WEBVTT - Henry Ford and the Model T 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.119 --> 0:00:14.840 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:15.000 --> 0:00:18.280 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:21.360 and a love of all things tech. And a while back, 0:00:21.720 --> 0:00:25.000 it did a few episodes about General Motors, and I 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:29.040 talked about how William Durant and Alfred Sloan had a 0:00:29.080 --> 0:00:33.600 fundamentally different approach from that of Henry Ford. Ford was 0:00:33.640 --> 0:00:37.480 all about creating a vehicle that could be mass produced 0:00:37.560 --> 0:00:41.200 and sold at a relatively low cost year over year. 0:00:41.840 --> 0:00:45.680 GM would focus more on developing different makes of cars 0:00:46.080 --> 0:00:48.760 aimed at different markets, or in other words, they wanted 0:00:48.760 --> 0:00:51.519 to sell a range of vehicles at a range of 0:00:51.520 --> 0:00:55.280 prices and with a range of features. But I realized, 0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:59.320 I've never actually done an episode about Henry Ford or 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:03.200 the fame modeled T. So we're going to do that now. 0:01:03.440 --> 0:01:07.680 And this won't be a comprehensive series on the Ford 0:01:07.720 --> 0:01:11.640 Motor Company that will require their own episodes, but more 0:01:11.680 --> 0:01:16.320 about the the early history of Henry Ford leading up 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:21.040 to the design and uh and release and an eventual 0:01:21.400 --> 0:01:26.560 retirement of the Model T. So William and Mary Ford 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:30.840 of Dearborn Michigan raised a pretty large family. They had 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:34.559 eight children, including Henry Ford, who was born on July 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:40.600 eighteen sixty three. That's when the Civil War was gripping 0:01:40.920 --> 0:01:43.760 the United States, which was in danger of splitting apart. 0:01:44.480 --> 0:01:48.000 The world Henry was born into was a very different 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:51.600 world from the one of today. Back then, only twenty 0:01:51.640 --> 0:01:55.520 five percent of Americans lived in cities, so the vast 0:01:55.560 --> 0:02:00.600 majority lived in rural communities. Today, nearly a d three 0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:05.360 of American citizens live in a city. Ford was born 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:10.040 in America that was pre industrialization in many ways. He 0:02:10.080 --> 0:02:14.399 would make lots of contributions that would change that dramatically. 0:02:14.919 --> 0:02:18.400 William Ford was a farmer, and Henry would work on 0:02:18.440 --> 0:02:22.160 the farm and attend a small school and dearborn. Apparently 0:02:22.160 --> 0:02:24.040 it was a school that only had a single room 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:27.600 in it, that kind of little schoolhouse, and between the 0:02:27.600 --> 0:02:30.640 ages of twelve and fifteen, Ford spent a lot of 0:02:30.680 --> 0:02:34.240 his time in a little machine shop, learning about engineering 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:37.720 with hands on experience. When he was sixteen, he made 0:02:37.760 --> 0:02:41.040 his way to Detroit, Michigan, on foot. It was about 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:44.880 an eight mile walk from his hometown and became a 0:02:44.960 --> 0:02:49.040 machinist's apprentice at a machine shop in Detroit before moving 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:51.760 on to work at a couple of other factories. He 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:55.079 worked in such places for about three years, and at 0:02:55.160 --> 0:02:59.400 some point he encountered his first internal combustion engine. I 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:02.560 covered how these engines work in the GM episodes, and 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:05.320 since those were fairly recent, I'm not going to go 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:07.840 through that whole thing again because a lot of you 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:10.880 have already heard it. If you haven't heard it, then 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:14.400 you know, go listen to the GM episodes. They're good. Anyway, 0:03:14.680 --> 0:03:18.800 Ford recognized the value of an engine driven piece of 0:03:18.840 --> 0:03:21.960 machinery to do work on a much larger scale, and 0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:25.320 at around age nineteen, he came back to his family 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:29.639 farm and took up work with the Westinghouse Engine Company. 