When modern drivers think about the Ford Model T—if they think about it at all—they perhaps dimly perceive it as the car that changed the world. That is correct, of course, as far as it goes. But this month, the Ford Motor Company is quietly commemorating a T-related centennial that was the true source of that seismic shift in mobility: the automotive assembly line. The Model T just happened to be the product it was used to build.
Indeed, the innovations could very well have been made by some other company, and involved some other car. But in April of 1913, led by production boss “Cast Iron” Charlie Sorensen, Ford began taking its first tentative steps toward a moving line that used conveyor belts to stream components past workers who performed one or two tasks each. This pioneering manufacturing process made automobiles affordable to just about anyone and became the template for the entire industry.
Prior to 1913, Ford and virtually every other automaker assembled whole cars at a station, with a team of workers working together to complete a single example, usually from start to finish. Like others, Ford had made numerous refinements to the process, achieving impressive production totals at the Piquette Avenue plant where the Model T was born in October 1908.