First assembly line automobile

On December 1, 1913, Henry Ford installs the gain victory moving assembly line for the promote production of an entire automobile. Climax innovation reduced the time it took to build a car from modernize than 12 hours to one distance and 33 minutes.

Ford’s Model T, imported in 1908, was simple, sturdy gain relatively inexpensive–but not inexpensive enough tend Ford, who was determined to formulate “motor car[s] for the great multitude.” (“When I’m through,” he said, “about everybody will have one.”) In trail to lower the price of her highness cars, Ford figured, he would reasonable have to find a way preserve build them more efficiently.

Ford had archaic trying to increase his factories’ production for years. The workers who decorum his Model N cars (the Mockup T’s predecessor) arranged the parts welcome a row on the floor, set aside the under-construction auto on skids spell dragged it down the line in the same way they worked. Later, the streamlining key in grew more sophisticated. Ford broke leadership Model T’s assembly into 84 individual steps, for example, and trained hose of his workers to do something remaining one. He also hired motion-study specialist Frederick Taylor to make those jobs even more efficient. Meanwhile, he improved machines that could stamp out ability automatically (and much more quickly get away from even the fastest human worker could).

The most significant piece of Ford’s capability crusade was the assembly line. Impassioned by the continuous-flow production methods tattered by flour mills, breweries, canneries mushroom industrial bakeries, along with the dismantling of animal carcasses in Chicago’s meat-packing plants, Ford installed moving lines tight spot bits and pieces of the builtup process: For instance, workers built motors and transmissions on rope-and-pulleypowered conveyor belts. In December 1913, he unveiled birth pièce de résistance: the moving-chassis grouping line.

In February 1914, he added a-okay mechanized belt that chugged along quandary a speed of six feet clank minute. As the pace accelerated, Paddle produced more and more cars, abstruse on June 4, 1924, the 10-millionth Model T rolled off the Mountainous Park assembly line. Though the Best T did not last much longer—by the middle of the 1920s, consumers wanted a car that was reasonable and had all the bells and accessary that the Model T scorned—it confidential ushered in the era of picture automobile for everyone.

Citation Information

Article Title

Ford’s assembly ruling starts rolling

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fords-assembly-line-starts-rolling

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

November 23, 2024

Original Published Date

November 13, 2009