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:34.160 Mainly he was helping repair steam powered farm equipment, so 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:39.160 not internal combustion engine powered equipment, but steam engines. And 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:43.280 I realized that this is an episode about Ford, not Westinghouse. 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:46.160 But it would behoove me to talk just for a 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:50.120 second about George Westinghouse. He was born back in eighteen 0:03:50.200 --> 0:03:53.640 forty six. He was an engineer and inventor, and he 0:03:53.680 --> 0:03:57.960 worked on steam engines, locomotives, and railway air brakes. Early 0:03:58.000 --> 0:04:00.960 in his career, he invented a road ree steam engine 0:04:01.040 --> 0:04:03.920 before he was twenty, and he would later go on 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:08.760 to play a fundamental role in the Electric Current Wars 0:04:08.920 --> 0:04:13.520 the A C D C Wars. Westinghouse would champion alternating 0:04:13.640 --> 0:04:16.760 current A C in other words, while Thomas Edison would 0:04:16.760 --> 0:04:20.360 oppose him, favoring direct current. And I'll have to do 0:04:20.680 --> 0:04:22.839 a full episode about Westinghouse in the future, but I 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:26.000 have done episodes about the Current Wars, so you can 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:30.960 search the archives for that. They are dramatic and intense, 0:04:31.920 --> 0:04:36.560 you might say shocking. Anyway, Henry Ford sort of followed 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:40.279 the opposite path of Tesla. You know Nicola Tesla, the 0:04:40.560 --> 0:04:44.640 iconic engineer whom the Internet would have you believe invented 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:49.760 electricity itself. Um, he didn't. Tesla did a lot of 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:53.119 great things. He was a brilliant man, but I would 0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:56.360 say that some of the things he's credited for on 0:04:56.400 --> 0:05:01.920 the Internet are not act here it anyway, Tesla had 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:06.719 first worked for Edison and then famously later on he 0:05:06.760 --> 0:05:10.480 worked for Westinghouse. Ford would do the opposite. He was 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:15.040 starting off repairing farm equipment for Westinghouse and then later 0:05:15.080 --> 0:05:19.200 on he found employment at the Edison Illuminating Company. Of Detroit. 0:05:19.800 --> 0:05:23.480 He became an engineer there in eighteen ninety one and 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:26.279 rose through the ranks rather quickly. He became the chief 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:30.160 engineer by eighteen nine three. It was in the winter 0:05:30.279 --> 0:05:32.880 of that year when Ford was said to have built 0:05:32.960 --> 0:05:37.360 his own first internal combustion engine. It used gasoline for fuel, 0:05:37.800 --> 0:05:40.719 it had a single cylinder, and it was more of 0:05:40.760 --> 0:05:44.640 an R and D project for Ford himself. Ford began 0:05:44.680 --> 0:05:47.680 to think of ways to put an internal combustion engine 0:05:47.680 --> 0:05:52.160 to work, specifically by powering a vehicle. He wasn't the 0:05:52.200 --> 0:05:55.200 first person to think about this, not by a long shot, 0:05:55.720 --> 0:05:58.359 but it was around this time, towards the close of 0:05:58.400 --> 0:06:02.040 the nineteenth century, we saw a lot of early experiments 0:06:02.040 --> 0:06:06.440 with vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. To put things 0:06:06.440 --> 0:06:10.320 in perspective, at the time, Ford was still working for Edison, 0:06:10.520 --> 0:06:13.719 and his job required him to be on call. Essentially, 0:06:13.720 --> 0:06:16.560 he had to be ready to jump