The Long Awaited Final Script

Hello and welcome to the CDC class of 2020 podcast series! Over the course of the next 12 podcasts we will take you on a journey through design. Each decade throws up some incredible design landmarks. In todays podcast we have an exclusive interview Henry Ford, the man behind the famous Model T, the worlds first affordable car, and then the assembly line. The man was a perfectionist and he was always looking for improvement. So without further ado, lets get into it!

Music – 0:50-1:00

Topic 1 (Biography and Car Design)

Interviewer: So, Henry, first I’d like to welcome you on to our podcast today. As Harry mentioned previously you are the founder of the Ford motor company and a pioneer in modern production ideas. Why don’t we start by learning a little bit about yourself?

Ford: Thank you for having me Niall, I was born and raised on a prosperous farm in a small town called Greenfield Township in the state Michigan. I have always been fascinated by machines and mechanics, but I knew that farm life was not for me. I spent most of my time in a machine shop, I equipped myself.

Interviewer: So, what piqued your interest in design?

Ford: At a very young age I was amazed by the design of pocket watches and how simple the components were, I dreamt of having a low-cost pocket watch business with mass produced parts (Henry Ford, 2020). At age 15 I had built my first steam engine and then the age of 16 I left the farm to take an apprenticeship as a machinist at shipbuilding firm in Detroit, here I enhanced my knowledge of design and machines and mechanics. And in ’91 I was working for Thomas Edison, I got promoted to chief engineer which gave me more time to work on my own personal designs of combustion engines (Ford, 2020).

Interviewer: Obviously, Thomas Edison changed the lives of billions with his light bulb invention, did he have an influence on you? Was he someone you looked up to?

Ford: Oh of course, Edison had a huge influence on my work. Let me tell you a story. One evening we were at an employee’s dinner and I met him for the first time. My car ideas were in early developments and he said to me, “Your car is self-contained–carries its own power plant–no fire, no boiler, no smoke and no steam. You have the thing. Keep at it.” (Badruddin, 2020). And that gave me the confidence to drive on my own car business, no pun intended.

Interviewer: With this belief you went on to design a number of cars, what were these ideas?

Ford: So, the first “car” that I made was the quadricycle which was essentially a light metal frame with four bicycle wheels powered by a two-cylinder, four-horsepower gasoline engine. This is what I showed Edison. I designed many models before the ol’ Tin Lizzie. There was Model A all the way to Model T before I got the right one but “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” (Failing for Success: Henry A. Ford, 2020).

Interviewer: What are these failures you mention? Were they design failures? How did the cars differ from each other?

Ford: Hell, I burned through all my first investors’ money without producing a car. But in 1903 we released the Model A. The Model A had numerous problems including overheating and the transmission slipping (Henry Ford failed - ConsultantJournal.com - Become a Consultant, 2020).This was a simple two-cylinder engine which was mounted under the seats and the rear wheels were driven by a chain (1903 Ford Model A Runabout - The Henry Ford, 2020). It was a magnificent thing. It was a single leather seat covered by a leather hood. The body work was a mixture of metal and wood and it had some brass instruments. It was brilliant but that wasn’t enough for me, it had to be better.

Interviewer: Tell me about the Model T.

Ford: The Model T was just timed right; I had the right amount of funding and my assembly line idea was coming near perfection. It was the right time to make “motor cars for the multitude.” (Casey, 2020). After a few years, my investors in the Detroit Automobile company got fed up of my constant desire for improvement. Around the time I released the Model T, I set up the Ford Motor Company (Editors, 2009).

Interviewer: How was it designed?

Ford: The car or the motor company?

Interviewer: Oh sorry, The Model T.

Ford: Yes, it was the first time I was happy with the design. It was a self-starting vehicle with a left-sided steering wheel, featuring an enclosed four-cylinder engine with a detachable cylinder head and a one-piece cylinder block. Fashioned from an alloy steel, it offered superior strength despite its light weight. It also featured a generous ground clearance that could take the worst roads (Editors, 2020). It was brilliant. And it was cheap because my assembly line was in full swing!

Topic 2 (Assembly Line)

Interviewer: You mentioned the assembly line there. My research tells me that you were the genius behind the whole thing. What was thought process behind that? What were desires? Because if you go to any car factory today, it may be all self-operating machines, but your concept of the assembly line is still evident.

