Henry's Model Tea

The Paczki Principle

A very natural, green tea scent.
If you like green "nature" scents, you'll like this one.

It was the car that put Detroit on the map, and ushered in a new era for humankind to boot. Among Henry Ford's long list of innovations, Model T remains the most enduring: it was the first mass-produced vehicle that was both reliable and affordable to the average citizen. During its production run from 1908 to 1927, 15 million of them rolled out of the Ford factories in Detroit and Highland Park.

After founding his company in 1903, Ford schemed to vault ahead of his many competitors by building a car that was cheap and easy to operate. The bankers dismissed his scheme, claiming that the only way to ensure success in the new motorized transportation market was to create fabulously expensive and luxurious dream-machines.

Always the shrewd entrepreneur, Ford forged ahead anyway, and the first Model T came on the market in 1908, selling for $850. It was a marvel of engineering know-how, and especially after Ford shifted production to a high-tech new assembly plant in Highland Park, the birthplace of the assembly line. There, Ford workers cut the average production time of building a car from 728 to an astonishing 93 minutes.

Ford reinvested the savings back into his company, with the idea that his workers should be able to afford what they made. The Wall Street Journal and much of the rest of the American business establishment were outraged in 1914 when he announced his company's new $5 workday, which more than double the going rate at the time. But the scheme worked, and sales soared. By 1918, half of all cars on the road in America were Model Ts. It remained the company's only model until the introduction of the Model A in 1927.

Historians deem the Model T one of most important inventions of the twentieth century. It was American industry's first mass-produced item, brought thousands of families out of rural America and into the cities, and spurred the creation of both paved roads and the gasoline industry.

Read more:

The Birthplace of the Model T