factory and workers moving to and from the product, assembly lines were used. This meant that the workers remained stationary and the product simply flowed past them (Murray, 1989). They were essentially treated as robots and dictated by machines; operating to the duplicated, repetitive tasks daily and not given the opportunity to express potential for advancement or improvement.