Born: July 30, 1863 Died: April 7, 1947 Henry Ford did not
invent the automobile, but he did masterfully develop the
methods that made mass-production of automobiles possible. He is
perhaps the person most responsible for launching the “car
culture” in the United States. Ford was born in Dearborn,
Michigan, the son of Irish immigrants who fled the potato famine
in the 1840s. As a child Ford attended a one-room school for
eight years and helped his father work the family farm. At age
16, the industrious Ford walked to Detroit to find work in its
machine shops. It was in these shops that he had his first
contact with the internal combustion engine. In internal
combustion engines, the engine produces power by sucking in a
mixture of gasoline and air and igniting it with a spark. The
force of this explosion provides power to operate a vehicle or
other machine. Ford married Clara Bryant in 1888 and five years
later welcomed their only child, son Edsel. In 1891 Ford became
an engineer at the Edison Illuminating Com