MILES THEY WALKED BEFORE THEIR VEHICLE TOOK OFF,
CONFUSIONS THEY FACED AMIDST THE CHAOS,
DECISIONS MADE; SWEAT ROLLED DOWN
FROM SCRATCH TO DESIGN, TOWN TO TOWN
NEVER DID THEY EVER PULL BRAKES ON HOPE,
LIVED THEIR LIFE IN FULL GEAR
TODAY LET’S PEAK INTO THEIR WAY OF LIFE
WHAT DROVE THEM SO FAR
WHAT MADE THE CAR-MAKER ITSELF A MISSILE…
FAMOUS AUTO MECHANICS
HENRY FORD
Henry Ford was an American industrialist and founder of the FORD MOTOR COMPANY. He created the first automobile that middle-class Americans could afford. He converted the automobile from an expensive curiosity into an accessible conveyance. He was given the title of FORDISM. He became one of the richest and best-known people in the world. He offered high wages for workers. Ford had a global vision and believed in consumerism as the key to peace.
“Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” – Henry Ford, Autobiography
Henry Ford (dbsn), was born in Michigan. His father’s family emigrated from Somerset, England in the 16th Century. Henry had four siblings. His father gave him a pocket watch in his early teens. At fifteen, he dismantled and reassembled the timepieces of his friends and neighbors. He did this dozens of times that made him gain the reputation of a watch repairman.
He was devastated when his mother passed away in 1876. His father expected him to take over their family farm, but he despised farm work. He later wrote, ” I never had any particular love for the farm-it was the mother on the farm I loved.”
Ford left his home in 1879 to work as an apprentice machinist in Detroit. Three years later, he returned to Dearborn to work on the family farm. There he became adept at operating the Westinghouse portable steam engines. He was later hired by the Westinghouse. During this period, he also studied bookkeeping at Goldsmith, Bryant & Stratton Business College, Detroit.
When he was 12, he received a watch. Also, he witnessed the operation of a Nichols and Shepard road engine. In his farm, Ford built a “steam wagon or tractor.” In 1890, he started work on a two-cylinder engine.
In 1892, he completed his first motor car, powered by a two-cylinder four horsepower motor. In 1893, the machine was running to his partial satisfaction and giving an opportunity further to test the design on the road. Between 1895 and 1896, Ford drove that machine about 1000 miles. Ford then started a second car in 1896, he built three cars in his home workshop. By 1918, half of all cars in the United States were Model Ts. Ford was always eager to sell to farmers who looked on the vehicle as a commercial device to help their business.
MILTON FINGER, BOB KANE AND GEORGE BARRIS
MILTON FINGER, also known as BILL FINGER, was an American comic strip and comic book writer best known as the Creator. An aspiring writer and a part-time shoe salesman, Finger joined Bob Kane’s nascent studio in 1938. Kane later offered him a job ghost writing the strips Rusty and Clip Carson. Early the following year, after National Comics’ success Kane conceived “the Bat-Man.” Finger then recalled ‘Batman’.
Finger offered such suggestions as giving a cowl, a cape instead of wings, adding gloves, and removing the red sections from the original costume. Soon this unique style received love and appreciation from across the globe. But Finger’s name did not appear as an official credit on Batman stories or films until 2015.
The BATMOBILE is the fictional car driven by the Batman. Housed in the Batcave, which it accesses through a hidden entrance, the Batmobile is both a heavily armored tactical assault vehicle and a personalized custom-built pursuit and capture vehicle that is used by Batman in his fight against crime.
The Batmobile made way into people’s lives in actual shape and form as FORD LINCOLN FUTURA 1955. It was customized in 15 days at a cost of $15,000 by George Barris.
Barris was born in Chicago. His mother died when he was a toddler. After that he moved to California to with his uncle. He began restoring with cars at an early age, later moved to Los Angles at the age of 18. There he set up a custom shop with his brother. He soon became known for his daring, flashy designs and customized cars for Hollywood sets. Experts say he helped to redefine the field of car customization, elevating it to a new, more populist art form in much lesser time and money. It was featured in the original Batman TV series starring Adam West. Barris kept it in his private collection until 2012. It eventually sold for $4.2 million.
CARL FRIEDRICH BENZ
Benz was a German engine designer and an automotive engineer. The first ever practical automobile was made by him as Benz Patent Motorcar from 1885. He received a patent for the motorcar in 1886. When he was two years old, his father died of pneumonia. His name was changed to Karl Friedrich Benz in remembrance of his father.
Benz’s lifelong hobby brought him to a bicycle repair shop in Mannheim. In 1883, Benz along with the two owners of the bicycle repair shop founded a new company producing industrial machines, usually referred to as Benz & Cie. Quickly growing to twenty-five employees, it soon began to produce static gas engines as well. The success of the company gave Benz the opportunity to indulge in his old passion of designing a horseless carriage. With his fondness and experience, he used similar technology when he created an automobile. Benz was unhappy because he was left with merely five percent of the shares and a modest position as a director. Worst of all, his ideas weren’t considered when designing new products. One year later, he withdrew from that corporation.
Benz began to sell the vehicle and made it commercially available automobile in history. The second customer of the Motorwagen was a Parisian bicycle manufacturer who had already been building Benz engines under license from Karl Benz for several years. Roger added the Benz automobiles to the line he carried in Paris and initially most were sold there.
During the last years of the nineteenth century, he came to be known as the owner of the largest automobile company in the world with 572 units produced in 1899 and sales kept increasing tremendously. In 2011, a dramatized television movie about the life of Karl and Bertha Benz was made Carl & Bertha by Das Erste.
The famous three-pointed star comes from a postcard sent by Gottlieb Daimler to his wife which said that he was living in a three-pointed star and that ‘one day this star will shine over our triumphant factories.’ The three signify Land, Sea and Air, first seen on a car in 1910.
GEORGE FOOTE FOSS
George was a machinist, bicycle repairman and inventor from Quebec. He was the inventor of the FOSSMOBILE. It was Canada’s first successful gasoline-powered automobile which he manufactured in 1896. Foss became an entrepreneur at an early age. His first job was running up and down the streets of Sherbrooke, ringing a bell on auction day to help his father. Foss obtained electrical expertise, while apprenticing with Whitney Electrical Instrument Company. He gained knowledge about how to assemble electrical instruments and wind electrical motors.
At the age of eighteen, he opened his own shop. He built a 52-volt boat motor. As he traveled, after thirty minutes the batteries in the car died. Then he began to design and build an automobile that would address the problem. He started with a chassis made of old bicycle frames.
He never tried to market or mass-produce his automobile. He turned down an offer to finance the production of his automobile. In 1900, he met Henry Ford who offered him a chance to help build a new company that Ford was trying to establish. Foss declined his offer, seeing Fossmobile as inferior. Later, at the age of 37, he went back to working as a machinist. He opened a machine shop in Montreal, Quebec and became a key contributor in the manufacturing of World War 1. In 1960, Foss became an honorary member of the Vintage Automobile Club of Montreal.
Source ( factual information): Google
