Ford Motor Company   Detroit   1908

Henry Ford created the Model T automobile in 1908. The car was simple so owners could fix it themselves. It was also sturdy and cheap. Soon, the Ford Motor Company started receiving so many orders for Model T's that they couldn't build them quickly enough. To speed up production, Ford changed the way the Model T was built. Instead of several groups of workers each building a complete car from the ground up, workers stayed in one spot and added parts to cars as they moved past them. Parts were delivered to the employees by conveyor belts. Ford even managed to time the delivery of a part so that it would get to a worker only when it was needed. By 1913, Ford had a complete assembly line functioning. This method of production was rapidly adopted by many industries when they discovered that mass production on assembly lines sped up manufacturing time and lowered costs. Cecilia wrote to us to say, "I just finished a research paper for one of my classes about assembly lines and how its created has always been attribuited to Henry Ford. My collected data points out that the first working assembly line was developed by Oliver Evans in 1784, and later Charles Babbage studied deeper into it in the early 1800's. For more information, visit this website. Thanks Cecilia!