the Ford Tri Motor

The aircraft Ford designed was the result of a clever, but sneaky, way that Ford and his son Edsel came up with to see the workings of all the all major aircraft manufacturers in 1925

They promoted the Ford Reliability Air Tour, from 1925 to 1931, and used the opportunity to have his engineers take measurements and design data on all the aircrafts assembled for the competition to come up with what would ultimately become the Ford Tri-Motor.

https://www.thehelmsandusky.com/features/fordtrimotor.aspx

https://www.restoretheford.org/

Henry Ford and assistant on the 1901 Ford Sweepstakes racer, recreating Edward Huff's pose, during the Grosse Pointe encounter with Alexander Winton on October 10, 1901. Ford's racing mechanic, Edward Huff, rode crouched on the floor board

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=6100467196680228&set=p.6100467196680228&type=3

https://www.facebook.com/groups/197491484165115/?multi_permalinks=1305480136699572&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen

In 1914 Henry Ford adopted a policy that no one applying for work at his auto plant would be refused on account of physical condition.

Of the 7,882 jobs at the factory, he’d found that only 4,287 required “ordinary physical development and strength"

The lightest jobs were again classified to discover how many of them required the use of full faculties, and we found that 670 could be filled by legless men, 2,637 by one-legged men, 2 by armless men, 715 by one-armed men, and 10 by blind men. Therefore out of 7,882 kinds of jobs, 4,034 — although some of them required strength — did not require full physical capacity.

https://www.futilitycloset.com/2017/12/12/work-for-all/  

 (Henry Ford, My Life and Work, 1922.)

While stopping at a service station to fix a headlight...

Ford liked to tell a story about stopping at a service station to replace a headlight:

He claimed to have said to the attendant, ‘By the way, you might be interested to hear that the man who invented this lamp is sitting out there in my car.’

‘You don’t mean Thomas Edison?’ the man gasped.

‘Yes, and, incidentally, my name is Henry Ford.’

‘Do tell! Good to meet you, Mr. Ford!’

Noting the brand of tire in the service station’s racks, Ford added, ‘And one of the other men in the car makes those tires — Firestone.’

The attendant’s jaw dropped. Then he saw John Burroughs with his flowing beard and his voice became skeptical: ‘Look here, mister, if you tell me that the old fellow with the whiskers out there is Santa Claus, I’m going to call the sheriff.’

From Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Fords: An American Epic, 2002.  

Via  https://www.futilitycloset.com/2019/04/09/apparition/

An odd encounter between Thomas Edison and Henry Ford at a Democratic fundraising luncheon at New York’s Biltmore Hotel, 1916, from the memoir of Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels:

 I do not suppose anything so strange ever occurred at a luncheon in New York and elsewhere. … After the first course, Edison, pointing to a large chandelier, with many globes, in the middle of the room, said, ‘Henry, I’ll bet anything you want that I can kick the globe off that chandelier.’ 

It hung high toward the ceiling. Ford said he would take the bet.

 Edison rose, pushed the table to one side of the room, took his stand in the center and with his eye fixed on the globe, made the highest kick I have ever seen a man make and smashed the globe into smithereens.

 He then said, ‘Henry, let’s see what you can do.’

 The automobile manufacturer took careful aim, but his foot missed the chandelier by a fraction of an inch.

 Edison had won and for the balance of the meal or until the ice-cream was served, he was crowing over Ford, ‘You are a younger man than I am, but I can out-kick you.’ He seemed prouder of that high kick than if he had invented a means of ending the U-boat warfare. 

 (Via Edmund Morris’ 2019 biography Edison.)

https://www.futilitycloset.com/2020/09/25/first-things-first-6/

Henry Ford built 3 land speed race cars, and won a crystal punchbowl. It was auctioned off with his personal effects in '51.

A young — and poor — Henry Ford won the punch bowl after besting heavy favorite Alexander Winton, founder of Winton Motor Carriage Co., in a 10-lap race on Oct. 10, 1901, at the Detroit Driving Club in Grosse Pointe, Mich.

The bowl was never supposed to belong to Ford. Race organizers presumed Winton would win, so they let his promotions manager select the bowl as Winton's would-be trophy because, it was believed, it would look good in the bay window of his Cleveland home.

"Henry Ford was a nobody, virtually unknown even in Detroit, and Winton was the best-known racing driver in the U.S.," said Matt Anderson, curator of transportation at The Henry Ford

In 2003, California Ford dealer Jim Burke offered an Expedition SUV, valued between $35,000 and $40,000, to anyone who could find the bowl. No one came forward, and Burke died in 2006.

