Unit6-Part3-Reading

America's famous car manufacturer, one of the most successful Americans of all time, Henry Ford was born in 1863 on his family's farm outside Detroit.

He had a passion for mechanical devices when he was a child.

He loved to take watches apart and assemble them again.

He often repaired the broken watches of friends and neighbors.

Ford left home at age 16 to go to Detroit, where he trained as a machinist for a railroad car manufacturer.

At age 19, he returned home and worked for an electric company.

He operated their steam engines on nearby farms.

In 1888, he got married and returned to farm work for a living.

During all this time, he was trying to build lighter steam engines.

Ford gave up farming in 1891 and moved to Detroit again.

He was hired as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company.

In 1893, he was promoted to chief engineer.

In his free time, Ford worked on a gasoline engine, which could be started by electricity.

In 1896, Ford completed his first horseless carriage, which he called the quadricycle.

Then he began building and driving race cars.

He designed and built a 26 horsepower race car in 1901.

He often raced in his own cars.

After two unsuccessful attempts to build a car factory, he established a Ford Motor Company in 1903.

In 1908, he introduced the reliable and economical Model T car.

Because of the rising demand for this model in 1913, Ford began to use the moving assembly

line, which he had modified for automobile manufacturing.

The factory started making cars in big numbers for the masses.

Ford was selling 170 ,000 cars a year, and in 1918, half of cars in America were Model T's.