Wollering started work in April 1906 and immediately streamlined the workflow. “We put up short conveyers to push it along to the next operation. It was not automatic. It had to be hand conveyed. When the man finished the milling operation, he’d take the block, put it on the slide, and push it along to the next station.”12
Although the assembly line was still years away, with Flanders and Wollering, Ford finally began to add the refinements that could keep pace with Olds’s and Cadillac’s production methods. “We didn’t group our machines by type at all,” Wollering recalled. “They were pretty much grouped to accommodate the article they were working on….When I got there, they had the milling machine, which was very big, and the boring machine, which is large, in place. I left them stand and we built around them. We put the others in to make a kind of progressive arrangement.”
Standardizing the product flow made improving the actual product much easier. For safety and stability, the weight of the car was brought up from 700 to 1,000 pounds and the dimensions were increased to carry the weight.13 The crankshaft and cooling systems were improved, as was the casting of the engine block. By the time the Model N was ready to be examined by auto journalists, Ford agents, and potential buyers, it had been transformed and, at the proposed price, promised to be one of the most sought-after cars ever produced in the United States.
What received the greatest praise in the trades was Flanders’s and Wollering’s machining:
The feature that strikes the experienced manufacturer most forcibly is the care and accuracy of the work. Parts are ground that makers of high priced machines consider well enough made when done on a lathe. Cylinders and pistons are first rough cut, then annealed to relieve the strains in the castings, after which, in the case of cylinders, they are reamed, an operation that insures a perfectly straight as well as a perfectly round cylinder. This method is now considered superior to grinding by most engineers. Pistons, after being annealed are given a finishing cut on another automatic machine, after which they are ground. The top is ground four-thousandths smaller than the bottom end, the section between the first and second rings, three-thousandths, and that between the second and the third, two-thousandths smaller than the main portion of the piston.14
When Ford saw what Wollering was capable of, he put him in charge of the Piquette Avenue factory as well. Within two months, the operation was turning out a steady stream of automobiles—although nowhere near one hundred per day—so that Ford agents could begin taking orders for the Model N. Still, the N was not ready for actual sale until after Malcomson sold his stock to Ford on July 12.15
As good as Wollering was, Couzens knew that Walter Flanders was better. But Ford was reluctant. “Couzens, Wills, and the Dodge brothers were behind this selection,” Charles Sorenson wrote. “Ford…was aware of Flanders’s ability, yet feared the man might take his place. There was a streak of jealousy here. Flanders, a forceful, boisterous man, was popular with the directors and got along well with men in the shop.”16
But Ford never allowed personal feelings to keep him from talent, so, ultimately, he hired Flanders in August and made him head of production with complete control over manufacturing operations at both plants. Wollering and another talented young production man, Thomas S. Walborn, became his assistants. Flanders proved himself every bit as brilliant in his métier as were James Couzens and Harold Wills in theirs. Even more impressive was that Flanders often displayed his genius through the haze of massive hangovers:
He took on the Ford job and in a few weeks completely revamped the plant’s production methods. The whole interior of the factory was rearranged, new machinery installed, workers given new jobs. It was not assembly line production, which was to come later, but it was the most efficient production system that had been introduced in Detroit up to that time. In the final assembly, for instance, each workman had specific jobs to perform. Each group of assemblers had runners to keep material always on hand; and there were helpers who supplied small tools at the exact moment they were needed. There was no hit-or-miss assembly as there had been before. Everything was done systematically, and thus the job of putting Fords together was considerably speeded up.17
Charles F. Kettering, a noted inventor, engineer, and, for almost three decades, head of research at General Motors, was unstinting in his praise of Flanders’s brilliance.
Flanders’ specialty was simplification of work. He constantly shifted machines and equipment to minimize the handling of materials. He made each machine more adapted to a specific job by developing special jigs and fixtures to eliminate as nearly as possible the chance of human error. Not only did he rearrange production machines, but he used the principle of simultaneous machining operations wherever possible. He installed milling machines that could mill two faces of a casting at the same time, made other machines more automatic and set up scores of punch presses. All of these had been and were being used in the production of other things, but no one up to that time had brought all these production methods and machines to bear upon one model of an automobile.18
Sorenson summed it up: “In the nearly two years he was at Ford, his rearrangement of machines headed us toward mass production. Ford, a quiet, sensitive person, got a few gray hairs at this stage, but he learned a great deal from Flanders, and so did I.”*, 19
Flanders’s operation also had substantial impact on the way money moved through the company.
He found that the demand was in excess of capacity…and…set up a production program for twelve months ahead. This enabled the purchasing department to get better prices with fixed deliveries. Instead of our carrying inventories, he got the foundries and other suppliers to do it. Our stock keepers were told not to have on hand more than a ten-day supply of anything to meet our production requirements. Previously the funds locked up for this purpose had been very large. Now, thanks to Flanders, those funds were freed and much of the confusion of hand-to-mouth operation that Ford Motor Company had been working under was now ended. The results were a revelation to all of us.
