He built his first car 1896 and founded the Ford Motor Company 1903. His Model T (1908-27) was the first car to be constructed solely by assembly-line methods and to be mass-marketed; 15 million of these cars were sold. Ford's innovative policies, such as a $5 daily minimum wage and a five-day working week, revolutionized employment practices, but he opposed the introduction of trade unions. In 1928 he launched the Model A, a stepped-up version of the Model T. Ford was born in Dearborn, Michigan, and apprenticed to a Detroit machinist 1878. He worked for the Edison Illuminating Company 1891-99 and then for the Detroit Automobile Company before starting his own firm. Victory in a car race at Grosse Point, Michigan, 1901, brought him the publicity he sought, and in 1904 he drove his 999 to a world record of 39.4 sec for 1 mi/1.6 km over the ice on Lake St Clair. Ford was politically active and a pacifist; he opposed US intervention in both world wars and promoted his own anti-Semitic views. In 1936 he founded, with his son Edsel Ford (1893-1943), the philanthropic Ford Foundation; he retired in 1945 from the Ford Motor Company, then valued at over $1 billion.
