1863 On July 30th, Henry Ford was born in a small town in Michigan, USA. His parents are Irish immigrants and his family owns a farm. Henry has been fascinated by machinery since he was a child. /kloc-when he was 0/2 years old, he built a mechanical workshop himself and then buried himself in research. /kloc-at the age of 0/5, he actually churned out an internal combustion engine in the mechanical workshop.
When Henry was born, the conditions for the second industrial revolution in the United States were taking shape. In the second year of his birth, the advent of open hearth smelting opened the modern steel age; The following year, the Ministry of Petroleum began to lay a dense oil pipeline network, 1869, and the railroad tracks ran through the continental United States.
/kloc-When he was 0/6 years old, Henry came to Detroit and began his dream of joining the machinery industry. He started as an apprentice, learning while learning. Gradually, Henry became an excellent engineer and worked for Edison Lighting Company.
189 1 year, 28-year-old Henry began to test a two-cylinder engine in the studio.
/kloc-in the spring of 0/896, the first self-made car was born in his small studio: two cylinders, no reverse gear, no brake and steering wheel, four bicycle wheels operated by only one handle, and two speeds were optional (10 mph and 20 mph).
His family doesn't like his car. His father thinks he prefers riding a bike, while his sister thinks riding a bike is only better than riding a bike. Henry was not discouraged. He is determined to make a more advanced car.
1898, Henry resigned from Edison Lighting Company and founded Detroit Automobile Company with friends. Unfortunately, the company only produced 25 cars and went bankrupt.
Henry Ford still won't give up because he firmly believes that he has seen the future.
1In June, 903, 40-year-old Henry gathered several investors and raised $28,000 to set up Ford Motor Company in a truck workshop in Detroit, with Henry holding 25.5% of the shares. In the same year, the company launched the first Ford car, which was called "the most perfect car on the market".
In the next five years, Henry served as chief engineer. He and his engineers made various models for market testing. He found that the four-cylinder car with a price of $500 sold much more than the six-cylinder car with a price of $2,500, so he decided that the company's future production should focus on low-priced cars that cater to the public.
Henry set out to make a simple, sturdy car that everyone could afford.
1908, one of the most classic masterpieces in automobile history: Ford Model T went on the market. Although it is cheap, it has super performance and won many car races. It is called "universal car" by Henry. As soon as the Ford Model T went on the market, it set off a car buying frenzy. It won the hearts of thousands of Americans in Qian Qian and became the most popular car at that time.
19 13, Henry invented the world's first assembly line. He believes that if each worker is fixed in one post and is only responsible for one job, a car can be quickly assembled from one process to the next. In order to test this idea, he managed to transport the car chassis on the floor with ropes and rollers, and the world's first assembly line was born.
19 13 By the end of the year, the output of Ford Motor Company had reached half of the total automobile production in the United States.
19 14, Henry made another decision that shocked the world: he paid $5 a day, and he only needed to work 8 hours a day and 5 days a week. At that time, the daily salary of peers was only $2, and the holidays were extremely limited.
Since then, Ford Motor Company has become the largest automobile manufacturer in the United States, and cars have begun to enter thousands of households in the United States, completely changing the American way of life.
19 19, Henry and his son edsel bought all the remaining shares of the company and achieved complete control.
19 19, although Henry passed the position of president of the company to his son edsel, he was the actual controller. From 65438 to 0920, the sales of Model T began to decline, because other automobile companies developed new mechanical systems and launched auto loans. However, despite edsel's repeated attempts to convince Henry, he still refused to add a new system to the car and refused to launch a car loan.
1922, Ford motor company acquired Lincoln brand for 8 million dollars, thus entering the luxury car market.
1942, under the mobilization of President Roosevelt, all American enterprises devoted themselves to supporting the war. Ford Motor Company produced 8,600 bombers, 57,000 aircraft engines, 250,000 tanks and other war machines in less than three years.
1943, edsel died of cancer at the age of 50. Although he has ideals and ambitions, it's a pity that he is always only the executor of an order. After his death, Ford Motor Company began to decline.
1945, Henry II, Henry's eldest grandson, succeeded him as president. After he took office, he carried out large-scale reforms and recruited a large number of management talents from General Motors. 1948, Ford launched the Ford 49, which quickly stood out in the fierce market competition. Ford finally turned a profit and maintained its position as the second largest automobile company in the United States.
Henry II led Ford for 35 years. During this period, Ford became a listed company and built the famous Ford World Headquarters Building. When there was no suitable successor in the family, he handed over the management of the company to a non-family member: Philip for the first time.
During Philip's 20 years in charge of Ford, Ford's profits increased greatly, surpassing GM by 1986 and becoming the most profitable automobile company in the United States.
From 65438 to 0999, Philip handed the leadership of Ford Company to Henry Ford's great-grandson Bill Ford. The fifth generation of Ford leaders lived up to expectations, making Ford still in sustainable development.
Today, after a hundred years of ups and downs, Ford is still standing and becoming one of the largest automobile companies in the world, and the control is still firmly in the hands of the Ford family.
Henry Ford's foresight makes people have to admire him. In the spirit of "how can you compete with others easily", in order to ensure the Ford family's absolute control over the company, he actually invented a two-tier shareholding system: splitting the company's shares into ordinary shares without voting rights and Class B shares with full voting rights, and Class B shares can only be held by Ford family members.
Because of the old Ford's shareholding system, even if Ford family members only hold 8% of Ford's shares, they still have 49% of voting rights, and they firmly control the company. This two-tier shareholding structure has also been followed by many people in later generations.