Early Life
Henry Ford was born July 30, 1863, on a farm in Greenfield Township, Michigan. His father, William Ford (1826–1905), was born in County Cork, Ireland, to a family that was originally from Somerset, England
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was a sovereign state in Northwestern Europe that comprised the entirety of the British Isles between 1801 and 1922. The United Kingdom, having financed the European coalition that defeated France during the Napoleonic Wars, developed a large Royal Navy that enabled the British Empire to become the foremost world power for the next century.. His mother, Mary Ford (née Litogot; 1839–1876), was born in Michigan as the youngest child of Belgian immigrants; her parents died when she was a child and she was adopted by neighbors, the O'Herns. Henry Ford's siblings were Margaret Ford (1867–1938); Jane Ford (c. 1868–1945); William Ford (1871–1917) and Robert Ford (1873–1934).
His father gave him a pocket watch in his early teens. At 15, Ford dismantled and reassembled the timepieces of friends and neighbors dozens of times, gaining the reputation of a watch repairman. At twenty, Ford walked four miles to their Episcopal church every Sunday.
Ford was devastated when his mother died in 1876. His father expected him to eventually take over the family farm, but he despised farm work. He later wrote, "I never had any particular love for the farm—it was the mother on the farm I loved."
In 1879, Ford left home to work as an apprentice machinist in Detroit, first with James F. Flower and Bros., and later with the Detroit Dry Dock Co. In 1882, he returned to Dearborn to work on the family farm, where he became adept at operating the Westinghouse portable steam engine. He was later hired by Westinghouse to service their steam engines. During this period Ford also studied bookkeeping at Goldsmith, Bryant and Stratton Business College in Detroit.
Ford stated two major events occurred in 1875, when he was 12. He received a watch, and he witnessed the operation of a Nichols and Shepard road engine, "...the first vehicle other than horse-drawn that I had ever seen." In his farm workshop, Ford built a "steam wagon or tractor" and a steam car, but thought "steam was not suitable for light vehicles," as "the boiler was dangerous." Ford also stated, he "did not see the use of experimenting with electricity, due to the expense of trolley wires, and "no storage battery was in sight of a weight that was practical." Then in 1885, Ford had the opportunity to repair an Otto engine, and built a four-cycle model in 1887, with a one-inch bore and a three-inch stroke. In 1890, Ford started work on a two cylinder engine. Ford stated, "In 1892, I completed my first motor car, powered by a two cylinder four horsepower motor, with a two-and-half-inch bore and a six-inch stroke, which was connected to a countershaft by a belt, and then to the rear wheel by a chain. The belt was shifted by a clutch lever to control speeds at 10 or 20 miles per hour, augmented by a throttle. Other features included 28-inch wire bicycle wheels with rubber tires, a foot brake, a 3-gallon gasoline tank, and later, a water jacket around the cylinders for cooling. Ford stated that "in the spring of 1893 the machine was running to my partial satisfaction and giving an opportunity further to test out the design and material on the road." Between 1895 and 1896, Ford drove that machine about 1000 miles. Ford then started a second car in 1896, eventually building 3 cars in his home workshop.
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This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Henry Ford (1863-1947)", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.
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