The Ford Motor Company would really like to have that punchbowl in the company trophy case. Probably not enough to pay you for it though...

Mr. Ford curtly offers  “There is no reward,” he said.

Mr. Ford also concedes that the punch bowl could “very well be under our noses and we don’t even know it.” Only 12 years ago, during a restoration of its 1901 Sweepstakes replica racecar, Ford Motor discovered that it was, in fact, the actual car driven by Ford to victory in 1901.

The Sweepstakes,
The Arrow
and the 999

https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2018/01/31/ford-renews-search-for-the-punch-bowl-won-in-the-race-that-helped-kickstart-the-company/
https://www.autonews.com/article/20180128/RETAIL03/180129778/have-you-seen-this-punch-bowl
https://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/edsel-ford-ii-wants-the-family-punch-bowl-back/

Book review, The Vagabonds by Jeff Guinn. Finally, a book about a topic I know something about, and with so much I want to learn!

By the numbers:
253 pages, and about 40 more of notes that are also worth perusing, and bibliography
26 photos and or images. These are in the middle of the book, as is usual in hardcover non fiction books

1st impression, this is the most researched book I've ever come across. Its also one of the easier ones to read because the author is good at making the story flow.

To say that this book is about the most famous Americans in the past 100 years is probably accurate. Henry Ford and Thomas Edison are probably the most pivotal men in the modern industrial era. Lighting and transportation... if these two men didn't pioneer and provide the path the rest of us followed on, in those categories, tell me who did more?

My complaints, are few, but here it is, once again a non car nut who wrote a book about Ford ascribes the modern assembly line method to Henry Ford, when it was the Curved Dash Oldsmobile that created the assembly line method.

However, this author is specific in pointing out that Edison was working from where others had invented, and he worked out how to make better light bulbs, useful ones, and make them commercially available.

Also, it just happens that I am one of the very few people to have been born in L'Anse, and raised in Sidnaw, and those are two of Ford's visits on the 1923 trip the Vagabonds took, so, I'm personally aware of a few things that I was looking for in the book that aren't there, and it's a bit annoying, as I was hoping that this book would mention a few things about Sidnaw, Camp 1, and where things were. But the author is mostly relying on newspaper reports for the trip's facts.

You probably remember my posts about the Vagabonds, I just recently posted some photos about their trip to Sidnaw and L'Anse. I very much recommend you look at them while reading the book for they are better than what's in the book https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/search?q=vagabonds and will help you with a mental image of what's going on when you read about the men, and where they were

So, back to the review.
Not only has this author done a herculean task of reading newspapers, books, notes from Ford, Edison, and Firestone, but he also makes SENSE of it, and doesn't just regurgitate the stats, facts, and dates. THAT is a very nice way to write this, and it makes it a pleasure to learn from while reading.

Harvey Firestone. Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Edward Kingsford 1923

The personalities of the men on the trips, and even their wives, comes through, and what made them that way, what was going on at the time in not only their lives, but their businesses, and the world at large, and how it affected them, puts so much of the information in context! It's so damn helpful in understanding why these titans of manufacturing were on trips with each other, what caused them to select each other, and not more, and who had what role and why in those decisions, and also... why they stopped going on these trips. That's a really smart way to wrap up this book, and the author uses such insights to fill in the reader on some thing essential to the story, but something I've never come across before in a book about car related things. Motivations.

Something I hadn't expected, is that the author keeps bringing the story into context, which is important for understanding the motivation of Edison, Firestone, Ford, and Burroughs.

The complex personality of Henry Ford is probably the dominant and most explored, and that is remarkable, in that he was already so jaded to people asking him for charity, and taking steps to avoid those confrontations - as his farm work upbringing was simply work = results, and he often shunned helping people. However, I was surprised at how many times he gave away cars, and tractors! Also, it's mentioned in passing that he kept a large supply of pocket watches, and gave them to kids that had caught his attention.

Not only that, he was ready willing and able to do farmwork, mechanics work, and improvise on the fly to keep cars on the road and on schedule. Try and find a corporate CEO today that can do anything in his company maunfacturing.

SO, I'm impressed all the way around with this book, and simply out of time to go through all the things I learned from it, as I usually do with book reviews. I will get back to that after Comic Con which starts in 12 hours.

I was also impressed that the author realized that to select 9 years to focus on, didn't preclude doing some history on the men in the story, and he brought up that Henry Ford started by driving a race car to a world speed record, and that Thomas Edison started with riding trains and selling newspapers to the riders.

