Ford Motor Company The Ford Motor Company was officially incorporated on June 16, 1903, but many things happened in the years leading up to that date that influenced its founder. Henry Ford was born on July 30, 1863, in Dearborn, Michigan, to an Irish immigrant father and an orphan mother. The Fords were farmers from Michigan. Henry didn't like farm work while growing up, so in 1879 he walked eight miles to Detroit and took a job with the Michigan Car Company. As a child, Henry had always enjoyed taking cars apart and putting them back together. This was a rare talent and many consider Henry Ford to be a natural mechanic. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get Original Essay In Detroit, Henry's apprenticeship at the Michigan Car Company lasted only a week because he embarrassed his foreman when he fixed a mechanical problem that older mechanics might not have noticed and was fired (Bak , 9). Henry took a number of other jobs in Detroit and later Dearborn before marrying Clara Jane Bryant in 1887. In 1891 Henry took a job with the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit. Two years later he was promoted to chief engineer. The late 1800s were the era of the first automobiles. Henry Ford kept an eye on the progress of America's small auto industry while working for Edison. During his time as chief engineer, he took advantage of his responsibility to be on call twenty-four hours a day by working late into the night in his backyard laboratory. His goal was to create a gasoline engine from scrap. On Christmas Eve 1893, Henry hooked up his first gasoline-powered internal combustion engine to the kitchen sink of his home and had Clara pour gasoline into the intake valve while he turned the crankshaft. Several years later, Henry's first vehicle was ready for testing. In the early morning of June 4, 1896, Henry Ford and one of his supporters, Jim Bishop, rolled the "quadricycle" out of the backyard shed after first knocking down part of the vehicle. to the wall because they were unable to measure the width of the vehicle compared to the width of the door. Mr. Bishop rode ahead on his bicycle to warn all horse-drawn travelers of the strange machine being tested. The quadricycle worked. It was capable of traveling at speeds in excess of twenty miles per hour. After that night he made some minor adjustments and within a week or so he was traveling to the countryside with his family and other guests. Later that year, Henry Ford was invited to the annual convention of the Association of Edison Illuminating Companies in New York City for his abilities as an engineer and innovator. At the convention, Ford met Thomas Edison himself. Edison personally praised Ford's gas engine idea and encouraged him to "keep doing it" (Bak, 27). When Henry Ford returned to Michigan, he immediately sold his quadricycle for two hundred dollars and began developing a better model. On August 5, 1899, the Detroit Automobile Company was founded. Henry Ford, with the help of Detroit Mayor William Maybury, raised $15,000 from several wealthy citizens to launch the venture. Henry agreed to share ownership of his pending patents with his partners in order to keep immediate funds coming in so he could continue experimenting with his new automobile (Bak, 29). He had been designated chief engineer and had no authority over how the company was to be run. Fifteen months later, the company had lost $86,000 and had virtually nothing to gain. According to Ford, his supporters were “more interested in making a quick buck thanto build a better car” (Bak, 30). After the dissolution of the Detroit Automobile Company, Ford recognized the potential benefits of auto racing. Auto racing was quickly becoming a popular American sport in the 1900s. Top drivers were viewed in the same light as baseball players and boxers. Henry didn't care much about racing, but he realized it was a good way to get his car noticed and attract investors. On October 10, 1901, Henry Ford upset Alexander Winton in a ten-mile dirt track race. By then, Winton was the country's leading auto racing company. A month later the Henry Ford Company was formed. The win over Winton resulted in five investors putting in more than $30,000 in cash. Henry was a sixth owner and his title was chief engineer. As with the Detroit Automobile Company, Henry Ford did not have control over the management of the company. Four months later, Ford resigned from the company that bore his name. He vowed to “never submit to orders again” (Bak, 45). Henry was not following the wishes of his supporters. He wanted to create a faster racing car, but management wanted him to focus on passenger cars. The conflict of interest forced him to resign. Ford walked away with a $900 settlement, his drawings and an agreement to change the company's name. They chose Cadillac, the name of Detroit's founder. Ford spent much of 1901 and 1902 looking for investors to keep his automotive experiments alive. He managed to attract enough of them to incorporate the Ford Motor Company on June 16, 1903. The company had a capitalization of $100,000. John S. Gray invested $10,500 in cash which gave him ten and a half percent of the company and the title of president (Bak, 50). Unlike his two previous companies, Henry Ford was named vice president and general manager. Gray died in 1906, and Henry Ford became president and majority shareholder of his company. Ford found some success in the early years of the Ford Motor Company. The company, whose capitalization was $100,000 in 1903, had a net worth of over a million in 1907, but it was not until the announcement of the production of the Model T in October 1908 that Ford became big (Burlingame, 53 years old). later nearly every second car in America was a Model T Ford (Watts, 111). Henry Ford faced several major dilemmas on his way to co-founding the Ford Motor Company. One of the first big ones was finding investors. Ford first won over supporters through his success at the Edison Illuminating Company. After a couple of production failures, however, finding rich men in Detroit to finance him was a little more difficult. He began using his racing cars to build his reputation. When he beat Winton in a ten-mile dirt race, fans everywhere saw him as a hero. This made Ford much more attractive to investors. During the Detroit Automobile Company and the Henry Ford Company, Ford was burned both times for not having control over how the company was run. At the time he wasn't really motivated by wealth or control. He was more concerned with building a better car. When he founded the Ford Motor Company, however, he was much more motivated by control because he felt that the reason his first two companies didn't work was because management was too motivated by financial gain. His second company, which morphed into Cadillac, didn't fail, but it wasn't nearly as successful as the Ford Motor Company. His conflict between the motivations of the founder and those managers led him to leave and eventually create a larger company..