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{{B}}Ford{{/B}} Ford's great strength was the manufacturing process — not invention. Long before he started a car company, he was a worker, known for picking up pieces of metal and wire and turning them into machines. He started putting cars together in 1891. Although it was by no means the first popular automobile.the Model T showed the world just how creative Ford was at combining technology and market. The company's assembly line alone threw America's Industrial Revolution into overdrive (高速运转). Instead of having workers put together the entire .car, Ford's friends, who were great toohnakers from Scotland, organized teams that added parts to each Model T as it moved down a line. By the time Ford's Highland Park plant was humming (嗡嗡作响) along in 1914, the world's first automatic conveyor belt could turn out a car every 93 minutes. The same year Henry Ford shocked the world with the $ 5—a day minimum wage scheme, the greatest contribution he had ever made. The average wage in the auto industry then was $ 2.34 for a 9-hour shift. Ford not only doubled that, he also took an hour off the workday. In those years it was unthinkable that a man could be paid that much for doing something that didn't involve all awful lot of training or education. The Wall Street Journal called the plan "an economic crime", and critics everywhere laughed at Ford. But as the wage increased later to daily $10, it proved a critical component of Ford's dream to make the automobile accessible (可及的) to all. The critics were too stupid to understand that because Ford had lowered his costs per car, the higher wages didn't matter — except for making it possible for more people to buy Cars. |