Things I learned:

Henry Ford was generous to his friends, as he knew them well enough to know they weren't after his money, and he often showed how little he cared how much money he lost due to his generosity. Burroughs mentioned that his family farm near Roxbury NY was near bankruptcy, as his family couldn't afford the mortgages, so Ford paid it off.

Thomas Edison was given a new car annually... not a cheap Model T either.

When Edison's New Jersey lab and factory burned down, Ford handed him a check for $750,000 and mentioned in passing to let him know if Edison needed more.

The 1915 Panama American Expo that was held in San Diego was competing with a similar World expo in San Fran. Ford, Edison and Firestone went to San Fran first, then San Diego

The dinner that was held in their honor? Slightly crazy amount of telegraphers felt they had to cover it... it was food for pete's sake, and 400 newspaper reporters were present. That's how much of a celebrity Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were, and they were such incredible celebs due to the miracles that they'd performed for the people... no Kardashian, no Hollywood A lister, no country president has ever invented the light bulb, city electricity, set a worlds land speed record, mass produced the Model T so cheaply that it kick started the American automotive industry, invented the record player, perfected the motion picture, etc etc. So, do you see just how unbelievably famous the Vagabonds were?

Thomas Edison was the guest of honor at the San Francisco expo, and just a reminder, Edison had been a telegraph operator and newspaperman... so, the menu was printed in Morse code. The speeches were tapped out on telegraphs. After the dinner and the speeches, everyone went outside to see that all the lights in town were on in honor of the inventor of the modern mass produced light bulb, and flashing lights on the downtown building roofs were spelling out a Morse code message for Edison.

A quote from Ford "If I ever wanted to kill opposition by unfair means I would endow the opposition with experts. No one ever considers himself to be an expert if he really knows his job"

Ford didn't invent the 5 dollar workday, that was the brainchild of his general manager James Couzens. Ford simply took credit for it, as he realized early, the power of publicity. Turnover was 300% annually, and with people either training or being replaced, the assembly line process was affected dramatically, and the 5 dollar wage was a remedy method, nothing more, to get productivity up. Ford was paying $2.34 on average, and balked at the idea of $5... he was only willing to entertain $3 a day, but Couzens got his way based on the chronic absenteeism and training costs, plus, it pissed off all of Fords competitors, and was such incredible good publicity from all newspapers, that aggravating the competition was just bonus.

Couzens was the only man in the company allowed to disagree with Henry Ford, he'd been with Ford since the inception, and earned all the respect he was given, the hard way.

The end of their working relationship was when WW1 put Ford's philosophy anti war philsophy into every interview, and Couzens realized what a publicity nightmare was happening and tried to get Ford to be circumspect. Well, Ford had last word over everything his company did of course, including the Ford Times which had been Couzens' baby, and when it ran two articles Couzens had ruled out, which Henry had put back in? Couzens had enough with Fords personal politics being in the business publication. Couzens quit, went on to be Detroit's mayor, and Michigan's senator

Henry Ford's 1922 Lincoln for road trips and camping with his friends, Edison, Firestone etc, the "Vagabonds"

https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/225326/

Coffee and Donuts video for the morning, How Henry Ford Saw The World

the 1925 Ford 5/8 size tractor Henry Ford had built for his grandchildren on a Model T frame

In 1925, Henry Ford asked his special projects design engineer, Howard Simpson, to design a miniature tractor for his grandchildren. At the Henry Ford Estate named Fair Lane in Dearborn, Michigan, along the Rouge River, Ford and his wife Clara had built to scale a small working farm for the grandchildren and requested of Simpson that the tractor be approximately 5/8 scale to accommodate a 10-to-12-year-old boy to drive. Once completed, it became part of the reduced size set of farm equipment for the grandchildren and was also displayed at fairs.

"When we first started this tractor, we found a governor on the fuel line to control how fast it could go, and a lock on the ignition to keep children from starting it without permission," says Aumann. Adding to the uniqueness of this tractor, the name on the front of the radiator says 'Fordsons' instead of the standard 'Fordson.'

