The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century (Vintage) (10 page)

This strong sense of kinship appeared even more clearly in Ford's description of their next encounter. Two or three years later, Ford visited Edison's New Jersey laboratory to discuss the problem of developing an electrical storage battery for the automobile. Once again, his telling of this tale emphasized their common impulses. “As I began to explain to him what I wanted, I reached for a sheet of paper and so did he,” Ford related. “In an instant we found ourselves talking with drawings instead of words. We both noticed it at the same moment and began to laugh. Edison said: ‘We both work the same way.’ ” Ford's form of hero-worship, it seems, revealed more about the worshipper than about the hero.
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Ultimately, Ford's veneration of Edison had deep roots in his own character and beliefs. He saw the inventor as the embodiment of American achievement: “The American spirit of endeavor as represented in its fullness by Thomas Alva Edison is the real wealth of the nation.” But the Edisonian influence involved more than abstract representations. In a very practical way, that first conversation sparked Ford's enthusiasm for plunging ahead with an improved version of his horseless vehicle. After getting encouragement from his idol, “I was in a hurry to get home and go ahead with the work on my second automobile,” he said. “The first thing I did when I reached Detroit was to tell my wife what Mr. Edison had said, and I wound up by saying, ‘You are not going to see very much of me until I am through with this car.’ ” Thomas Edison's fist-banging seal of approval at Manhattan Beach provided an emotional springboard for a new leap forward in Henry Ford's career. But it soon would land him in new, unfamiliar, even threatening terrain.
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By the fall of 1896, Ford had become a familiar, if somewhat eccentric figure on the streets of Detroit. With his Quadricycle performing reliably, he could be seen puttering about the city on short trips that often proved adventurous. Ford once described the reactions of his fellow townsmen and -women as he sat perched behind the tiller of his vehicle:

It was considered to be something of a nuisance, for it made a racket and scared horses. Also it blocked traffic. For if I stopped my machine anywhere in town a crowd was around it before I could start up again. If I left it alone even for a minute some inquisitive person always tried to run it. Finally, I had to carry a chain and chain it to a lamp post whenever I left it anywhere. And then there was trouble with the police. I do not know quite why, for my impression is that there were no speed-limit laws in those days. Anyway, I had to get a special permit from the mayor and thus for a time enjoyed the distinction of being the only licensed chauffeur in America.
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Though Ford's motorized adventures were certainly unusual, they were not unique. In the early 1890s, European engineers such as Carl Benz in Germany and Émile Constant Levassor in France had developed reliable vehicles with ever-larger, more powerful engines. In the United States, mechanically minded individuals were also tinkering with horseless-carriage models all over the country. In 1893, Charles and Frank Duryea had built the first successful American vehicle powered by an internal-combustion engine in Springfield, Massachusetts. Other innovative mechanics, such as Elwood P. Haynes, Hiram Maxim, Ransom E. Olds, and Alexander Winton followed suit. In 1895alone, two periodicals devoted to the automobile,
Motorcycle
and
Horseless Age,
appeared; over five hundred applications for patents related to motor vehicles were filed in the U.S. Patent Office; and the Chicago
Times-Herald
sponsored the first American automobile race on Thanksgiving Day, which was won by the Duryea brothers.
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Thus, by 1896, when Henry Ford first began piloting his Quadricycle through Detroit, a highly energized and competitive atmosphere was taking shape in the fledgling American automobile market. His vehicle, though skillfully built and charming, was too small and unfinished for large-scale production. No one realized this more than Ford, who sold his first car to Charles Ainsley, an acquaintance in Detroit, for $200, in order to raise funds for continued research and development. As he described later, “I had built the first car not to sell but only to experiment with. I wanted to start another car. Ainsley wanted to buy. I could use the money and we had no trouble agreeing upon a price.”
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Ford began work on a second automobile with an eye toward manufacture for a mass audience. “I was looking ahead to production,” he noted with his usual practical bent. Once again, he turned to the circle of mechanics
who had helped him with the Quadricycle. In 1897–98, Jim Bishop and George W. Cato continued to perform a variety of mechanical tasks. Ed Huff, who had proved to be something of an electrical genius and possessed a creative temperament to match, had left Edison and begun bouncing from job to job as his interest waned. He remained loyal to Ford, however, and threw himself into refining the electrical system for the second automobile. Huff designed a key electrical part—the magneto—that made it superior to many of its competitors.

David Bell was a new addition to the team. Ford had hired him as a blacksmith at Edison, and he became invaluable by helping his supervisor forge new, sturdier metal parts—wheel spokes, steering rod and mechanism, iron pipe in the undercarriage for the vehicle, handrails on the seat—for the new horseless carriage. As for Ford himself, he supplied more brainpower than brawn. In Bell's words, “I never saw Mr. Ford make anything. He was always doing the directing.”
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Ford purchased a stream of materials from Detroit suppliers as the second car slowly took shape. He purchased a lathe from the Detroit Motor Company, wrenches from the Strelinger Company, and a whole list of items from Whitehead and Lewis and S. Harvey's Sons Manufacturing Company: locknuts, brass bushings, flanges, plugs, nipples, gears, electrical parts, and collars. Charles T. Bush, a young mechanic who worked at the Strelinger Company, recalled that Ford

