December 1, 1913: Henry Ford's Assembly Line

Ninety-three years ago today, Henry Ford introduced the first moving assembly line ever used in large-scale manufacturing. Ransom Eli Olds, another automotive pioneer, patented the first assembly line process in 1901, but is rarely credited for his creation. Still, Ford's contribution to manufacturing had many fathers. Eli Whitney, the Connecticut Yankee who invented the cotton gin, designed the American system of manufacturing. Samuel Colt, father of the Colt revolver and founder of the Colt Firearms Company, proved Whitney's model by mass-producing the "gun that won the West."

Though poorly educated, Henry Ford earned 161 U.S. patents and fostered "Fordism", the dominant method of production during much of the twentieth century. Armed with a large workforce of semi-skilled laborers, Ford factories used interchangeable parts and standardized methods of production to build cars at a record-breaking pace. By building a complete car every 2.5 minutes, Ford's moving assembly line allowed the automaker to sell more cars for less money. In 1914, his workers began earning the then tidy sum of $5 a day, in part so that they could afford to buy the products that they built.