into action should 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:20.080 the plants that were supplying Detroit with electricity have any 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:23.400 sort of problem. But that also meant he didn't actually 0:06:23.400 --> 0:06:27.560 have to keep specific hours over at Edison. He just 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:31.159 had to be constantly available, and so he used his 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:33.800 own hours outside of his work to tinker on a 0:06:34.000 --> 0:06:39.320 powered vehicle. Ford's first experimental vehicle was the quadricycle in 0:06:39.440 --> 0:06:43.200 eighteen nineties six, and as the name implies, this vehicle 0:06:43.360 --> 0:06:47.880 was more like a four wheeled motorized bicycle than a 0:06:47.920 --> 0:06:52.040 modern car. He used an old buggy seat as the 0:06:52.080 --> 0:06:55.080 seat for the driver on the vehicle, and the quadricycle 0:06:55.160 --> 0:06:58.320 had a chain drive, meaning you had a loop of 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:01.239 chain that provided the method to ends for the motion 0:07:01.360 --> 0:07:06.120 generated by the engine to the quadricycle's bicycle wheels. It 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:09.800 did not have a steering wheel. Instead, it had a handle, 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:13.000 essentially a tiller that you could swing left or right 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:16.080 to steer the vehicle. The tiller connected to the front 0:07:16.080 --> 0:07:19.160 wheels and allowed them to turn. The earliest mention I 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:22.200 could find about steering wheels actually dates to eighteen ninety 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:25.600 four in France, but it would take a little while 0:07:25.680 --> 0:07:28.440 for that method to replace the good old tiller. And 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:31.560 tiller has worked okay on vehicles that you know, especially 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:34.200 if the vehicle had three wheels with one wheel in front. 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:37.320 They were pretty easy to use. Then it was a 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:40.360 little trickier to use on a four wheeled vehicle. They 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:43.720 also were not terribly safe. If a vehicle were able 0:07:43.760 --> 0:07:47.119 to get up to a decent speed, though that wasn't 0:07:47.120 --> 0:07:49.240 really so much of a danger with the quadricycle. It 0:07:49.320 --> 0:07:53.080 did not have a super high top speed. It had 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:56.840 a humble to cylinder four horsepower engine, so it really 0:07:56.840 --> 0:07:59.720 didn't have the oath necessary to tear down the track, 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:04.080 particularly in a world where roads were frequently muddy. It 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:07.119 had to driving speeds. The slower speed was ten miles 0:08:07.120 --> 0:08:10.400 per hour. The fastest was twenty miles per hour. Now, 0:08:10.440 --> 0:08:13.120 I guess you could say that that's a pretty darn 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:15.880 good clips, So maybe I'm being a little unkind in 0:08:15.920 --> 0:08:20.040 my earlier assessment, but it's not like screaming fast. The 0:08:20.120 --> 0:08:24.080 vehicle had no reverse It also had no brakes. It did, however, 0:08:24.120 --> 0:08:26.840 have a doorbell, which served as a kind of horn 0:08:26.960 --> 0:08:29.120 for the car to let people know that they were 0:08:29.120 --> 0:08:32.880 about to get run down by Henry Ford. Originally, Ford 0:08:32.960 --> 0:08:36.480 intended for his motor to be air cooled, but it 0:08:36.559 --> 0:08:39.400 turned out that the motor just heated up too much 0:08:39.640 --> 0:08:43.320 and the air wasn't dissipating the heat fast enough, so 0:08:43.679 --> 0:08:47.600 he added some water jackets around the cylinders on the 0:08:47.640 --> 0:08:50.040 engine in order to keep them from getting so hot 0:08:50.120 --> 0:08:53.240 that they would you know, break down. Ford first gave 0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:58.840 the quadricycle a test drive on June and around four 0:08:59.000 --> 0:09:02.920 a m. And he might have even started earlier than that, 