Henry Ford Accomplishments

An influential person is someone whose ideas and/or actions have changed the world. These people are commonly viewed as leaders in their respected fields and become well known for their achievements. An influential person can work in mathematics, politics, science, philosophy, engineering, or many other varieties of work. Henry Ford was an influential person who impacted the world through his work in engineering. Ford, originally a farmer from Michigan, became interested in the internal-combustion engine and began working on developing an automobile (Axelrod 109). Ford would later produce the first automobile to be mass-produced and develop the layout for modern factories (“Development of the Industrial U.S.: Biographies” 79). Henry Ford can

Henry Ford began his journey to reinvent to automobile and develop other engineering advancements after the American Civil War. Ford’s youth in Detroit and his life on the farm destined him to work with mechanics. “At age 16 he walked to Detroit to find work in its machine shops. After three years, during which he came in contact with the internal-combustion engine for the first time, he returned to the farm, where he worked part-time for the Westinghouse Engine Company and in spare moments tinkered in a little machine shop he set up. Eventually he built a small “farm locomotive,” a tractor that used an old mowing machine for its chassis and a homemade steam engine for power” (“Henry Ford”: Britannica School). Henry Ford’s placement near an internal-combustion engine at Westinghouse Engine Company educated him on the engine and provoked him to become interested in automotives and eventually develop cars. Because he had the opportunity to work with engines, Ford could apply his knowledge to helping his family farm by building machines to make the work easier. The designs and developments on cars when Ford was a teen led him to get a job as a mechanic and inspired him to learn about automobiles and build his own.

One of his biggest achievements was the innovation of the assembly line. “The design for an assembly line is determined by analyzing the steps necessary to manufacture each product component as well as the final product. All movement of material is simplified, with no cross flow, backtracking, or repetitious procedure. Work assignments, numbers of machines, and production rates are programmed so that all operations along the line are compatible” (“Assembly Line”). The design of the assembly line helped the automobile industry drastically because it increased production speed and caused production to become easier. This would also cause the price of buying to drop for consumers because it took less time to make the product and it allowed the company to sell more cars. Ford’s Model T was the most influential accomplishment of his career. It would impact the society of the United States, which would ripple out into the world, “The Model T was the chief instrument of one of the greatest and most rapid changes in the lives of the common people in history, and it effected this change in less than two decades. Farmers were no longer isolated on remote farms. The horse disappeared so rapidly that the transfer of acreage from hay to other crops caused an agricultural revolution. The automobile became the main prop of the American economy and a stimulant to urbanization—cities spread