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tractor-custom-built-for-henry-fords-grandchildren-offered-at-public-auction-300825785.html

Edison and Ford at the Michigan Central Railroad Depot, Ypsilanti, Michigan, 1929

http://michiganpast.tumblr.com/post/182127445654/vintage-michigan-thomas-edison-and-henry-ford

Henry Ford and the horse named Jericho

In 1928 Henry Ford was in the process of setting up and acquiring artifacts for his museum at Dearborn Michigan. The Brooklyn City Railroad donated this 1860s horsecar

Part of the photo op was Mr. Ford driving the horse car but the horse "Jericho" refused to move. Henry told the press, who was urging him to wave his whip; "I wouldn't whip that horse for anything!" at which point the horse proceeded to move.

http://progress-is-fine.blogspot.com/2016/10/henry-fords-new-acquisition.html
https://twitter.com/NYTransitMuseum/status/993843007165214720

Norman Rockwell automobile painting I haven't seen before "The Revolution that Started in a Shed at Night"

Part of the 50th anniversary advertising series by the Ford Company. A 1953 magazine has this and the accompanying advertising verbiage to tell the fanciful story of how Henry Ford worked in his garage in his spare time to make the quadricycle   

Norman Rockwell painted eight historical works for The Ford Motor Company, in celebration of the company's 50th anniversary in 1953. The present work is a study for one of the four paintings of the series in which Rockwell depicted the early days of the automobile. Here, Rockwell envisions Henry Ford in 1896, building his first automobile in the small brick shed behind his rented home on Bagley Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. The scene is actually fantastical and idealized, since the car was actually designed by Ford with several friends at a nearby electric station. In this interpretation, Rockwell paints Ford working on a last adjustment, as his wife Clara looks on while darning socks in the corner.

https://fineart.ha.com/itm/paintings/norman-rockwell-american-1894-1978-the-revolution-that-started-in-a-shed-at-night-ford-motor-company-fiftieth-anniver/a/5372-68183.s

Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs, embarked on a series of camping trips, they called themselves the Vagabonds and in 1923, the group visited Northern Michigan lumber camps at Sidnaw and Iron Mountain.

The above photo is taken near L'Anse at the Keating Spur, probably 1923 or 1926

Here they are talking with Kingsford, of the charcoal briquets fame, who started the process with scraps of wood left over and thrown away from the wood and lumber used in making Ford cars. It was a free supply, and resulted in a substitute for coal, and burned cleaner.

The above photo is taken near L'Anse, at the Keating Spur, probably 1923 or 1926

https://www.flickr.com/photos/thehenryford/albums/72157628233721391/with/6437342101/

Wisdom from Henry Ford

Even Henry Ford preferred a Packard.... or why else was his last ride in one?

the Ford people scoured the country trying to find a Ford or Lincoln hearse, but couldn't find one. To their chagrin, they later learned that there had been one just a few miles (relatively speaking) away.

Thanks Steve!

Ford's best factory for efficient production wasn't in Michigan, it was in Minnesota

It was the tallest built, to take advantage of gravity, and it was built on a silica sand deposit, mined right under the building to make the glass for the cars.

"One of the environmental criteria that Ford set was to locate the plants near raw material. In St. Paul, underneath this plateau, 100 feet above the river, was this incredible amount of pure silica ... for the production of glass. They developed a tunnel system and a mining system right underneath the floor of the plant. They would tunnel and collect all the sand on little electric carts, haul it up to the floor of the factory 100 feet above, dump it on the floor and shovel it right into the glass furnace."

The smaller parts were hauled to the top and the car was assembled as it worked its way down through the building.

he even built a hydroelectric dam int he 1920s to supply the factory

A new book, "The Ford Century in Minnesota" by Brian McMahon, tracks the car company's influence across the state. McMahon interviewed more than forty retired auto workers about their time at the St. Paul plant and their memories of the company.

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2016/11/29/books-ford-century-in-minnesota#gallery

The hunt for a new site to build a modern, single-story plant stirred intense rivalry between Minneapolis and St. Paul. Henry Ford took a rare personal interest in the search and selected a 125-acre parcel in St. Paul overlooking the recently built High Dam on the Mississippi River, which allowed for navigation and hydroelectric power. The Twin Cities Assembly Plant would go on to manufacture millions of cars, trucks, tractors, and military vehicles until its closure in 2011.

Henry Ford’s large-scale experiments with every aspect of the industrial economy sent ripples and shockwaves through the lives of Minnesotans—management and assembly line workers, dealers and customers, families and communities. First-person accounts of more than forty retired auto workers share what it was like to work at Ford—from the early years of the Minneapolis plant to the final hours of the Twin Cities Assembly Plant in St. Paul. McMahon documents the company’s transformation—through the Depression, the rise of the United Auto Workers Union, World War II, women joining the workforce, competition from imported cars, globalization, outsourcing, and the closing of the plant.

https://www.amazon.com/Ford-Century-Minnesota-Brian-McMahon/dp/0816637199/

Darn kids better get off his lawn too

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/cool-images-not-kewl-images-that-just-float-your-boat.888482/page-212

Henry Ford and executives with the 1st commercial tractor shipped to England, 1917

https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/search-results#advancedSearch=1&tab=artifact-results&s.0.in=keywords&s.0.for=Kanzler,%20Ernest%20Carlton,%201892-1967&years=0-0&perPage=10&pageNum=1&sortBy=relevance

Who saved Ford from bankruptcy in the great depression? Henry Ford? Nope. Edsel Ford? Nope. The guy who fixed Edsel's car on his 1915 cross country trip, his brother in law Ernest

http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2015/07/in-1915-edsel-ford-and-friends-went.html

Henry Ford suddenly resigned the presidency of Ford in December 1918, and Edsel Ford was elected to succeed him.

