Here is a line from the History channel about Ford: AUTOMOBILES: Through newsreels and family home movies, meet Henry Ford, the man who invented the first automobile.
I didn't think Ford was credited with the first automobile. I thought Europe cars were the first.???
This comes from Movers & Shakers: Story of the Men Who Built America DVD
SKU ID #383591
I've seen several "documentaries" that contain similar errors. I guess accuracy is not a prerequisite for writing such programs.
Henry Ford did not invent the automobile, but he is credited with perfecting mass production on an industrial scale thus allowing him to manufacture more automobiles than anyone thought possible up to that point making automobiles affordable and available to the masses. Jim Patrick
Hey Jim,
I think that Ely Whitney gets the credit for mass producing on an industrial scale. Ford gets credit for utilizing the assembly line on a large scale, as even that was not a new thing. As for the first automobile, I think that was built before we declared independence from England.
Best
Gus
Oh yea, it's about time to see this lie again: "Henry Ford's first automobile, the Model T, was designed to run on ethanol."
... don't forget perpetual motion, Ralph!
Garnet
Cugnot is recognised as the designer of the first self-propelled vehicle, as Rob has illustrated above. That was 1769.
Little happened then for the next 100 years. Then Frenchman Lenoir built an internal combustion engine. This ran on coal. But he didn't build a vehicle. Benz and Daimler did that about 1886 - that is considered to be the world's first automobile.
The pace then sped up. There was lots of development in Europe but the Americans would do things better. The Duryea brothers built America's first car. That was in 1893. A couple of months later, Henry - with Clara's help - famously started his first internal combustion engine in the kitchen in his home - Christmas Eve, 1893. He followed that up with the Quadricycle in 1896.
In my view, Ford was the first to make a reliable, strong. servicable and affordable automobile available to the masses. He acomplished this by several means, with mass production methods, such as the moving assembly line, being one of them. He did not "invent" mass production but he sure did perfect it.
John,
I think you will find that Daimler & Benz, quite independently developed two separate vehicles, both in 1886. Both Daimler & Benz had worked for Nicolaus Otto who is credited with developing the first 4 stroke engine.
If you want accurate history you should look somewhere besides a computer screen or the History channel. Their version of "history" is often revised to fit their socialist / leftist / pro - enviro nazi ideas and they will not hesitate to simply make up a story to fit their agenda.
Keep that in mind and you can find entertainment on that channel.
Beg to differ, Mr. Stokes: My cousin, Ransom Eli Olds, made nearly 20,000 Curved Dash Olds while Ford was tinkering with a progression of models.
from Wiki:
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The gasoline powered Curved Dash Oldsmobile is credited as being the first mass-produced automobile, meaning that it was built on an assembly line using interchangeable parts. It was introduced by the Oldsmobile company in 1901 and produced through 1907. 425[citation needed] examples were produced the first year, 2,500 in 1902, with over 19,000 built in all.[2]
It was a runabout model, could seat two passengers, and sold for US$650. While competitive, due to high volume, and below the Ford US$850 "Doctor's Car",[3] Western in 1905 produced the Gale Model A roadster at US$500, the Black went as low as $375,[4] and the Success hit the amazingly low US$250.[5]
The flat-mounted water-cooled single-cylinder engine, situated at the center of the car, produced 5 hp (3.7 kW),[1] relying on a brass gravity feed carburetor. The transmission was a semi-automatic design with two forward speeds and one reverse. The low-speed forward and reverse gear system are a planetary type (epicyclic). The car weighed 850 lb (390 kg) and used Concord springs. It had a top speed of 20 mph (32 km/h).
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I thought Ford was the pioneer of interchangeable parts, with his Johannsen help.
Yeh, Royce, and I get more real news in six minutes on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart than you can get all day on Fox Noise.
As Colbert famously said, "The truth has a liberal bias."
Back to the nonpolitical thread drift, please.
Good morning Gus. I won't say Eli Whitney invented mass production. That honor probably goes to some forgotten Minoan, Persian, Greek and/or Roman in antiquity, as it is a common conception. Eli Whitney was, however, the first to introduce mass production in Colonial America made possible by water power, in the manufacture of firearms and interchangeable parts, but only on a regional scale, no where near the massive scale attained by Ford which was made possible with the inventions and discoveries brought about during the industrial Revolution. Notice I didn't say Ford invented mass production but he did perfect it on a massive, worldwide industrial scale. Jim Patrick
Hey Jim,
I re-read your post, and you are right, sometimes one word can change the whole meaning of a sentence. Ford did perfect the manufacturing process.
