Industrial Revolution Biographies | Henry Ford Biography

Born July 30, 1863

Greenfield, Michigan

Died April 7, 1947

Dearborn, Michigan

American engineer, automobile manufacturer

"You can do anything if you have enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes rise to the stars."

Henry Ford symbolized the fruits of the Industrial Revolution, a period marked by the widespread replacement of manual labor by machines, by standardizing parts and machinery and utilizing the moving assembly line to efficiently mass-produce cars. To many, he was a folk hero: from a modest beginning on a farm near Detroit, Michigan, where he attended a one-room schoolhouse, he built an enormous enterprise that was for a time the largest manufacturer of automobiles in the world. At one time, a brand-new Ford Model T cost just less than three hundred dollars, a price low enough that Ford's own workers could afford...