Henry had been angered by minority stockholders, particularly the Dodge brothers, who had sued for increased dividends. He figured out a brilliant short term solution to having to put up with working for shareholders though.

Early in 1919 Henry Ford said he would form a new company and produce a car to rival the famous Model T.

Suddenly scared of the profitability of their Ford shares in view of Henry himself announcing a better car in the works, shareholders sold their shares to agents secretly working for the Fords.

This ruse brought complete ownership of Ford Motor back to the Ford family. The charade led to Edsel Ford's ownership of 41 percent of the company's stock that had been in non-Ford hands. Henry Ford remained the majority stockholder.

But then the 1920 recession hit, and Ford happened to be $75 million in debt to the Boston and New York banks due to rapid expansion and buying out the shareholders, including the Dodge brothers. As the recession deepened, he was at risk of losing the business.

Ernest Kanzler, a second Vice President at Ford in charge of the tractor side of the Ford business, Edsel's brother-in-law, (Edsel married Kanzler's wife Josephine's sister, but more on that under the links) and closest confidant, cancelled all supplier contracts, extended accounts payable from 60 to 120 days, and then used the standing inventory to assemble 90,000 cars, which were then sent to Ford dealers unsolicited under the standard terms: cash on delivery. Dealers had no choice but to pay for the cars or forfeit their franchises.

In this way, Ford threw his debt onto the backs of his dealers, the bankers were chased off, and Ford maintained control of his company. This was not the first or last time Ford gave his dealers a raw deal, and it was his practices in part that inspired all the various state franchise laws that give car dealers special protections.

Kanzler composed a six-page letter in January of 1926, pointing out that Chevrolet sales were rapidly gaining, while Ford's were in sharp decline.

Kanzler, while delicately refraining from direct criticism of Henry's beloved Model "T", called for a more competitive six cylinder car. "With every additional car our competitors sell, they get stronger and we get weaker."

Any critisism of the Model T infuriated Henry. Thereafter, Ernest Kanzler found himself ignored, ridiculed, and victimized in every conceivable way. Ultimately, while Edsel was out of the country, Henry had Kanzler fired. Henry really didn't get along with anyone, as no one was quite the same hard ass flint nosed old oak stump stubborn as Henry, except for maybe Thomas Edison and Harvey Firestone.

Even Edsel wasn't able to get along with the old man, and what is probably unknown to you is that part of this is due to Henry's farm upbringing but due to Henry's success in automobiles Edsel had been born and raised in the city, and then Edsel married the niece of one of the Hudson car company leaders and owner of the largest dept store in Detroit, and then moved farther from the country, into the most elite and highest society circle of his wife's old money family in Indian Village, and then into Grosse Pointe Shores.

After he left Ford, Kanzler became a prominent Detroit banker, and while he and HF I did not get on, he remained a close advisor to Edsel Ford, and later to Edsel's widow Eleanor, and to their son. Henry Ford II. To the family he was known as "Uncle Ernest."

Kanzler was also head of the War Production Board during World War II, and a director of the Detroit Lions football team.

In 1955 he married Rosemarie, and he died in 1967

http://www.edsel.com/pages/edslford.htm
https://www.facebook.com/groups/321577158048111/
http://biography.yourdictionary.com/edsel-bryant-ford

Henry Ford II met his second wife, the Italian-born Cristina Vettore Austin, at one of Mrs. Kanzler's homes.
Mr. Ford's daughter, Charlotte Ford, met Stavros Niarchos, the Greek shipping tycoon whom she later married, at the Kanzler residence in St. Moritz.

Mrs. Kanzler was also credited with introducing Henry Fonda to his third wife, Countess Afdera Franchetti, and Oscar de la Renta to Francoise de Langlade, his first wife.

Over her lifetime, Mrs. Kanzler decorated and lived in 23 residences throughout the world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/world/rosemarie-kanzler-85-social-magnet-who-d-find-a-find-and-make-a-match.html