This flurry of designing, construction, and purchasing soon brought results. By late 1897, Ford's second car was complete, although he still continued to refine it and tinker with details. In most respects, it represented a striking departure from the Quadricycle. The original boxlike carriage, with its four bicycle tires and tiny carriage that barely accommodated two passengers, had given way to a larger, elongated, flowing design with elevated rear tires and smaller front ones. A large, stuffed seat, big enough for two, sat above a more powerful, sophisticated engine, a glass-jar battery system,
and a gearbox. Although this model still retained a tiller for steering the vehicle, a throttle and “sparking” control had been installed near the driver's right hand, just below the seat.
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With his second vehicle running dependably, Ford began to venture out for weekend excursions to the family farm in Dearborn with his wife and son in tow. Margaret Ford Ruddiman had a clear memory of her brother's first appearance at the family homestead in his car:

By 1898, Ford's schedule of alterations on his second car had been finished, and he made it available for public inspection. One engineer and horseless-carriage enthusiast, R. W. Hanington of Denver, stopped in Detroit after a trip to the East Coast. He had examined several motorized vehicles under development, and he had been told of the Michigan machine. After visiting with Ford and inspecting his prototype, he returned home and wrote a highly favorable analysis of the vehicle. Hanington offered much praise for the engine design, cooling tanks, carburetor, and transmission mechanism, but judged the gear system only adequate. Though there was nothing particularly novel about Ford's automobile, the engineer noted, its virtue lay in the way that it refined and compactly arranged existing elements. “The whole design strikes me as being very complete, and worked out in every detail,” Hanington concluded. “Simplicity, strength, and common sense seem to be embodied in Mr. Ford's carriage, and I believe that these ideals are the essential ones for a successful vehicle.” When manufactured and sold to the public, “this carriage should equal any that has been built in this country.”
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Using his own skills and drawing inspiration from the encouragement
of his hero, Thomas Edison, Ford had taken a major step forward. His new automobile prototype came near to a version salable to the public. But one move remained to be made. In modern, industrial America, even minor-scale manufacturing required both an organization and an extensive commitment of capital, and Ford lacked these resources. As the 1890s drew to a close, he began to search for financial support among those who did. Henry Ford the mechanical inventor stepped aside as Henry Ford the businessman strode forward.

On a Saturday afternoon in July 1899, Henry Ford pulled his motor vehicle up in front of the house of William H. Murphy, at the corner of Putnam and Woodward Streets, in a fashionable area of Detroit. Some months earlier, this prominent businessman had expressed an interest in Ford's horseless carriage, and told him to come see him when the car could travel from Detroit to Orchard Lake and back by way of Pontiac—a total distance of some eighty miles. Now Ford announced, “I am ready to take you on that ride.” The two climbed aboard and set out, with Ford driving and Murphy keeping a log of the trip, in which he recorded the fuel consumed, the behavior of the car, and the condition of the roads it navigated. The businessman was satisfied. Upon returning to his house several hours later, he said simply, “Well, now we will organize a company.”
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Securing Murphy's support was no small achievement. With his position in Detroit, his agreement to back Ford sent a clear financial signal that the horseless carriage carried significant economic potential. But actually manufacturing and selling these motorized vehicles, like any industrial enterprise in modern America, was a daunting task. It demanded considerable capital, the construction of a complex business organization, and the deployment of marketing skills to get the product to buyers. Murphy would be a key figure in this process as it unfolded over the next few years. The relationship between the two major actors in the drama—the innovative mechanic and the wealthy investor—yielded a progress report on Henry Ford's evolving business sense.

Ford's relationship with Murphy was the culmination of a search for financial backing that had begun with a series of quiet inquiries. By 1898, with the successful development of a second vehicle, Ford looked to identify and woo investors. One of his earliest contacts was George Peck, president of the Edison Illuminating Company and the Michigan National Savings
Bank. Peck had developed an interest in horseless carriages through his son, Barton, a young dilettante who was tinkering unsuccessfully with his own motorcar in a shop. Ford's friendship with this family led to his use of part of Barton's shop space for his own work, and the elder Peck ended up a shareholder in Ford's enterprise. William C. Maybury, an old friend of the Ford family and newly elected mayor of Detroit in 1897, proved to be a much more important figure. This energetic, charismatic businessman and Democratic politician took an early interest in Ford's project, helping him to secure credit for purchasing materials, loaning money to pay for outsourced labor, and issuing him an official “license” when some citizens complained about the car's noise.
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A number of factors—Ford's expertise and growing reputation, excitement about the profit potential of motor carriages—inspired broader entrepreneurial interest. In the fall of 1898, Mayor Maybury and a trio of businessmen became the first investors in Ford's automobile enterprise. Ellery I. Garfield of the Fort Wayne Electrical Corporation, Everett A. Leonard of the Standard Life and Accident Insurance Co., and Dr. Benjamin Rush Hoyt, a physician, joined Maybury to advance money for Ford to meet development expenses. They each put up $500, worked out provisions with Ford to share any patents, and anticipated the formation of a corporation to manufacture the automobile when it was ready. When such a corporation was formed, the contract provided that it would employ Ford “on fair compensation.”
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