America's Industrial Revolution

The Model T's distinction as a landmark car design can be traced in large part to machines like this -- a high capacity precision machine tool that performed just two production steps on the car engine's cylinder block. The Model T as a design achievement is inseparable from many hundreds of engineering, materials, and production innovations.

At this meat packing operation, a conveyor moved hog carcasses past meat cutters, who then removed various pieces of the animal. To keep Model T production up with demand, Ford engineers borrowed ideas from other industries. Sometime in 1913 they realized that the "disassembly line" principle employed in slaughterhouses could be adapted to building automobiles -- on a moving assembly line.

The first Ford assembly line at the Highland Park, Michigan, plant was relatively crude. Here, in 1913, workers put V-shaped magnets on Model T flywheels to make one-half of the flywheel magneto. Each worker installed a few parts and simply shoved the flywheel down the line to the next worker.

Ford workers disliked the new assembly line methods so much that by late 1913, labor turnover was 380 percent. The company's announcement to pay five dollars for an eight-hour day compared to the previous rate of $2.34 for a nine-hour day made many workers willing to submit to the relentless discipline of the line in return for such high wages.

Letter written to Henry Ford from the wife of an assembly line worker, January 23, 1914. The woman writes asking Henry Ford to investigate the situation on the assembly lines in the factories with regard to working conditions. She is angry about the treatment her husband receives on the job.

Unimate robots were the world's first successful industrial robots. The units, designed by Unimation Inc., could perform tasks in manufacturing facilities that were difficult, dangerous, or monotonous for human workers. This is the first Unimate ever used on an assembly line. It was installed at the General Motors plant in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1961 to unload a die-casting press.

The Fordson tractor, manufactured by Henry Ford and Son, Inc., was the first lightweight, mass-produced tractor that was affordable to the average farmer. Through this and other efforts, Henry Ford sought to relieve farmers of the burden of heavy labor. Ford gave this Fordson, the first production model, to fellow innovator Luther Burbank, creator of hundreds of new plant varieties.

Ford Motor Company built the Rouge Plant with the ability to create automobiles from raw materials. In this photograph, the boat docks and huge coal, iron ore and limestone bins are visible. In 1948, about 850,000 tons of ore and 2,500,000 tons of coal arrived by boat and filled these bins to be used towards building Ford cars.

Mechanical cotton gins separated billions of pounds of fiber from seed in the late 19th century to meet textile-factory demand. William Henry Jackson of the Detroit Publishing Company captured a typical scene inside a Mississippi cotton gin in 1899. It shows three gin stands with engineers standing close by, and other men compressing fiber into a 500-pound cotton bale.

Photo taken near the end of the Model T assembly line at the Highland Park Plant, 1914. Radiators, assembled elsewhere in the same building, were conveyed to an overhead platform and slid down ramps. Wheels, with tires mounted and inflated, rolled down chutes from the upper levels of the building. Workers installed both on chassis pulled along by moving chains.

By the time Standard Oil ordered this wagon in 1892, petroleum products were common in the rural and urban United States. The wagon has three separate compartments -- for kerosene, for lubricating oil, and for gasoline. As late as the 1920s, horse-drawn wagons were still the primary means for moving these products from the railroad depot to the customer.

This Ford Motor Company leaflet discusses its exhibit at the Panama-Pacific Exposition, the Model T, and its U.S. factories. The image of the main plant at Highland Park, Michigan, illustrates the comprehensive manufacturing operations. The plant had facilities for casting, machining, stamping, assembly, and shipping. The massive power plant with five smokestacks generated the factory's electricity.

The Shelby Division of Copperweld, in Shelby, Ohio, used this time recording punch clock. The numbered wheel can be rotated, which activates the time recording mechanism, causing the employee number and time to be printed on paper tape fixed to the drum at the rear of the mechanism. The clock is an electrically activated slave unit connected to a master clock. Such time clocks both regulated employees' workdays and helped insure accurate calculation of their pay.

Portable steam engines like this powered grain threshers, sawmills, or corn shellers. Horses pulled them from farm to farm. In 1882, 19-year-old Henry Ford was able to make this engine run well when an older man could not; his first accomplishment in the adult world. Thirty years later Ford tracked down the engine, bought it, and returned it to operating condition.

Until reliable internal combustion engines became available, farmers depended on portable steam engines. They were efficient and affordable, and when mounted on wheels or skids, horses could pull them from farm to farm. The small engines powered agricultural machinery like sawmills, corn shellers, or -- as seen here -- grain threshers.

