Tuesday Open Line


On this date 150 years ago, Henry Ford was born in Dearborn, Michigan to a farming family. But his life’s course led him to revolutionize industrial production the world over. He built his first automobile in 1896, and in 1908, introduced the Model T, an immediate success. To meet demand, Ford developed the assembly line, which cut the time to build each car from over 12 hours to just 90 minutes. At one point, half of all the cars in America were Model Ts — all of them painted black — which sold for as little as $300. Today, the average cost of a new car at one of the nation’s nearly 18,000 dealerships is just over $26,000. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau, online at <www.census.gov>.