Ford Motor Company was incorporated
On this day · 16 June 1903
A coal dealer's office in Detroit hosted the 1903 signing that, within a decade, would put much of America on wheels.
On the morning of June 16, 1903, Henry Ford and a small group of backers gathered in Detroit to sign the Articles of Association for the Ford Motor Company. The papers went to Michigan’s secretary of state, and the firm was formally on the books.
Ford himself put in no cash. His partner, coal dealer Alexander Malcomson, rounded up roughly a dozen investors — among them the brothers John and Horace Dodge — to capitalize the venture. The whole company was launched on about $28,000 in paid-in money.
A month later the first Ford car rolled out of a plant on Mack Avenue. The real revolution came in 1913, when Ford’s moving assembly line slashed the time to build a Model T and made the automobile affordable to ordinary wage-earners.
What began as a signature in a coal office became the template for twentieth-century mass production.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