Steamboats were popular for long-distance and inter-city travel. These boats made trips between Detroit and Cleveland in 1911.

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Henry Ford and his engineers constantly searched for ways to speed up car production and hold down costs. The integration of a moving assembly line in the Highland Park plant allowed Ford's company to do just that. From 1908-1927, Ford Motor Company produced over 15 million Model T cars and the price dropped from $850 to as little as $260.

Brothers George and Oscar Peters, with Clinton Firestone, established Columbus Buggy Company in Columbus, Ohio, in 1875. It grew into one of the world's largest manufacturers of horse-drawn vehicles and operated branch offices throughout the United States. The company entered the automobile business in 1903 with a ten-horsepower high-wheeler, but it wasn't successful. Columbus Buggy Company went bankrupt in 1913.

Founded in 1914 to address the language needs for Ford's ever-expanding immigrant labor force, the Ford English School used this method of language training to quickly give students a basic and functional vocabulary of English words to help them integrate into American society. In addition to English, the school also taught students, many attending classes before or after their regular shifts, the requirements needed to pass citizenship tests including American geography as seen on the blackboard in the background.

Henry Ford and Ford Motor Company revolutionized the auto industry once again in 1932 with the introduction of a low-priced V-8 engine. By casting the crankcase and cylinder banks as a single unit, Ford cut manufacturing costs and could offer its V-8 in a car starting under $500. Ford's original V-8 design remained in production, with modifications, until 1953.

Unmarried young people found that some Victorian-era social restrictions -- like having a chaperone -- loosened on a bicycle trip.

Ford's Model T mass production system would not have been practical without electricity; by 1919 nine of these Ford-designed hybrid internal combustion/steam engines generated the power needed by the Highland Park plant's assembly lines and associated machinery. By 1926 the engines were rendered obsolete when electricity was fed from the power plant at Ford's River Rouge plant ten miles away.

This photographic negative gives a glimpse of farm life circa 1900. Most farms were family operations and everyone, including children, had a job to do. People and horses were the primary power sources for most farm work. But technology, like electricity, was becoming more widely available, even in rural in farmhouses.

Around 1919 a farmer driving his converted Model T Runabout is pulling a McCormick-Deering reaper to harvest grain in Minnesota. Large-diameter steel-drive wheels and a rear power takeoff were all that was needed to achieve the conversion. For only $195, E.G. Staude Company of St. Paul, Minnesota, had started selling the Mak-a-Tractor conversion kit for the Model T in 1917, capitalizing on the popularity of the Ford car among farmers. Staude produced an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 of these in its lifetime.

Henry Ford (far right) joined Edison Illuminating Company as a night engineer in September 1891. By mid-1894 he had been promoted to chief engineer. It was during his time here that Ford built his first automobile, the 1896 Quadricycle. Ford resigned from Edison Illuminating Company in August 1899 to devote himself full time to the budding automotive industry.

As the 19th century progressed, Americans had additional travel options. Railroads competed with steamboats for freight, mail, and passenger traffic. Rail routes often paralleled major river traffic routes. In 1852, the Hudson River Railroad offered travel to points along the river between New York City and Troy. This schedule shows the different travel schedules and options available to passengers.

Canals opened new lands to settlement and commerce in the first half of the 19th century. New York's Erie Canal, completed in 1825, connected Albany with Buffalo. It also joined with other canals to make more areas of the state accessible. This print shows the junction of the "Northern" (Champlain) and the "Western" (Erie) canals.

Machining Model T Ford engine blocks, ca. 1914. Fifteen engine block castings were loaded into large milling machines that made two cuts on the bottom of each block. The Highland Park machine shop was filled with such specialized machine tools. One of these machines is displayed in the Made in America exhibition in Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation.

Letter carrier August Edinger used this horse-drawn wagon to deliver mail around Kimmswick, Missouri, for more than 20 years. Sliding doors offered ventilation in summer, and a tiny coal stove provided heat in winter. Rural Free Delivery, instituted by the U.S. Post Office in 1896, eased the isolation felt by rural Americans and boosted mail-order businesses as well.

Pocket watches helped businessmen, workers, and travelers stay on time. This 17-jewel watch was made by the Manistee Watch Company of Manistee, Michigan, around 1910.

This single-cylinder, four-horsepower engine powered the Oldsmobile Curved Dash runabout. It has one cylinder, one piston, one connecting rod and crank, one balance wheel, and two valves. The complications of larger multi-cylinder engines were eliminated. The engine's simplicity and the vehicle's affordable $650 price made the Curved Dash runabout America's first car produced in large numbers.

