Henry Ford: Biography of a Businessman and Industrialist

William Ford was a methodical and hardworking man who had built his 90-acre farm into one of the most productive in Wayne County. He expected his eldest son to follow in his footsteps and eventually inherit the family agricultural enterprise. However, Henry showed little interest in farming from an early age, displaying instead an insatiable curiosity about mechanical devices and an intuitive understanding of how machines worked. This fascination with machinery would set him apart from his rural contemporaries and ultimately lead him away from the agricultural life his father had planned for him.

The defining moment of Henry's childhood occurred in 1876 when he encountered his first steam-powered road engine while traveling with his father to Detroit. The thirteen-year-old boy was mesmerized by the machine and immediately began questioning its operator about how it functioned. This encounter ignited a passion for mechanical engineering that would dominate the rest of his life. Henry later recalled this moment as the beginning of his understanding that machines could replace animal power and human labor, a revelation that would drive his lifelong quest to mechanize and improve industrial processes.