Much of that money went into research, in particular for the next-generation Ford automobile, which in 1908 would be christened the Model T.
Literally one day before Alexander Malcomson left to build his “car of the future,” Horseless Age published an evaluation of Ford Manufacturing:
All parts, where it is at all possible, are finished on automatic machines, regardless of size. Each machine makes that part and nothing else; and since many of the machines are specially designed, they are fitted for nothing else. High-speed steel is used to its limit. A large corps of inspectors constantly follow the different operations in order to instantly detect any variation and rectify the error before it is made in a large number of pieces. For it will be readily seen that this system, which can only be applied where cars are made in very large quantities, cuts down the total cost of production enormously, and goes a long way toward putting the automobile in the same class with typewriters, sewing machines, guns and other interchangeable products.20
The piece then proceeded to praise the corporate vision that resulted in such a system, which went to the heart of Henry Ford’s brilliance:
In manufacturing any machine cheaply two distinct courses are open to the maker: Either he may use the cheapest possible material, make parts as small as he dares, finish as few surfaces as possible, and by employing cheap workmen and making fits so loose that the parts can be thrown together from a distance, he will be able to produce an article which will be cheap in more senses than one. On the other hand, he may use a quality of material amply good for the purpose to which it is put, design his machine so that the parts are as few and simple as possible, make them of sufficient size for proper strength and wearing qualities, and by systematized methods of manufacture finish all necessary parts as well as they need be finished. It is this latter course that the Ford Motor Company are endeavoring to follow in the manufacture of their little car.
By autumn 1906, while For
d would fall short of his goal of ten thousand cars (he would produce only eight thousand) and not be able to hold to the $500 price (he would raise it to $600), he had the best-running factories, which were producing one of the lowest-priced, highest-quality automobiles to be found anywhere in the world. Thanks to his own indefatigable efforts—and those of Alexander Malcomson, James Couzens, Harold Wills, Walter Flanders, the Dodge brothers, and a host of others—he had successfully transitioned from one of the hundreds of small, hopeful start-ups to an industry power; from an operation that threw automobiles together to one that used the incipient techniques of mass production.
With the N, Ford also demonstrated how his insatiable drive for improvement, his refusal to allow either himself or his company to stand still, could bear unexpected fruit. The Ford Manufacturing Company had been a contrivance, a paper fiction created to squeeze out an unwanted associate. If Ford and Couzens wanted to gain closer control over building engines and transmissions, there were any number of simpler ways to do it. But once Ford Manufacturing was a reality, Ford got the most out of it. Starting from scratch, he went out and obtained the human and mechanical resources required to initiate the manufacturing techniques that he would later be credited with inventing.
* * *
* In 1908, after he had created the production system that would eventually produce tens of millions of Model Ts, Walter Flanders would join the Ford Alumni Association. He joined with an auto body manufacturer, Barney Everitt, and William Metzger, a salesman from Cadillac, to form the E-M-F Corporation. After only two years, E-M-F was taken over by Studebaker.
CHAPTER 19
By early 1906, while Ford and Couzens were scrambling to produce the Model N, Ralzemond Parker was contending with a patent suit that had taken on Dickensian heft. The defendants had completed their testimony, which ran to “2,400 typewritten pages and 140 exhibits.” In February, Horseless Age noted that “although a decision was confidently expected last fall, very little has been heard recently of any progress in the proceedings. This remarkable case promises to develop into a record in patent litigation as regards the length of time during which the patent has been under dispute before the courts.”1 That statement proved prescient: a decision would not be forthcoming for three more years.
The main problem in reaching resolution was that patent suits were conducted as if they had actually been lifted from the pages of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, where the entirety of a huge estate was eaten up by legal fees, leaving nothing for the heirs. In American patent law in the early 1900s, a judge wasn’t even assigned to the case until after massive amounts of material had been generated by each side, all totally outside the court system or rules of evidence. All that was required in the taking of a deposition, for example, was that it be done in the presence of a neutral third party. Therefore, if either the witness or the lawyer wanted to drag the proceedings on, either by asking irrelevant questions or by giving irrelevant answers, there was no way to speed the interrogation along. Exhibits submitted by each side might or might not be germane to the issue at hand. Many patent lawyers, either because of self-interest or because they thought volume would impress the trial judge, would submit massive briefs supported by staggering quantities of what passed for evidence. Lawyers for the other side, fearful that a streamlined submission would be interpreted as a lack of thorough preparation, would match or outdo their opponents. During this entire process, not surprisingly, each side would continuously announce its desire to move the case along and decry the excesses of its opponent in protracting the process.
