Henry Ford

Hello, my name is Henry Ford. I am known for making cars that many people could own. I was born on a big farm in Michigan on July 30th, 1863. Growing up, I was supposed to be a farmer, but I was much more interested in how machines worked. I loved tinkering with tools and gadgets. My father once gave me a watch, and what did I do? I took it all apart. I wanted to see every single tiny gear and spring and understand how they all fit together to tell time. To me, machines were like wonderful puzzles just waiting to be solved.

When I grew up, I left the farm and moved to the city of Detroit to become an engineer. I loved working with engines. In 1893, I built my very first gasoline engine right in my kitchen sink. It was a small, noisy thing, but it worked. That little engine gave me a big idea. Three years later, in 1896, I built my first car in a small brick shed behind my house. I called it the Quadricycle because it had four wheels, just like a bicycle. It didn't have a steering wheel like cars do today. Instead, I steered it with a long handle called a tiller. It was my first horseless carriage, and I was so proud to drive it down the street.

My biggest dream was to build a car that was simple, strong, and affordable enough for almost any family to buy. In 1903, I started my own company, the Ford Motor Company, to make that dream come true. A few years later, we created my most famous car. We called it the Model T, and it first went on sale on October 1st, 1908. At first, we built them one at a time, which was very slow. So, in 1913, I had a new idea. We created a moving assembly line. The car frame would move along a line, and each worker would add one part. This made building cars much faster and cheaper, and it changed how factories all over the world made things.

Because of the Model T and the assembly line, cars became something that regular families could have, not just toys for the rich. People could drive to visit relatives in other towns, go on vacations, and see new parts of the country. I lived a long and busy life and reached 83 years old. Today, people remember me for helping to put the world on wheels. My ideas about building things quickly and well are still used in factories everywhere, helping to make all sorts of things that we use every day.