Road Apples by Tim Sanders
July 30, 2012

He had a better idea

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Today, unless you put off reading the July 30 edition of The Post until tomorrow, is the day when people all over the world celebrate the birthday of a great innovator who popularized no-frills vehicular transportation at a reasonable price. That’s right, I refer to Bert Oosterbosch, the Dutch bicyclist.

That is how I would have started this column if I was actually writing about that Oosterbosch guy, who was born on July 30, 1957. But I only discovered his name while researching a list of notables who were born on July 30. I liked the name, and made a note to mention it in the column. Bert Oosterbosch is an excellent name, but you need to know that as I approached adulthood (a work my wife claims is still in progress) I lost all interest in bicycles. I do, however, like automobiles. Which brings us to the actual topic this week: Henry Ford, who was also born on July 30, but in 1863.

People like me, who were born and raised in Michigan, know all about Henry Ford. Much of what we know is absolute fact, mostly. Here are some Ford facts:


• Henry was raised on a farm in Greenfield Township, Michigan. When Henry was a teenager, his father gave him a pocket watch. Henry immediately took it apart to see how it worked. He became known in the coommunity for disassembling watches, and neighbors soon learned to plead ignorance when little Henry asked for the time. “Here comes that Ford kid,” they’d say. “Hide your watch!” Apparently he was much better at dismantling watches than he was at reassembling them.


• Fortunately, Henry gave up the watch repair business and became an engineer. In the 1890s he moved to Detroit and in 1893 he worked for Thomas Edison. He then went into the automobile business. He got to know several other famous automobile innovators, including the Dodge Brothers, General Beauregard T. Motors, and Ransom and Mary Oldsmobile.


• In 1899 Ford constructed his first car, the Ford Quadricycle. It was a 4 hp vehicle, with a top speed of 20 mph. The device had a steering tiller, chain drive, two forward gears and no reverse. The frame was a set of bed springs fitted with four bicycle tires. When he tested his invention on the streets of Detroit, he was ticketed for blocking traffic. The 1899 Ford Quadricycle was much like today’s fuel efficient hybrid autos, only faster and more reliable.


• In 1903, after several failed attempts, Ford Motor Company produced the Model A, which should have been followed by Models B, C, D and so on, but wasn’t, due to the fact that the exclusive rights to those letters had already been purchased by Dr. Flushing’s Natural Vitamin Company, Inc.


• In 1908, Ford Motor Company began production of the Model T, which was so named because just a year earlier Dr. Flushing’s Vitamin T Elixer had been taken off the market due to unexpected side effects it was having on farm animals. So the letter was available and Ford snatched it up. The Model T, or “Tin Lizzie,” was a 4 cylinder vehicle with a detachable head and interchangeable parts. It came in a wide variety of colors, if you consider black a wide variety. In 1909 the lowest priced Model Ts sold for $825, but by 1916, after the assembly line was introduced, the price had dropped to $345. Given inflation rates and the decreasing value of the dollar, that would amount to the price of five cups of Starbucks Caffe Latte today. (Caffe Latte, by the way, is great for stopping radiator leaks.)


• Speaking of the assembly line, it was developed by Henry Ford in 1913. Until then, auto workers wasted a lot of time fighting over parts in bins and then running back to their work stations only to find that someone had stolen their crankshaft. Ford’s original conveyor belt system provided hours of free rides for his employees, but did little to help production until someone suggested leaving the employees in one place and sending parts down the belt instead.


• Henry's son, Edsel, took over the Presidency of Ford Motor Company in 1919. Henry loved Edsel, but did not like him much, due to structural defects and bad grillwork. Ford often claimed that his son looked more like a Packard than a Ford. Edsel Ford died in 1943 from bad gas. In 1958 the Ford Edsel was produced to honor Edsel. It had a peculiar look to it that encouraged prospective buyers to avoid it in droves. The Edsel was so unpopular that the model lasted for only three years. Not surprisingly, if you owned one today, you could sell it and buy yourself a nice chalet on Lake Tahoe with the profit.


• TRUE FACT: Henry Ford was so fond of Thomas Edison that he convinced Edison’s son to catch the inventor’s dying breath in a test tube and immediately cork the thing. That test tube, containing Edison’s dying breath, is still on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn’s Greenfield Village.


• Other things on display at the museum include a variety of carriages, steam engines, and other historically significant vehicles, including an original 1950s Oscar Meyer Wienermobile. The Village itself contains many original buildings which were dismantled, moved there and reconstructed, board by board and brick by brick. Among those are the Wright Brothers’ bicycle shop from Dayton, Ohio and Edison’s laboratory from Menlo Park, New Jersey. I have no doubt that if they’d ever located the log cabin in Hyde Park, New York where FDR claimed to have been born, Henry Ford would have moved that to Greenfield Village, too.


• Henry Ford died in Dearborn, Michigan in 1947, after which he was put on display in Greenfield Village. Thousands of people viewed his body, but the viewing ended abruptly when the conveyor belt broke. It might have been repaired, but the Village was unionized then and the entire maintenance department was on strike. Ford left behind him schools, libraries, philanthropic organizations, hospitals and Detroit’s Ford Freeway. I believe he is also indirectly responsible for that 1978 Pinto station wagon I owned–the one that went through water pumps the way Elizabeth Taylor went through husbands. But I won’t hold that against him. Without Henry Ford, we might all be driving Wienermobiles today.