Henry+Ford,+The+Model+T,+and+Mass+Consumption

__**Henry Ford, The Model T, and Mass Consumption**__

Henry Ford was born July 30th, 1863 in Dearborn, Michigan. At an early age he was given a watch from his father and showed everyone that he could take it apart and put it back together with ease. People now went to him if they had any trouble with their watches. Henry was a engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company and after his promotion to the Chief Engineer he had enough money to start his own side project. Henry expiermented with gasoline engines and eventulally was successful in building what he called the Ford Quadricycle.

Ford was in love with the Quadricycle and tried to find ways to find ways to improve it. Ford left the Edison Illuminating Company and started his own company called the Detroit Automobile Company. Henry eventually produced an automobile, but he still thought that it was too expensive and not at a high enough quality that he had wanted. The project was put on a halt and Ford left the company that was later named the Cadillac Automobile Company. On October 1st, 1908 the Model T car was introduced. This car had major differences than all other cars of it's time and had the wheel on the left side. Competitors all soon copied this idea. The car was cheap for its time at $825 and was falling in price year after year after year. Eventually the price fell all the way to $360 for the basic Model T. The reason for the cheap prices was because of the new and improved ways to mass produce the cars. it used to take 14 hours to produce one care and then the process was shortened all the way down to one our and 33 minutes. media type="youtube" key="IXkxl8dSXb4" height="390" width="480" align="center"