Henry Ford is the man commonly given credit for transforming the automobile from a rich man’s toy to every man’s transportation.It was another Michigan resident, however, who set the stage for Ford’s revolution. Before Ransom E. Olds, the few cars that were being assembled were fabricated individually in machine shops and sold on a catch-as-catch-can basis to those few rich enough to afford the high asking prices. Olds was the man who orchestrated the innovation from the shop to the assembly line, making the automobile reasonably priced to a far larger audience, thus setting the stage for Henry’s Model T.
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Inveterate tinkerer
The son of a machinist, Olds studied accounting at a Lansing, Michigan, business college, but he always considers more at home in his father’s shop. With his schooling over, he joined the business, which operated in the thrilling world of repairing farm machinery. An inveterate tinkerer, Olds had dreams far beyond fixing plows.
In the late 1880s, several men from around the world were coming to the same assumption: Read more . . .
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