User:NOAM/bagrut project

Henry Ford

Introduction

I chose Henry ford because I am a big fan of cars industry, and I was impressed from his influence on the industry. Also I'd like to enrich my knowledge at the subject. At my project you will learn about Henry ford early life and why he is known as an innovator at the industry.

Conclusion

We have learned that Henry ford is known as a revolutionary of the industry thanks to his introduce of the assembly line to society. The development of the assembly line influenced for good and for worse for example it enlarged the unemployed class But at the same time it decreased the cost of producing the cars and there for he could low the price of his car.

Bibliography

Henry ford was the founder of the Ford motor company and is credited with contributing to the creation of a middle class in America society. He was one of the first to apply ASSEMBLY LINE manufacturing to the mass production of affordable automobiles. This achievement not only revolutionized industrial production in the United States and the rest of the world but also had such tremendous influence over modern culture that many social theorist identify this phase of economic and social history as "Fordism". Early life: Ford was born on a farm in a rural township west of Detroit to William Ford and Mary Litogot. During the summer of 1873, Henry saw his first self-propelled road machine, a stationary steam engine that could be Used for threshing or to power a saw mill. The operator, Fred Reden, had mounted it on wheels connected with a drive chain. Henry was fascinated with the machine, and over the next year Reden taught Henry how to fire and operate the engine.

Ford later said, it was this experience "that showed me that I was by instinct an engineer.

Henry took this passion about mechanics into his home. His father had given him a pocket watch in his early teens. At fifteen, he had a reputation as a watch repairman, Having dismantled and reassembled timepieces of friends and neighbors. In 1876 his mother died and Henry was devastated by it. His father expected him to eventually take over the family farm, but Henry hated farm work. He later said : "I never had any particular love for the farm. It was the mother on the farm I loved". In 1879, he left home for the nearby city of Detroit to work as an apprentice machinist but than in 1882, he returned to Dearborn to work on the family farm and became adept at operating the Westinghouse portable steam engine and that lead him to be hired by Westinghouse company to service their steam engines. at 1888 Ford got married to Clara Bryant and supported himself and his family by running a sawmill Henry and Clara had one child, Edsel Bryant Ford. In 1891, Ford became an engineer and soon in 1893 he got promoted to Chief Engineer. he had enough time and money to devote attention to his personal experiments on gasoline engines. And than further along everything started. Ford suffered an initial stroke in 1938, after which he turned over the running of his company to Edsel. Edsel's 1943 death brought Henry Ford out of retirement. He died in 1947 of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 83 in Fair Lane, his Dearborn estate, and is buried in the Ford Cemetery in Detroit. Henry Ford took that last ride to Ford Cemetery in a Packard.

On the night of his death the River Rouge had flooded the local power station and had left Ford's house without electricity.

Before going to sleep Henry and his wife lit candles and oil lamps to light the house.

Later that evening, just before dawn, Henry Ford, father of mass production and creator of the modern era, died in the same atmosphere as he had been born 83 years earlier, surrounded by candlelight.

Appendix

Personal Reflections

Please add it. --Nellie Deutsch 04:59, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Photos

Do you have any photos?

Survey Questions

What actually is an assembly line?

Henry Ford set out to build a construction method called the 'assembly line' , that would allow a faster and more cost effective method of producing vehicles.

An assembly line is a manufacturing process in which interchangeable parts are added to a product in a sequential manner to create a finished product.

It was a line where parts of a product were pieced together by individual workers.

The assembly line was improved largely by Henry Ford and his engineers; Ford was also the first to build factories around that concept.

It usually consists of 4 workers in control of one specific job and their work related movements are reduced to a minimum.

Until the fifteenth century, a single craftsman or team of craftsmen would create each part of a product individually and assemble them together into a single item. Making changes in the parts so that they would fit together - the so-called English System of manufacture.

The assembly line forced workers to work at a certain pace with very repetitive motions which led to more output per worker while other countries were using less productive methods

What did the assembly line contributed to the industry and in general?

Henry Ford's engineers perfected the assembly line concept by 1913, and Ford was the first to build entire factories around the concept, which was also referred to as the armory system. The assembly line was an evolution by trial and error and not any single event.

It was a team effort consisting primarily of Peter E. Martin, the factory superintendent; Charles E. Sorensen,

Martin’s assistant; C.Harold Wills, draftsman and toolmaker; Clarence W. Avery and Charles Lewis, a first line supervisor. They added the conveyor belt, and production by 1916 was over 700,000 model T's --twice the output of all competitors combined

The increased efficiency allowed Ford to cut prices in half and in half again, selling the car for $850 in 1909, and $290 by 1924. Ford had made 15 million model T's by 1927.

He integrated the assembly line concept with many ideas from the Efficiency Movement, including the famous $5 day that attracted the best workers.

Complex safety procedures --especially assigning each worker to a specific location instead of allowing them to roam about--dramatically reduced the rate of injury.

The combination of high wages and high efficiency is called "Fordism," and was copied by most major industries.

The efficiency gains from the assembly line also coincided with the take off of the United States.

How did the assembly line damaged the industry and the workers?

Some theories assumed that workers must have felt alienated from the product of their work. Actual studies of workers did not reveal the predicted alienation. Because workers had to stand in the same place for hours and repeat the same motion hundreds of times per day, some might have suffered from what are now called repetitive stress injuries,

but Ford installed his own medical department with industrial nurses, and they reduced the accident and injury rate.

However, work on the assembly line sometimes still proved to be dangerous, as is the case with the operation of most heavy machinery.

I asked three people about Henry Ford: 1)Do you know Henry Ford? Faye: Yes sort of, I heared his name once. Tomer: Never heared about him, Is he famous? Hen: yes I know Henry Ford. 2)Do you know what does Henry ford innvented? Faye: He innvented a cars company. Tomer: I have no idea. Hen: Henry Ford innvented the assembly line. 3)Does Henry Ford was pro - nazi? Faye: I think he was pro - nazi. Tomer: Maybe I dont know. Hen: Yes he was.

Survey Findings

Noam, where are your survey findings? --Nellie Deutsch 04:58, 23 March 2009 (UTC)