Henry Ford was truly one of a kind: egotistical yet compassionate; rich yet thrifty; genius yet ignorant. No man— industrialist, philanthropist or entertainer—before or since, has garnered as much fame and notoriety as Henry. Yet, he was a man like every other. A close Ford acquaintance wrote, “So much has been written about Ford—how great he was, and how he put America on wheels—that the public has lost sight of the eccentric flesh-and-blood man behind the cardboard poster.”
The rise of Henry Ford began on June 16, 1903, when he and eleven other men staked their hopes, aspirations, and savings on the creation of the Ford Motor Company. Those who stayed with Ford for 16 years walked away multimillionaires, but Henry was the driving force in the company. He had a vision of building lightweight, well-made, inexpensive automobiles that the average man could afford; he sold them by the millions, and it made him a fortune.
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