Go anywhere in the world today—to remote regions of the planet—find a native citizen of that country and say but one word, one syllable really: Ford. No matter the language, no matter the culture, no matter the vast gulf of difference separating you, eyes will register recognition. Over the past hundred years oh human progress, Ford Motor Company has transformed the course of history. The company is an inextricable part of the revolutionary then a mere maker and seller cars. Ford has shaped the world around us.
This epic story of a global institution begins simply, with a boy who loved to take watches apart and put them back together again. Henry Ford was born on a farm in Springwells Township (now Dearborn), Michigan, on July 30, 1863. Abraham Lincoln was president of the twenty-four states of the Union, then torn by civil war. Overseas, Charles Dickens began work on his last completed novel, Karl Marx considered his theories on socialism, and Giuseppe Verdi polished La Forza del Destino, his grand opera on the force of destiny.
The forces that would shape the Industrial Age were gathering the year Henry Ford was born. The open-hearth process of manufacturing steel, the cast network of pipelines transporting pol, and the crisscrossing railroads uniting a nation lay ahead. One American in five lived in a city; the United States was still a rural nation defined by agriculture and the farmers who worked the land.
