I wonder if they were horny. All those cars, I mean. Were the early ones equipped with horns?
We can go back to October 7, 1913, to look at this. Something revolutionary happened on that day inside Henry Ford’s Highland Park factory in Michigan. For the first time, the entire plant ran on a moving assembly line. It was a system that would forever change how things were made. Not just at Ford, but for products and goods all across the world.
How did Henry work it? Well, a motor and rope slowly pulled each Model T chassis past workers stationed along the factory floor. Instead of employees walking around to gather parts and tools, the work came to them. All of this resulted in a stunning leap in productivity.
Before the moving line, assembling a Model T required far more labor and time. It took more than 12 hours to build just one car. But with the new method, Ford slashed man-hours dramatically. Within a year, improvements reduced chassis assembly to just 93 minutes. That’s a big, big time saver, I’d say.
Because of this, Ford could do what he had always dreamed of. He could lower the price of cars so that everyday Americans could afford one. Before this, only the very rich could afford them.
When Henry Ford introduced the Model T in 1908, he famously said, “I will build a motor car for the great multitude.” It was pretty ambitious for him to promise such a thing. Those very first cars were luxury items. They were handmade and expensive.
The Model T changed that. It was sturdy, simple to maintain, and designed with the needs of middle-class families in mind. Still, the pre–assembly line price tag of $850 put it out of reach for many.
Ford realized that the only path to getting cars to all people was mass production. Here is the funny thing. The inspiration for this breakthrough came from an unlikely place. He found it in meatpacking plants. In Chicago and Cincinnati, workers butchered livestock on overhead trolleys that carried carcasses from station to station.
Ford engineers took that idea and ran with it.
Once those engineers worked out the best process, Ford turned up the volume. By 1916, the Model T cost only $360. Eventually, Ford could produce a car every 24 seconds.
The moving assembly line didn’t just make cars cheaper. It changed the world. Because of this, urban growth accelerated. The assembly line transformed labor and launched a manufacturing revolution.
And here we are. The robots and AI are our new assembly lines.
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“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.”
— Henry Ford
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“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
— George Bernard Shaw
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“Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master.”
— Christian Lous Lange
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“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.”
— Alfred North Whitehead
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