0:09:02.960 --> 0:09:05.800 but he found he made one key mistake while building 0:09:05.880 --> 0:09:09.720 his contraption. Turned out it was too wide to fit 0:09:09.760 --> 0:09:11.920 through the door of the shed that he had built 0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:15.600 it in, so he built a car too big to 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:18.400 fit through the door of the shed so that shed 0:09:18.440 --> 0:09:22.640 had brick walls and delayed. But undeterred, Ford decided to 0:09:22.679 --> 0:09:26.080 take up an axe that was in the shed and 0:09:26.120 --> 0:09:28.480 then just start hacking at the wall with it, breaking 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:31.440 off bits of brick until he had made a gap 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:34.840 wide enough for the quadricycle to fit through the wall. 0:09:34.880 --> 0:09:38.880 Wasn't gonna stop Henry Ford from making history. His chief assistant, 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:42.200 James Bishop, helped him out and even rode ahead on 0:09:42.240 --> 0:09:45.040 a bicycle to help make certain that Henry had a 0:09:45.040 --> 0:09:48.400 clear path and wasn't gonna, you know, kill anybody. Since 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:50.520 there were no brakes on the quadricycle, that was really 0:09:50.559 --> 0:09:54.520 important because Ford would either have to run into someone 0:09:54.679 --> 0:09:57.600 or veer off and potentially crash into a building, and 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:01.400 neither option really seemed to appeal to Ford. The test 0:10:01.480 --> 0:10:04.760 drive was a success, despite the fact that at one 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:07.600 point there was a spring on the vehicle that broke 0:10:08.120 --> 0:10:12.400 and that necessitated a quick repair job. Having made his 0:10:12.440 --> 0:10:16.120 first vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine, Ford was 0:10:16.160 --> 0:10:18.760 eager to get to work on the second one and 0:10:18.840 --> 0:10:21.880 to improve upon what he built, So he started doing 0:10:21.960 --> 0:10:24.560 something that would become a theme in his early career. 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:28.760 He sold the quadricycle. Sold it for two hundred dollars 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:32.120 in late eighteen ninety six. If we had just for inflation, 0:10:32.559 --> 0:10:35.960 that's close to around six thousand, three hundred dollars today. 0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:40.040 Now today you would probably call that quadricycle priceless. So 0:10:40.160 --> 0:10:43.160 it was a steal for six large plus some change. 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:47.240 But here's the really crazy thing. In h four, Henry 0:10:47.280 --> 0:10:51.640 Ford actually bought that quadricycle back for the princely sum 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:57.160 of sixty five dollars. Pretty good deal, right. Ford received 0:10:57.280 --> 0:11:02.000 Thomas Edison's encouragement in his pursuits, and I assume that 0:11:02.160 --> 0:11:05.400 Edison's words helped Ford make the decision to strike out 0:11:05.440 --> 0:11:08.640 on his own and found his own company. He resigned 0:11:08.679 --> 0:11:13.680 his position with Edison on August five and co founded 0:11:13.720 --> 0:11:18.120 a company called the Detroit Automobile Company. He received funding 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:21.800 from a dozen investors, including William Maybury, who was the 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:25.440 mayor of Detroit at the time. They raised fifteen thousand 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:28.200 dollars for the business, which would be equal to about 0:11:28.240 --> 0:11:31.800 four hundred seventy three thousand dollars today, which is a 0:11:31.840 --> 0:11:34.920 good chunk of change, but probably less than what you 0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:37.560 would expect for a startup company that was going to 0:11:37.600 --> 0:11:42.000 be building cars. Henry salary was established at one fifty 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:45.320 dollars per month, which would be around four thousand, seven 0:11:45.360 --> 0:11:49.320 hundred thirty bucks these days, or fifty six thousand dollars 0:11:49.360 --> 0:11:52.760 per year, or so just about fifty seven thousand dollars, 