Henry Ford was born on a successful family farm in Springwells Township, which became a part of Dearborn, Michigan, where the headquarters of the company he founded are now located. His parents, William and Mary Ford, were immigrants from County Cork in the south of Ireland, and Ford was the eldest of six children.

Even as a child, he was passionate about mechanics. Ford always worked on the machines in his father’s workshop rather than doing farm work. When he was 13 years old, he saw a self-propelled steam engine for the first time. In 1879, he left home and moved near Detroit to learn how to operate machines. In 1882, he returned to Dearborn to work on the family farm and became an expert in operating Westinghouse portable steam engines. He was finally hired by Westinghouse Electric Company to service their steam engines. In 1891, Ford became an engineer at the Edison Illuminating Company, and after being promoted to chief engineer in 1893, he had the money to devote himself to his own experiments on internal combustion engines. Those experiments culminated in 1896 with the completion of the first car named the Quadricycle, which Ford took for a test drive on June 4 of the same year.

Following that success, Ford left the Edison Illuminating Company and together with other innovators founded the Detroit Automobile Company, which went bankrupt soon after because Ford was perfecting the design instead of selling the cars. In order to show the superiority of his vehicles, Ford took part in car races against automobiles manufactured by other companies. Because he took an interest in racecars, Ford founded another company – the Henry Ford Company. In 1902, Ford was driven out of the company together with other innovators, and the company was reestablished as Cadillac Automobile Company. In 1903, he founded his own company named the Ford Motor Company. The company assets included tools, instruments, machines, plans, specifications, blueprints, patents, several models, and $28,000 capital in cash provided by twelve investors. Besides Henry Ford, the first shareholders in this young company were a coal trader, his bookkeeper and his banker, two brothers who owned a workshop and manufactured engines, a carpenter, two lawyers, a clerk, haberdashery owner, and a man who built windmills and made air pistols. The first commercially available model was described as a car with the most perfect engine on the market and so easy to operate that even a fifteen-year-old could drive it. The first car was sold to doctor E. Fanning, a dentist from Chicago. He bought the car a month after the company was founded, to the huge satisfaction of the concerned shareholders who were nervously looking at the balance which came down to just $223. For the next five years, young Henry Ford, first as the chief engineer, and then as the president, directed all programs in the process of development and manufacture, which were moved in 1905 from a rented space in Mack Avenue in Detroit to a much larger building on the lot between Beaubien Street and Piquette Avenue. In the first 15 months, a total of 1,700 Model A cars were manufactured in the old factory. Between 1903 and 1908, Henry Ford and his engineers feverishly went through 19 letters of the alphabet, from Model A to Model S. Some of those vehicles were experimental and have never been made public. Some had two cylinders, others four, and one had six; some engines were powered by a chain, and others by a shaft, while in two of the models, the engine was placed under the driver seat. One of the most successful cars was probably Model N – small and lightweight; it had a four-cylinder engine and its market price was $500. The sales of Model K, a six-cylinder limousine worth $2,500, were not going well. The fact that Model K was so unsuccessful and that Ford insisted on the idea that the future of the company was in manufacturing reasonably priced cars for a broad market, had caused disagreements between him and Alexander Y. Malcomson, a coal trader from Detroit who was one of the original investors of the initial $28,000 capital. Malcomson left the company, and Ford gained enough shares to increase his total share up to 58.5%. He became the company’s president in 1906, as successor to John S. Gray, a banker from Detroit, after his death. However, the conflicts between the shareholders did not put the future of the small business in jeopardy nearly as much as George B. Selden did. Selden held a patent for the road locomotive that ran on an internal combustion engine. To protect his patent, he founded a strong union that granted licenses to selected manufacturers, so as to take a royalty for every automobile made or sold in America. It was not long after the gates of the Mack Avenue factory had been opened that Selden’s union sued the Ford Motor Company, which courageously opened their business without Selden’s license. Other stronger car companies paid royalties rather than risking a conflict with Selden’s union. Henry Ford was convinced, however, that George B. Selden’s patent on all internal combustion vehicles was void and that someone should put an end to it. Ford and his partners decided to enter a dispute. Eight years later, in 1911, after an expensive and incredibly complex court case, Ford Motor Company won the battle which liberated the whole growing automotive industry from the thing that had for years been threatening its further advancement.

In 1908, the company put the Model T on the market, and Ford used its racecar version to take part in races from 1909 until 1913, winning a race across the United States driving this car (even though he was later disqualified). In 1911, Frank Kulick used this version of Model T to set an oval speed record. In 1913, Ford tried to enter the Indianapolis 500, but dropped out because the rules required a 450kg weight addition. Soon he dropped out of racing altogether, because he did not need it for publicity anymore, since the Model T had become popular. At the beginning of 1919, he turned the company’s presidency over to his son Edsel, even though he retained a strong managing position in it.

By 1927, Model T became obsolete. Improved, but basically unchanged for many years, its popularity started to decline in the face of newer, more powerful engines offered by the competition. On May 31, Ford’s facilities across the country closed down for 6 months in order to reshape and create the new version of Model A. The Model A was an improved car in every sense. More than 4,500,000 cars of several versions and colors were driven on the national roads between 1927 and 1931. However, Model A also became outdated due to a demand for even more luxurious and more powerful cars. Ford Motor Company was ready for that with their new product – the first V8 engine, which was presented to the public on April 1, 1932. Ford was the first company in history to successfully produce the V8 engine in one piece. Experts had tried to convince Ford that it was not possible. It was many years before Ford’s competitors learned how to manufacture a reliable V8 engine. In the meantime, Ford’s car, with its powerful engine, became the favorite amongst the Americans who were aware of its sports car performances. The manufacturing of passenger cars suddenly ceased in 1942, when the company had to make all of its facilities available for military production. Edsel Ford initiated a large military program, during which 8,600 Consolidated B-24 Liberator four-engine bombers, 57,000 aircraft engines, and more than 250,000 tanks, anti-tank vehicles, and other military equipment were produced in less than three years.

After Edsel Ford’s death on May 26, 1943, Henry Ford supported Harry Bennett in taking over the presidency, while Edsel’s widow Eleanor, who inherited his voting rights, nominated Henry Ford’s grandson, her son, Henry Ford II for the position. The problem was finally solved when 79-year-old Henry Ford personally took over the presidency, Henry Ford II became the vice president, and Harry Bennett was put in charge of the employees and public relations.

Henry Ford turned the company’s presidency over to his grandson Henry Ford II on September 21, 1945. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 83, on April 7, 1947, at his estate in Dearborn. He was buried in the Ford Cemetery in Detroit.