Henry Ford

Henry Ford (1863–1947) was an American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company and made the automobile an ordinary possession. Born on a farm near Dearborn, Michigan, he left for Detroit at sixteen to work as a machinist, built his first car in 1896 and launched the Model T in 1908. The moving assembly line of 1913 and the five-dollar day of 1914 transformed manufacturing and wages, and more than fifteen million Model Ts were sold. His autobiography My Life and Work, written with Samuel Crowther, set out his views on business and society. He was also a pacifist, an opponent of unions and, through his newspaper, a notorious antisemite.