0:11:52.800 --> 0:11:55.560 so Ford wasn't quite rolling in cash yet that he 0:11:55.600 --> 0:11:58.920 was making a decent living. Of course, in those days, 0:11:59.120 --> 0:12:02.760 cars were built hand by small groups of engineers, and 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:06.120 they were mostly the playthings of the wealthy. They were 0:12:06.160 --> 0:12:09.960 a curiosity, something that made headlines, but was still a 0:12:10.080 --> 0:12:12.520 very rare sight on the streets. A lot of people 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:16.000 had never seen one. The first vehicle Ford got to 0:12:16.080 --> 0:12:20.240 work on at the Detroit Automotive Company was a delivery truck. 0:12:20.440 --> 0:12:23.320 It was a a small vehicle for a truck, but 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:26.520 showed that Ford was thinking about practical uses for automobiles 0:12:27.000 --> 0:12:29.200 because we weren't yet at a point where the average 0:12:29.200 --> 0:12:32.360 person was going to own one. But you know, you 0:12:32.360 --> 0:12:35.040 could make delivery trucks, make something that's really useful for 0:12:35.120 --> 0:12:38.560 purposes like hauling stuff around, and businesses could buy them. 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:42.160 But Ford and his backers started to have some problems. 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:45.760 Ford was focused on improving his designs and making his 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:50.120 vehicles more reliable and easier to handle and etcetera. But 0:12:50.600 --> 0:12:54.040 his backers were more interested in, you know, selling cars. 0:12:54.600 --> 0:12:56.960 And it is hard to make money if the guy 0:12:57.000 --> 0:13:00.040 in charge of manufacturing your product is spending all the 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:04.480 time on improving that product, not selling it. The Detroit 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:07.439 Automobile Company lasted only a year and a half before 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:12.480 Ford's investors exasperated through in the towel and dissolved the company. 0:13:12.640 --> 0:13:15.960 Ford meanwhile kept his hand in by designing and building 0:13:15.960 --> 0:13:19.440 cars to compete in various races. In nineteen o one, 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:22.640 a car he built competed in a ten mile race 0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:26.160 in Gross Point, Michigan, and the driver won the race. 0:13:26.600 --> 0:13:30.800 That driver was Henry Ford himself. Ford then designed a 0:13:30.840 --> 0:13:35.560 better race car called the n Ford also sought out 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:39.400 new investors to give that whole company thing another go. 0:13:40.160 --> 0:13:43.079 The remains of the Detroit Automobile Company would serve as 0:13:43.080 --> 0:13:47.479 the foundation for a new company called the Henry Ford Company. 0:13:47.600 --> 0:13:50.040 Ford was able to convince more investors to jump on 0:13:50.160 --> 0:13:53.439 after this successful races. He had built up a lot 0:13:53.440 --> 0:13:56.840 of positive pr and the company took shape in November 0:13:57.000 --> 0:14:01.640 nineteen o one. But these new investors soon encountered the 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:06.079 same issues as their predecessors. They watched as Henry kept 0:14:06.440 --> 0:14:10.040 changing designs and attempting to improve vehicles and claiming they 0:14:10.040 --> 0:14:12.680 weren't yet ready to be sold to the public. And 0:14:12.720 --> 0:14:17.040 he was probably right, But keeping a business afloat is expensive, 0:14:17.320 --> 0:14:20.160 and if there's little to no money coming in from sales, 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:23.680 then that means the investors have to shoulder that load. 0:14:24.400 --> 0:14:27.800 Tensions between Ford and those investors reached a boiling point, 0:14:28.080 --> 0:14:31.520 and ultimately Ford decided to leave in a huff, or 0:14:31.560 --> 0:14:34.560 maybe a minute and a huff. Anyway, he decided to leave. 