Best
Gus
What is perceived as bias in service of an evil hidden agenda is more often simple incompetence.
It would be nice to get info from somewhere else but the net.Problem is,the libarys are getting rid of old books with accurate info in them and replaceing them with books written by the same or similar thinking people as runs the media.So we are screwed as a world as far as history is concerned unless we do our parts to preserve the truth.
That's very profound Mack. I guess we will have to rely on Bruce's book for accurate Model T information. The internet is a double edged sword.
Unfortunately I don't remember the particulars but I saw a documentary concerning mass producing pulley blocks for British sailing ships. Supposedly in the 1700's. Consisted of 7 machines that any one could be taught to use. At one end was the rough wood block and after passing through the 7 machines a finished pulley block was produced. They called it the first mass production line.
Seems like there are several related concepts that keep getting confused. These are my definitions:
Mass production Making more than one of the same basic item.
Interchangeable Parts Making more than one of an item and assuring the parts of one will work in another. I read somewhere that Royal-Royce transmission parts were not exactly interchangeable. The individual parts were reworked so each gear set ran quietly and smoothly.
Station Assembly This is how almost everything was made in the "old days". The base of an item was placed in a work area and the necessary parts were brought to it as needed. Assembly of each complete item was usually by a team. Workers and parts do the moving while the production unit remains stationary.
Assembly Line or Moving Assembly Line This is where the base of an item is placed on the Assembly Line and moved along with the various necessary parts added in a planned sequence. Each worker along the way added their part over and over again to each unit. The production unit moved, not the workers are the stockpiled parts.
Early automakers tried to make interchangeable parts for their vehicles. Ford combined interchangeable parts with a moving assembly line to achieve efficient mass production of the Model T.
More on the Portsmouth Block Mills is available here.
Mass production could be the making of more than one of the same basic item at the same time.
The making of 10,000 items in ten years might not be mass production, but the making of that same 10,000 items in 10 days probably would be.
Wasn't there an internal combustion engine powered wagon built in 1865 and driven some distance until it broke?
Wikipedia has an article on steam coaches and such.
Sylvester Roper of Boston made this vehicle in 1863 or thereabouts.
Apparently, not everyone was eager to see mechanical travel come along. This cartoon from 1831 shows what was going to happen.
Kep, the 1865 car you refer to was probably the "first Marcus car" built by Austrian inventor Siegfried Marcus. It's nowadays usually dated to about 1870, but I think I've seen older books on automobile history giving the 1865 date. It was primitive but still the first vehicle propelled by gasoline.
It could also be the Hippomobile, a hydrogen gas propelled vehicle built by Étienne Lenoir in France http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippomobile
The Hippomobile was more like a traction engine, a self propelled platform for the engine. Lenoir sold more than 350 Hippomobiles from 1863 (!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_automobile#Internal_combustion_engin es
Thomas. I see in your 1831 illustration where Dr. Seuss may have gotten his artful inspiration...
Sorry for the late response to Gavin and Ralph above. Work does get in the way. What I was trying to point out in my post that Ford most certainly did not invent the automobile (which we all know) and to show a sequence of events that lead to the invention of the automobile, and to try to show what Ford was really known for.
Gavin - you are right - Benz and Daimler were all operating independently of each other. My wording was poor! Benz produced a three-wheeler. Daimler produced a motorcycle - is a motorcycle considered to be an automobile?
Ralph - you are also quite right about the Curved Dash Olds being the first mass-produced automobile. Parts were interchangeable, but was it built on an assembly line? I would question that. He (R E Olds) did build the first purpose-built automobile factory (in Detroit, which established that city as the US centre of auto production).
I am of the view that Henry Ford took all these really good ideas (auto design and assembly procedures) and perfected them over the period 1903 to 1914, and made his product reliable and accessible as never before. This takes nothing away from the "Merry Oldsmobile" and its well-deserved place in automobile history!
I recently learned while researching my family's genealogy, that a possible ancestor did indeed invent a hydrogen powered vehicle in 1808. His name was Issac de Rivaz and he was an offshoot of my distant ancestors with a common variant in spelling. It was a very primitive engine, granted, but unique enough that he was granted a patent. Could this be the reason for my interest in antique cars????? Might be in the genes.
More info here:
http://earlyamericanautomobiles.com/index.htm
Herb