Henry Ford's parents left Ireland during the potato famine and settled in the Detroit area in the 1840s. Henry Ford, born July 30, 1863, was the first of William and Mary Ford's six children. He grew up on a prosperous family farm in what is today Dearborn, Michigan. Henry enjoyed a childhood typical of the rural nineteenth century, spending days in a one-room school and doing farm chores. At an early age, he showed an interest in mechanical things and a dislike for farm work. He had an intelligent, inquisitive nature and was energized by the huge growth of industry occurring in the Detroit area. He was also an avid experimenter. Once, in order to prove the power of steam, he plugged up the spout of a teakettle full of boiling water and it blew apart! As he grew up his father allowed him to "tinker" with many of the tools on the farm. Ford's mother called him a "born mechanic" and provided him with darning needles and corset stays to make into tools for his watch repair work.

8) Nevins, Allen and Frank Ernest Hill. Ford: Decline and Rebirth 1933-1962. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1963.

1879 Leaves family farm for Detroit to work in machine shops.

dramatic event in Henry Ford's life happened in 1876 when he was thirteen years old. While riding with his father in a wagon, they saw a steam engine traveling along the road under its own power! Ford jumped off the wagon and excitedly began to question the driver about this remarkable engine. Used for stationary purposes such as sawing wood, the engine had been mounted on wheels to propel itself. The engineer explained all about the machine and even let Ford fire the engine and run it. Ford later said, "That showed me that I was by instinct an engineer." The seed was planted that there could be a self-propelled vehicle and that thought would haunt his imagination for years.

4) Lacey, Robert. Ford: The Men and the Machine. New York: Ballantine Books, 1986.

CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE OF HENRY FORD

"Well, I guess we've got started," Ford observed at the time. The car went to the first customers on October 1, 1908. In its first year, over ten thousand were sold, a new record for an automobile model. Sales of the "Tin Lizzie," or "flivver," as the T was known, were boosted by promotional activities ranging from a black-tie "Ford Clinic" in New York, where a team of mechanics showcased the car, to Model T rodeos out west, in which cowboys riding in Fords tried to rope calves. In 1909, mining magnate Robert Guggenheim sponsored an auto race from New York to Seattle in which the only survivors were two Model T Fords. "I believe Mr. Ford has the solution of the popular automobile," Guggenheim concluded.

When the last Model T rolled off the assembly line, it was not the end of an era; it was still the very dawn of the one that the little car had inaugurated. Cars -- more than half of them Model Ts -- pervaded American culture. They jammed the streets of the great eastern cities and roamed newly laid roads in southern California. Adapted to haul everything from mail to machine-guns to coffins to schoolchildren, automobiles represented an opportunity for change in practically everything. They also became a crucial factor in recasting a growing economy. Henry Ford had created a car for the multitudes and that car had created the basis of the car culture embraced by every subsequent generation.

1941 Ford Motor Company signs a contract with UAW.

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Approximate Word count = 4433
Approximate Pages = 18 (250 words per page double spaced)