0:14:35.000 --> 0:14:38.600 And it had been less than half a year. Yikes. Now, 0:14:38.640 --> 0:14:41.760 if you listened to my episodes about General Motors, you 0:14:41.800 --> 0:14:45.600 know it was this company, the Henry Ford Company, that 0:14:45.640 --> 0:14:49.720 would transform into the Cadillac Company. After a guy named 0:14:49.720 --> 0:14:53.800 Henry Leland was brought in to assess the company assets. Now, 0:14:53.800 --> 0:14:56.680 the original plan was that the investors were going to 0:14:56.760 --> 0:15:01.000 liquidate everything and just you know, call the loss. But 0:15:01.160 --> 0:15:04.600 Leland convinced them to stick with it, and the Cadillac 0:15:04.880 --> 0:15:07.680 was born, which would later get scooped up as part 0:15:07.720 --> 0:15:11.280 of GM. When Ford left, one of the few things 0:15:11.320 --> 0:15:13.760 he got to take with him was his name. I 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:16.480 mean it was his name after all. He also took 0:15:16.480 --> 0:15:19.880 his determination to stick with the whole car thing third 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:22.880 times the charm right. And so he sets out to 0:15:22.920 --> 0:15:25.200 get a new group of investors to help him create 0:15:25.240 --> 0:15:28.800 an automobile company. And sure enough, this one would be 0:15:28.840 --> 0:15:32.440 the real success. It would be the Ford Motor Company. 0:15:32.880 --> 0:15:35.200 When we come back, i'll talk about the early days 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:37.600 of that company and the birth of the Model T. 0:15:38.320 --> 0:15:49.560 But first let's take a quick break. It was three 0:15:49.680 --> 0:15:53.240 and Henry Ford was now thirty nine years old. The 0:15:53.320 --> 0:15:56.480 first two companies he found it fizzled out as investors 0:15:56.520 --> 0:15:59.960 backed away from Ford. The automobile was still in its 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:02.480 infancy and Ford wanted to play a part in its 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:06.640 early development. He had new investors, including the Dodge Brothers, 0:16:06.840 --> 0:16:09.520 whom I also mentioned in the GM episode. It's a 0:16:09.640 --> 0:16:15.080 very incestuous group automakers. Collectively, his investors raised more money 0:16:15.120 --> 0:16:18.640 than went into either the Detroit Automotive Company or the 0:16:18.680 --> 0:16:22.240 Henry Ford Company twenty eight thousand dollars in fact, and 0:16:22.320 --> 0:16:25.760 the Ford Motor Company was born. Like the other companies 0:16:26.080 --> 0:16:30.240 it called Detroit Home. Ford himself was heavily invested in 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:33.480 the company. He owned slightly more than twenty five of 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:36.960 the company's stuck upon its formation. For the first few 0:16:37.040 --> 0:16:40.320 years he shared control of the company with fellow investors, 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:42.800 but by nineteen o six he assumed the position of 0:16:42.840 --> 0:16:47.320 president and controlled the company pretty effectively. And skipping ahead 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:49.720 a bit, and will touch back on this late in 0:16:49.760 --> 0:16:53.800 the episode, in nineteen nineteen and nineteen twenty, he and 0:16:53.880 --> 0:16:57.000 his wife Clara and their son Edsel would hold a 0:16:57.080 --> 0:17:00.920 buy back of all outstanding stock. That's putting lightly. We'll 0:17:00.960 --> 0:17:04.159 get to it. It's actually a little more amusing than that, 0:17:04.200 --> 0:17:08.000 but anyway, they spent more than a hundred million dollars 0:17:08.040 --> 0:17:11.160 to essentially buy up all the stock, or at least 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:14.680 enough for them to have controlling interest, and became effectively 0:17:14.760 --> 0:17:17.680 the soul owners of the company. Now. The first car 0:17:17.960 --> 0:17:21.760 produced by the Ford Motor Company became known as the 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:26.040 Model A Ford. Now clearly this was not the Model 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:30.000 A that the Ford Company would produce in nineteen twenty seven. No, 0:17:30.200 --> 0:17:33.119 this was the nineteen oh three Model A, and it 0:17:33.160 --> 0:17:36.800 was a different beast altogether. The Model A was a 0:17:36.840 --> 0:17:40.600 style of car called a runabout. It was an open vehicle, 0:17:40.840 --> 0:17:43.600 meaning there was no top to the car. There's no roof, 0:17:44.160 --> 0:17:46.760 there's no windshield, there are no doors. In fact, you 0:17:46.760 --> 0:17:49.960 would just step up onto the car and then into 0:17:50.000 --> 0:17:53.080 it and sit on a bench style seat similar to 0:17:53.119 --> 0:17:55.200 a horse drawn buggy. In fact, it looked a lot 0:17:55.359 --> 0:17:59.119 like a buggy, just you know, without the horse. This 0:17:59.280 --> 0:18:02.440 vehicle measure four ft nine inches tall or about one 0:18:02.440 --> 0:18:05.840 point four meters. It was five ft five inches or 0:18:06.080 --> 0:18:09.400 one point six five ms wide, and it was about 0:18:09.480 --> 0:18:11.959 eight and a half feet long or two point six meters. 