Before it was the Motor City, Detroit had a diversified industrial economy. Its waterway and railroad access made Detroit a prime location for manufacturing. The Berry Brothers Varnish Factory and office was built in 1861 on the corner of Leib and Wight Streets. The company made varnish used by other industries, including railroad cars, carriages, wagons, furniture and farm implements.

The image shows continuing United Auto Workers activity outside the Ford Rouge plant less than three months following the "Battle of the Overpass," in which Ford Motor Company security men beat labor organizers Walter Reuther, Richard Frankensteen, Richard Merriweather, and Ralph Dunham. Men and women hand out special editions of the United Auto Worker UAW newspaper while boys sell Detroit Free Press newspapers.

This pin demonstrates the cooperation between the United Auto Workers union and Ford Motor Company in advocating for domestic cars.

Byron Moore grew up on a farm in rural Utica, Michigan, and came to work for Ford Motor Company. This biography describes his positions at the Piquette Plant, the Grand Boulevard and Woodward sales branch office, the Highland Park Plant, and the Rouge Plant. Moore also remarks on Henry Ford's theories about agriculture and advancements in safety on the farm.

This short biography reveals James O'Connor's history with the Ford Motor Company. After starting work in a paint shop at a young age, O'Connor progressed through the employment ranks to become the final assembly line foreman in the "B" Building of the Ford Rouge Plant.

Joseph Galamb was an engineer from Hungary who immigrated to the United States in 1903. Galamb was part of the Ford Motor Company team that produced the 1909 Ford Model T. This biography explains how Galamb came to the United States and includes his memories of looking for work, his first job, and finally finding the right fit at Ford.

World War II produced one of America's all-time favorite vehicles -- the jeep. Soldiers loved the homely little car because it could go anywhere and do almost anything. They used it to tow artillery, carry the wounded, and deliver ammunition. When fitted with a machine gun, it became a weapon itself. The jeep came to symbolize American ingenuity and productivity to allies and enemies alike.

Wilbur and Orville Wright established their first bicycle shop in 1892. They started building their own bikes in 1896. Van Cleve bicycles -- named for Wright family ancestors -- used high-grade materials, and they featured special oil-retaining wheel hubs and coaster brakes of the brothers' own design. The Wrights built each bike to order, hand-making parts with basic tools.

This 1858 Rogers steam locomotive is typical of those used in the United States in the second half of the 19th century. Its flexible wheel arrangement, high power output, and light weight were well suited to the tight curves, steep grades, and hastily constructed track that characterized American railroads. This locomotive struck an agreeable balance between practicality, safety, and economy.

The passengers traveling on this 1831 ticket could use three complementary modes of transportation: canal boats, steamboats, and railroads.

Factory-built buggies made the pleasures of carriage ownership affordable for a new group of people. Whether in town or on the farm, people loved these inexpensive, lightweight vehicles. The piano box buggy -- named for its resemblance to 19th-century square pianos -- was the most popular of all. Buggy owners quickly became accustomed to the freedom and control offered by personal vehicles.

From the 1820s to the 1850s, hundreds of these simple, rugged carts transported annual supplies to the Red River Valley settlements of Minnesota and Manitoba, Canada. On return trips, the carts -- each drawn by a single ox -- carried meat, furs, and skins to St. Paul. This replica was probably built for exhibition by the Great Northern Railway.

This 1901 pen and ink drawing shows New Yorkers packed into a streetcar.

Early automobile inventors tended to make one-of-a-kind vehicles. Charles and Frank Duryea had a different idea. In 1896, they established the Duryea Motor Wagon Company and built thirteen identical vehicles. Based on their second model that had recently won America's first automobile race, this car was user friendly. A single lever controlled steering, shifting, and accelerating. The Henry Ford owns the only known surviving 1896 Duryea.

The 1958 Edsel came in many styles, sizes, prices and colors. This paint color swatch card gave the buyer an array of colors to select.

In 1872, Montgomery Ward & Company launched America's first general mail order company. Through their catalogs, the company offered a broad selection of goods at affordable prices. Other retailers would follow. But as this 1894-1895 catalog proudly states, Montgomery Ward & Company were the "Originators of the Mail Order Business."

The "New Yorker" Reaper was made between 1851 and 1853 by Seymour and Morgan, one of the earliest manufacturers of harvesting machinery, and is similar to Cyrus McCormick's "Virginia" reaper. Horse-drawn reapers like this greatly expanded the productivity of American farmers by reducing labor requirements over harvesting by hand with a sickle, while allowing the increase of land under cultivation.