Ordinarily, it was more in the plaintiffs’ interest to push for a conclusion, since until a decision was rendered, no licensing fees would be forthcoming, and each month’s delay worked against the patent’s seventeen-year life. While victory in court did entitle the plaintiffs to royalties retroactive to the date the patent was issued, collecting back taxes is always a touch-and-go affair. Better to set up a mechanism to collect the fees as they were taken in. But here, ALAM was contending with what it saw as a growing weakness of both the patent and the infringement suits it had initiated on the basis of the patent. The obvious and quite serious holes in the plaintiffs’ case had been relentlessly exploited by Ford’s lawyers, and there was more than a little doubt about how the trial judge would view the evidence, especially in an industry that had advanced immensely in just the three years since the suit had been originally filed. And, of course, the Ford Motor Company was no longer merely a speck on the automotive landscape.
So, although the United States patent office had seen fit to grant George Selden his patent without requiring that his theoretical machine actually be built and tested, the ALAM lawyers no longer felt they enjoyed the same luxury. While the patent examiners had taken it on faith that the Selden road carriage was both workable and a radical departure from all that had come before, the trial judge, whoever it turned out to be, might actually want a bit of proof.*1 The plaintiffs feared they might need to demonstrate not only that Selden’s plan had been an original concept in 1879, which might not prove to be all that difficult, but also that his design could be turned into a practical automobile—a far taller order.
The chief problem was the same as it had always been—George Selden had never really built anything. The only piece of the puzzle that had even tentatively been brought to life was the unfinished three-cylinder motor, which, except for being briefly employed to power a lathe in 1904, had spent its entire life in Selden’s storeroom.
In 1902, before the first infringement action was taken, the Electric Vehicle Company management had anticipated the problem and assigned an engineer, Henry Cave, to build a Selden machine. “This was quite a contract,” Hiram Percy Maxim noted later, “as the engine shown in Selden’s patent drawings was a fearful and terrible affair.”2 The work was to be done in secret, with an open checkbook—and, significantly, the process would not involve Selden. In fact, it would take Cave, working exclusively on this project, a full four years to come up with something, although just how much it conformed to Selden’s patent specifications would be one more drop of water in an ocean of disputes. “Had he not been the essence of patience, tenacity, and resourcefulness,” Maxim observed, “he certainly would have failed and brought himself to the madhouse.” Still, with all that resourcefulness, Cave’s final product did not seem to be what George Selden had designed but rather “resembled a truck.”3 Actually, “cart” would be more accurate, for it had a body that appeared to be sheets of metal painted a uniform green, and it lacked even the barest amenities.
Although in theory no more sophisticated construction was required to demonstrate workability, as the case dragged on, there was simply no way to determine whether Cave’s creation—later to be labeled Exhibit 157—would be sufficiently persuasive. So the decision was made to produce a Selden road carriage that appeared both to have been built from the patent specifications and to have been done so by Selden himself.
Even for this effort, however, George Selden was not involved. Instead, the project, the full cost of which was borne by ALAM, was assigned to be overseen by his sons, Henry and George junior, both in their early twenties, although neither would have a hand in the actual construction. Like Cave’s creation, the 1877 Buggy, as it would come to be known—or Exhibit 89—was constructed in secret, this time at the Gundlach-Manhattan Optical Company factory in Rochester. The product, which, other than the resurrected motor and crankshaft, contained not one component that was built or even designed by anyone named Selden, at least appeared to be a primitive motorcar. And even the motor had been completely rebuilt in the Gundlach machine shop. The body, fashioned by a maker of fine sulkies and finished in black lacquer with a gold stripe trim, sat over red-orange springs, wheels, and metalwork. The word “Selden” was emblazoned on the sides at the front of the machine, and “1877” was painted prominently farther back, thus predating even the application by two years. “It is an exact copy of the drawings of my patent a
nd I defy any cross-examination to show any substantial variation,” George Selden announced.
Selden’s challenge was sufficiently pugnacious to give pause, but the machine was not. The 1877 Buggy would not have stood up to even the most casual scrutiny. It might have superficially resembled the drawings in the patent application, but both it and Cave’s machine had been built with vast departures from its specifications. The Rochester vehicle, for example, had a modern carburetor and oil pump, timed ignition rather than constant flame, and new cylinder heads and valves. In fact, the only component of the buggy that had not been updated was the cooling system, likely thought unnecessary by machinists working in the Rochester winter. Cave’s machine represented even a greater departure. In addition to all the improvements in the 1877 Buggy, Cave had installed a water jacket to cool the engine, pneumatic tires, and gears to change speeds. This last enhancement allowed his machine to generate 15 horsepower, rather than the 2 horsepower that the Selden buggy achieved.
But even if all the alterations were made public—and they were not—it remained an open question whether or not they would invalidate Selden’s claim. According to 1900’s patent law, validation would depend upon whether or not the patent was granted pioneer status—which, of course, was the crux of the case. If it was, then the “substitutions” would be perfectly acceptable because it was expected that a pioneer concept would be improved on. If not, however, the substitutions would not be allowed because the patent would apply only to the specific design in the application.
Drive!: Henry Ford, George Selden, and the Race to Invent the Auto Age Page 25