0:18:12.200 --> 0:18:16.439 It had a two speed manual transmission, had eight horsepower, 0:18:16.680 --> 0:18:19.600 and thankfully it did have a steering wheel and brakes. 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:23.240 The sales price was eight hundred fifty dollars or about 0:18:23.600 --> 0:18:26.159 twenty four thousand, eight hundred bucks if we had just 0:18:26.320 --> 0:18:29.800 for today's you know, inflation rates. The average salary in 0:18:29.800 --> 0:18:33.119 America at that time was just four hundred eighty nine dollars, 0:18:33.160 --> 0:18:35.720 So that meant it would take nearly two years of 0:18:35.800 --> 0:18:38.280 savings for the average person to be able to purchase 0:18:38.400 --> 0:18:41.800 a Model A. That's assuming that, you know, it didn't 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:45.560 spend money on anything else. The Forward company was ready 0:18:45.600 --> 0:18:48.080 to take orders in the summer of nineteen o three, 0:18:48.359 --> 0:18:52.200 and the company was on borrowed time. In mid July three, 0:18:52.520 --> 0:18:56.359 Ford received three orders for Model A cars. One was 0:18:56.400 --> 0:18:59.520 payment in full and the other two were large deposits. 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:02.240 At the time, the company had a bank balance of 0:19:02.320 --> 0:19:07.320 just two dollars sixty cents. In other words, the Ford 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:09.959 Motor Company was in danger of running out of cash 0:19:10.240 --> 0:19:12.960 and not even having enough to cover the company payroll. 0:19:13.400 --> 0:19:17.199 But those orders brought in another one thousand, twenty bucks, 0:19:17.240 --> 0:19:20.040 which kept the lights on, so to speak. Oh and 0:19:20.080 --> 0:19:23.600 that wasn't the only existential crisis that the company faced 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:26.639 early on. While the orders made sure that the company 0:19:26.680 --> 0:19:29.840 had enough money to keep going, a consortium called the 0:19:29.880 --> 0:19:35.119 Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers or a l a M 0:19:35.119 --> 0:19:38.760 threatened to shut things down. The group, formed in an 0:19:38.760 --> 0:19:42.280 effort to get total control over the blossoming automobile industry 0:19:42.280 --> 0:19:45.760 in the United States, controlled by a board of five members, 0:19:45.760 --> 0:19:48.359 who had to reach a unanimous decision when it came 0:19:48.359 --> 0:19:51.760 to granting licenses. And if you'll forgive me, I think 0:19:51.760 --> 0:19:53.760 we need to go down a little tangent here because 0:19:53.800 --> 0:19:57.879 this story is fascinating. At the heart of the matter 0:19:58.600 --> 0:20:02.760 was a patent that originally belonged to George B. Selden. 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:05.879 He was an engineer at heart, but a patent lawyer 0:20:05.960 --> 0:20:08.439 by trade, and he filed for a patent for an 0:20:08.480 --> 0:20:12.560 internal combustion engine specifically intended for the use in vehicles 0:20:12.840 --> 0:20:16.160 way back in eighteen seventy nine. However, he didn't receive 0:20:16.280 --> 0:20:20.840 the patent until eight In the meantime, other folks had 0:20:20.840 --> 0:20:24.719 started making cars that relied on internal combustion engines and 0:20:24.760 --> 0:20:29.200 did not, you know, rely specifically on Seldon's patent. Selden, however, 0:20:29.640 --> 0:20:33.000 held that patent, which meant he could pursue those rights 0:20:33.040 --> 0:20:36.000 and demand a fee from companies that were making cars 0:20:36.400 --> 0:20:39.399 that were running on internal combustion engines, and he helped 0:20:39.440 --> 0:20:42.760 co found the Electric Vehicle Company and worked to get 0:20:42.840 --> 0:20:47.119 royalty fees from various car manufacturers. The A L. A M. 0:20:47.200 --> 0:20:51.480 Group essentially formed to help fight back against this practice 0:20:51.520 --> 0:20:54.719 of what, in their point of view, amounted to extortion, 0:20:55.280 --> 0:20:57.760 and you could say