Ford: I knew I needed to speed up the production of the cars at the cheapest possible cost. It was a time consuming and labour-intensive process; it was my biggest challenge. One of the most important design changes in my factory came from somewhere I never would have expected, one of the most unlikely and unsavoury places, a slaughterhouse.

Interviewer: A slaughterhouse? How did this idea come about?

Ford: A slaughterhouse. Pa Klann, a senior employee visited a Chicago meat packing plant where he saw carcasses hung from the ceiling attached to moving hooks. Each employee has specific and specialised job, this in fact was a disassembly line. We then knew by reversing this process and could facilitate it our factory. (Staires, 2010)

Interviewer: Tell me more about your design of the line?

Ford: Well, we simplified assembly of the Model T’s 3,000 parts by breaking it into 84 steps performed by different groups of workers as a rope pulled the car chassis down the line. It was a lot quicker than building the car from the ground up in the one position. Then our factory could make a full car in only 93 minutes as opposed to 12 hours. (Goss, 2020).

We could save an enormous amount of time. Time was money in this case. This is an perfect example of taking a design from one industry into another industry, and changing the world.

Interviewer: How was it designed to be so efficient?

Ford: Every Model T produced on my assembly line used the exact same valves, gas tanks, tyres and all other parts so that they could be assembled in a speedy and organized fashion. Parts were created in mass quantities and then brought directly to the workers who were trained to work at that specific assembly station (Goss, 2020).

Hmm, I think, about 140 workers applied their assigned parts to the chassis and other workers brought additional parts to the assemblers this kept them stocked and reduced the amount of time workers spent away from their stations (Goss, 2020).

Interviewer: So, if you were always looking for improvement. How much refinement did it actually take to get to what you made it today?

Ford: If I said it didn’t take any refinement, I would be lying. Assembly line work was incredibly repetitive. The line was seen as an insult to skilled craftsmen (Eschner, 2016). But that didn’t bother me. I just wanted to design a factory scene that would run as efficiently as possible. It took a lot of planning, we worked up to it in stages. We practiced the process on one car. When we perfected this, we then trained the workers in and went full scale. My most useful innovation was the development of a way to mechanize production and yet customize the configuration of each Model T as it rolled off the block (Goss, 2020). This allowed us to produce different designs of the Model T.

Interviewer: tell me more about the different designs of the model T

Ford: there were 5 different designs, each design was a progression from the previous. Initially, when designing the model T, I looked at the engine. What most people find interesting is what’s NOT in the engine. I removed the water pump and the fuel pump. so, we saved money on making parts and making it easier to assemble. The model t became useful in agriculture, it could be used as a power source for different farming machinery. (Branch, 2018)

Interviewer: What about the colours, why black?

Ford: Well, at first town cars were painted grey, five seaters were painted in red and green was available for two seaters and others. I preferred black. Black paint was also faster drying and more convenient to use in my production line. (Branch, 2018)

Topic 3 (Employee standards)

Interviewer: You mention employee welfare, so let’s talk about that. You greatly improved these standards with methods that have had such an impact on employees’ rights today.

Ford: Are you referring to the 5-day week?

Interviewer: Yes.

Ford: Well my first intention was to generate profit. But the employees benefitted too. I gave them 2 days off so they could buy and drive my cars. I employed hundreds of thousands all over the world. "Leisure is an

indispensable ingredient in a growing consumer market because working people need to have enough free time to find uses for consumer products, including automobiles." (Today, 2017)

Interviewer: So, when you increased the wage from $2.34 for a nine-hour day to $5 for an eight-hour day, you weren’t thinking about your workers?

Ford: Yes and no. If I don’t pay them enough money to afford the car then how will they buy my cars? I could also sense unrest in my factories, so to stabilize the workforce, I raised the wage. However, $2.66 of that money was contingent on a worker meeting company standard for clean living.

Interviewer: That makes sense, I never thought of it like that.

Ford: My “Sociological Department” investigated every aspect of my workers’ lives, attempting, in a way, to standardize them the way I standardized my production line. Still, the money meant people came from all over the country looking for work at Ford, and many new immigrants found work there learning English at a Ford school I set up (Eschner, 2016). At one stage I employed over 52,000 in something like 14 different countries.

