OnInnovation: Visionaries thinking out loud. A video oral history project advancing a culture of innovation powered by The Henry Ford.

When Henry Ford was 16, he left the family farm where he was born and raised. It would be nearly a quarter of a century before he founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903, and another five years before he launched a transportation revolution that would sweep the world with his Model T Ford.

Obviously, his success was far from instant. He worked in a machine shop. He worked evenings repairing watches. He was a night shift foreman in an electric generating facility. Even when he decided to follow his entrepreneurial bent, he had difficulties, founding two companies that failed before the success of Ford Motor Company.

His Ford was not, by any stretch of the imagination the first car. Neither was his vaunted assembly line the world's first.

The innovation that brought him enduring fame, though, was to build a reliable, low-priced car that people wanted to buy. It was a radical and game-changing concept. By making a car that was within the reach of the masses, he created something that had been a toy for the rich into an innovation that provided a practical transportation device for millions of people.

The Model T changed the speed of life. Named the "Car of the Century" by the Global Automotive Elections Foundation, the Model T would remain in production until 1927. In time, more than 15 million of this remarkable automobile would be manufactured.

But Ford was not done innovating. His continued to develop new and ever-more populist products. In time, Ford himself would begin exploring innovative forms of education which, in time, would lead to the founding of the Edison Institute, known today at The Henry Ford.

Henry Ford wasn't just a titan of industry. He was interested in every aspect of life around him. He wanted to know how things worked. And, just as important, why they didn’t work. Not just cars. He wanted to know how electricity worked. And steam engines. He was even fascinated with social dancing and hosted weekly dances for the executives of his company.

There is a prophetic story of how the 13-year-old Henry Ford got a pocket watch for his birthday, then proceeded to take it apart. He simply wanted to know how it worked.

In short, he wanted to know everything about everything. He saw technology as a powerful force in improving people's lives. It wasn’t just a source of profits. Technology was about harnessing new ideas and, ultimately, about a democratization of American life. Like George Washington Carver, a man for whom he had a great admiration, Ford believed there could and should be a mutually beneficial relationship between agriculture and industry. He spent several decades researching and developing products made from soybeans, going to far as to wear suits made of soy-based fabrics and employing auto parts made of soy-based plastics.

The Life of Henry Ford
Henry Ford & Thomas Edison re-create the advent of the electric light bulb at Lights Golden Jubilee at Greenfield Village, Dearborn, MI
Ford's Model T: A Car for the Great Multitude
Model T Ride at The Henry Ford, Dearborn, MI
You can be an innovator like Henry Ford! Teacher Guide and Unit plan for grades 3-5
Ford Motor Company Chronology
Alan Mulally, Ford CEO and Edison Award winner, re: electric cars
Alan Mulally, Ford CEO and Edison Award winner, re: "tapping today's needs"

automobile, dearborn, ford motor company, quadricycle, the henry ford, model t