Ford, Henry (part I)

Henry Ford was one of eight children of William and Mary Ford. He was born on the family farm near Dearborn, Michigan, then a town eight miles west of Detroit. Ford attended a one-room school for eight years when he was not helping his father with the harvest. At age 16 he walked to Detroit to find work in its machine shops. After three years, during which he came in contact with the internal-combustion engine for the first time, he returned to the farm, where he worked part-time for the Westinghouse Engine Company and in spare moments tinkered in a little machine shop he set up. Eventually he built a small “farm locomotive,” a tractor that used an old mowing machine for its chassis and a homemade steam engine for power.

Ford moved back to Detroit nine years later as a married man. His wife, Clara Bryant, had grown up on a farm not far from Ford's. They were married in 1888, and on November 6, 1893, she gave birth to their only child, Edsel Bryant. A month later Ford was made chief engineer at the main Detroit Edison Company plant with responsibility for maintaining electric service in the city 24 hours a day. Because he was on call at all times, he had no regular hours and could experiment to his heart's content. He had spent several years before to build a gasoline-powered vehicle, and his first working gasoline engine was completed at the end of 1893. By1896 he had completed his first horseless carriage, the “Quadricycle,” so called because the chassis of the four-horsepower vehicle was mounted on four bicycle wheels.

Unlike many other automotive inventors, including Charles Edgar and J. Frank Duryea, Elwood Haynes, Hiram Percy Maxim, and his Detroit acquaintance Charles Brady King, all of whom had built self-powered vehicles before Ford but who held onto their creations, Ford sold his to finance work on a second vehicle, and a third, and so on.

During the next seven years he had various backers, some of whom, in 1899, formed the Detroit Automobile Company (later the Henry Ford Company), but all abandoned him in exasperation because they wanted a passenger car to put on the market while Ford insisted always on improving whatever model he was working on, saying that it was not ready yet for customers.

He built several racing cars during these years, including the “999” racer driven by Barney Oldfield, and set several new speed records. In 1902 he left the Henry Ford Company, which subsequently reorganized as the Cadillac Motor Car Company. Finally, in 1903, Ford was ready to market an automobile. The Ford Motor Company was incorporated, this time with a mere $28,000 in cash for Ford had, in his previous dealings with backers, antagonized the wealthiest men in Detroit.

The company was a success from the beginning, but just five weeks after its incorporation the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers threatened to put it out of business because Ford was not a licensed manufacturer.

He had been denied a license by this group, which aimed at reserving for its members the profits of what was fast becoming a major industry. The basis of their power was control of a patent granted in 1895 to George Baldwin Selden, a patent lawyer of Rochester, New York. The association claimed that the patent applied to all gasoline-powered automobiles.

Along with many rural Midwesterners of his generation, Ford hated industrial combinations and Eastern financial power. Moreover, Ford thought the Selden patent preposterous. All invention was a matter of evolution, he said, yet Selden claimed genesis. He was glad to fight, even though the fight pitted the puny Ford Motor Company against an industry worth millions of dollars. The gathering of evidence and actual court hearings took six years. Ford lost the case in 1909; he appealed and won in 1911. His victory had wide implications for the industry, and the fight made Ford a popular hero.

II. Look through the text again and answer the following questions:

1. At what age did Ford build a “farm locomotive”? What was it?

2. Why was the first horseless carriage called the “Quadricycle”?

3. Who formed the Detroit Automobile Company? Why were the backers exasperated?

4. Was Ford a licensed manufacturer or not? Why?

5. Why did Ford hate industrial combinations and Eastern financial power?

6. What did Ford fight against? Did he win the case?

III. Match the words with their definitions and make up your own sentences with these words:

1. preposterous a) uniting of some organizations, associations;

2. backer b) employment, duty, work;

3. license c) any vehicle, motorcar;

4. to improve d) permission of doing smth, privilege;

5. incorporation e) ingenuity, inventiveness;

6. manufacturer f) to put to practical use;

7. service g) to make smth. better or perfect;

8. automobile h) perverse, nonsensical;

9. to apply i) producer, maker, industrialist;

10. invention j) patron, sponsor;

IV. Read the following statements and discuss them with a partner:

1. Ford was a genius that’s why he succeeded in the creation of the first horseless carriage at such an early age.

2. Ford sold his creation because he wanted to be a rich person.

3. The claim that the patent should be applied to all the gasoline-powered automobiles was a necessity of that time.

4. If Ford had lost the case against the Eastern financial power he wouldn’t have become a popular hero.

Giving your opinion you may find the following expressions helpful:

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