Interviewer: Do you realise the impact these ideas have had on the world today? Everyone still works forty-hour weeks, your $5 wage is equal to about $120 in today’s money, which is still roughly the living wage. Your ideas for profit have revolutionised employee standards today.

Ford: Well there you go; I am a genius.

Interviewer: Well Henry, thank you very much for coming on to talk to us today. It has been a pleasure.

Ford: Thank you kindly sir.

Music

Conclusion

The cheap reliable car disrupted not only the old order of transportation but also industries that supported it like the oil industry. The progression of cars influenced how cities were designed. Narrow streets, like those in French villages, became Broadways, like in New York. Highways devastated urban areas as the popularity of the car increased. We can now see what Henry Ford’s vision was. Thank you for listening, we now hand over to Sean, Ed, and Kieran to look at the 1910s.

Closing Music

(The Model T: The Unexpected Lessons Behind One of History's Biggest Design Marvels, 2020)

References:

· Thehenryford.org. 2020. 1903 Ford Model A Runabout - The Henry Ford. [online] Available at: <https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-

research/digital-collections/artifact/48168#slide=gs-214129> [Accessed 27 April 2020].

· Badruddin, A., 2020. When Henry Ford Met Thomas Edison. [online] Medium. Available at: <https://medium.com/asads-almanac/when-henry-ford-met-thomas-edison-b7b99c892609> [Accessed 14 April 2020].

· Branch, J., 2018. A Brief History of The Model T Ford - Everything You Need to Know. [online] Silodrome. Available at: <https://silodrome.com/history-model-t-ford/> [Accessed 3 May 2020].

· ConsultantJournal.com - Become a Consultant. 2020. Henry Ford Failed - Consultantjournal.Com - Become A Consultant. [online] Available at: <https://consultantjournal.com/blog/henry-ford-failed> [Accessed 27 April 2020].

· Casey, B., 2020. Ford’s Model T: A Car for The Great Multitude - Blog - The Henry Ford. [online] Thehenryford.org. Available at: <https://www.thehenryford.org/explore/blog/fords-model-t> [Accessed 14 April 2020].

· Editors, H., 2009. Henry Ford. [online] HISTORY. Available at: <https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/henry-ford> [Accessed 14 April 2020].

· Eschner, K., 2016. One Hundred and Three Years Ago Today, Henry Ford Introduced the Assembly Line: His Workers Hated It. [online] Smithsonian Magazine. Available at: <https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/one-hundred-and-three-years-ago-today-henry-ford-introduced-assembly-line-his-workers-hated-it-180961267/> [Accessed 14 April 2020].

· Ford.ie. 2020. History & Heritage. [online] Available at: <https://www.ford.ie/experience-ford/history-and-heritage> [Accessed 27 April 2020].

· Intellectualventures.com. 2020. Failing for Success: Henry A. Ford. [online] Available at: <https://www.intellectualventures.com/buzz/insights/failing-for-success-henry-a.-ford> [Accessed 14 April 2020].

· Goss, J., 2020. How Henry Ford's Assembly Line Changed Manufacturing. [online] ThoughtCo. Available at: <https://www.thoughtco.com/henry-ford-and-the-assembly-line-1779201> [Accessed 14 April 2020].

· Biography. 2020. Henry Ford. [online] Available at: <https://www.biography.com/business-figure/henry-ford> [Accessed 1 May 2020].

· Staires, M., 2010. What Henry Ford Learned from A Slaughterhouse - Michael Staires. [online] Michael Staires. Available at: <http://www.mstaires.com/what-henry-ford-learned-from-a-slaughter-house/> [Accessed 3 May 2020].

· Today, E., 2017. Henry Ford Started The 40-Hour Workweek but The Reason Will Surprise You. [online] India Today. Available at: <https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/gk-current-affairs/story/40-hour-workweek-henry-ford-1026067-2017-07-27> [Accessed 14 April 2020].

· Vox, 2016. How Highways Wrecked American Cities. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odF4GSX1y3c> [Accessed 14 April 2020].

Inc.com. 2020.The Model T: The Unexpected Lessons Behind One Of History's Biggest Design Marvels. [online] Available at: <https://www.inc.com/graham-winfrey/3-ways-the-model-t-reinvented-the-wheel.html> [Accessed 5 May 2020].