AUTOMOTIVE GENIUS

Model T.

Henry Ford, a self-taught mechanical genius, was undoubtedly the most famous automaker and perhaps the most famous man of the era. Ford vastly improved the techniques of mass assembly and production and revolutionized the auto industry by producing the famous Model T, or "Tin Lizzie," an inexpensive, durable car that essentially democratized automobile ownership. The Model T, which was first produced in 1908 and remained in production until 1927, had sales of more than seventeen million during its nineteen years.

Contradictions.

Ford was a man of many contradictions: an idealist who was a pacifist during World War I and health-food faddist all his life, he was also a pragmatist and sometime cynic; an obviously bright man, he also proved doggedly anti-intellectual, dismissing books and art as wastes of time. A would be politician running for the Senate in 1918 and frequently...