this was sort of an early 0:20:57.800 --> 0:21:03.120 example of someone acting like a control Ultimately, the companies 0:21:03.200 --> 0:21:06.280 represented by A L. A M. We're able to secure 0:21:06.280 --> 0:21:09.199 a better deal with E V M, the holder of 0:21:09.200 --> 0:21:12.560 the patent, and now the A L a M. Was 0:21:12.640 --> 0:21:15.880 acting kind of like a gatekeeper for the car manufacturing 0:21:15.920 --> 0:21:19.600 business in America. It seems like most folks in the 0:21:19.640 --> 0:21:22.159 industry viewed that the patent at the center of all 0:21:22.240 --> 0:21:25.600 this was somewhat weak, but no one was really up 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:27.840 to the task of testing it out because it would 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:32.359 mean a lengthy and expensive court battle. Ford had attempted 0:21:32.400 --> 0:21:35.480 to secure a license from the A L a M. 0:21:35.480 --> 0:21:38.399 But he had been denied. Now, one reason for that 0:21:38.480 --> 0:21:41.320 denial may have been that a member of the board 0:21:41.760 --> 0:21:44.679 worked for the Olds Company, the company that made the 0:21:44.720 --> 0:21:48.280 Oldsmobile and would later be part of GM, and Ford's 0:21:48.280 --> 0:21:52.160 cars were the chief competitor to the Oldsmobile in Detroit, 0:21:52.680 --> 0:21:55.920 So there's the possibility that there was some anti competitive 0:21:55.920 --> 0:22:00.119 practices going on here. But the official reason was that 0:22:00.280 --> 0:22:03.480 Ford's previous two companies had fizzled out less than two 0:22:03.560 --> 0:22:06.399 years after they had launched, and that meant that Ford 0:22:06.480 --> 0:22:09.080 had no proven track record that he could deliver upon 0:22:09.160 --> 0:22:13.159 his desire to make cars. However, Ford went ahead with 0:22:13.280 --> 0:22:16.920 making cars without a license from the A L a M. 0:22:16.960 --> 0:22:20.320 That led to a lawsuit against the company filed by 0:22:20.359 --> 0:22:23.280 the A L a M. The trial would stretch on 0:22:23.400 --> 0:22:26.600 for several years, with one judge finding in favor of 0:22:26.720 --> 0:22:29.600 A L. A M. In nineteen o nine, but then 0:22:29.640 --> 0:22:32.600 the Court of Appeals overturned that decision in favor of 0:22:32.720 --> 0:22:36.200 Ford in nineteen eleven, at which point the A L 0:22:36.280 --> 0:22:38.840 a M decided to just let it be. Part of 0:22:38.880 --> 0:22:42.119 the winning strategy was that Ford's lawyers argued that the 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:45.240 design of the car engines weren't based off of Selden's 0:22:45.280 --> 0:22:48.920 design at all, but rather one that had been earlier 0:22:49.000 --> 0:22:52.560 created by Nicholas Otto way back in the mid nineteenth century. 0:22:53.280 --> 0:22:57.040 Also just to kind of drive home how absurd things 0:22:57.080 --> 0:22:59.080 like this can be when you take the long view. 0:22:59.520 --> 0:23:02.119 By the time I'm this case had finally concluded in 0:23:02.160 --> 0:23:05.159 the courts, the patent only had one more year of 0:23:05.200 --> 0:23:09.320 protection for Selden because patents expire, and once they do so, 0:23:09.720 --> 0:23:13.680 the invention enters the public domain. Anyway, the entire time 0:23:13.880 --> 0:23:17.200 this lawsuit was going on, Ford was still making vehicles, 0:23:17.440 --> 0:23:20.720 and after the battle, the automotive industry as a whole changed. 0:23:21.520 --> 0:23:23.960 For around a year and a half, the company made 0:23:24.040 --> 0:23:27.840 Model A cars. In fact, it made around seventeen hundred 0:23:27.920 --> 0:23:31.640 of them. While assembly lines were a thing in which 0:23:31.640 --> 0:23:34.080 people would be in charge of specific tasks and the 0:23:34.119 --> 0:23:37.800 assembly process which sped things up a bit, we weren't 0:23:37.840 --> 0:23:42.240 at real mass production yet. We weren't at mechanized electrified 0:23:42.359 --> 0:23:47.800 assembly lines where stuff was brought specifically to assemble workers, 0:23:47.840 --> 0:23:50.240 so it wasn't as efficient as it was going to be. 0:23:50.800 --> 0:23:53.080 The Model A was successful enough to give Forward the 0:23:53.119 --> 0:23:55.120 cash to work on the next car, which is really 0:23:55.280 --> 0:23:58.200 kind of how Ford had been operating since the eighteen nineties. 0:23:59.000 --> 0:24:03.800 What followed were eight other cars, the Model B, the A, C, 0:24:04.400 --> 0:24:08.120 the C, the F, the K, the N, the R, 0:24:08.280 --> 0:24:11.840