Summary on Henry Ford - Essay Example

Henry Ford was an extremely influential character from 1917-1930 in the U.S., important for bringing the automobile to the mainstream and evoking thepromises that cars brought to the nation. Ford was not always such an influential multi-millionaire. Born on a farm in Michigan in 1863, much of Ford’s education was agrarian and moral in nature. It is perhaps this upbringing that shaped many of Ford’s later beliefs, and the dedication to hard-work that informed the decision to become a mechanic.

It is also perhaps what shaped Ford’s preference for building manufacturing sites in small villages and his love of birds. The real turning point for Ford’s career was joining the Edison Company in Detroit as an engineer in 1892. Here, he struggled with building a gasoline engine strong enough to power a motorcar, but in 1896 the first Ford motorcar was born, and it could reach 90 miles per hour. From here, Ford accumulated funding and released the Ford model T in 1908, hugely increasing growth with assembly line production.

Having become reputedly the richest man who ever lived, Ford was in a position to publish his opinions and moral-code on a huge scale. Ford detested all that was un-American (in his eyes), strongly backing the pioneers and detesting the immigrant Jew. This eventually led to Ford financially backing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a widely distributed anti-Semetic text favoured by Hitler. Ford is often mistakenly assumed to be anti-History, but he had a great passion for collecting and an admiration for the American past.

He used this passion further in 1920 to restore his family home using real archaeological techniques. He then went on in 1926 to recreate a whole village as a tribute to village life and God’s nature, which he truly admired.