1863-1947
Automotive Genius

Model T.

Henry Ford, a selftaught 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 essenially democratized automobile ownership. The Model T, which was first produced in 1908 and remained in proluction until 1927, had sales of more than seventeen nillion during its nineteen years.

Contradictions.

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