Today, July 30, we celebrate the founding father of mass production, Mr. Henry Ford, born on this day in 1863, in Detroit, Michigan. Though not the inventor of production nor the automobile, Henry took those concepts to the next level and melded them into one idea which gave the world better transportation and a method of building those machines thru mass production and in 1903 incorporated The Ford Motor Company. Likewise, Henry was not the inventor of the V8 engine, but his company was the first to cast a one-piece engine block. The rest is history, but in November, 1938, Henry partnered with another Irishman, Henry “Harry” Ferguson, who owned the patent rights to his three-point hydraulic lift system which would revolutionize farming forever. That resulted in the world’s first farm tractor with a draft control system built in, called it the 1939 Ford-Ferguson 9N Tractor, and, changed the way in which farming would be done forever. Henry would have been 153 years old today and died on April 7, 1947, at his estate, Fair Lane in Dearborn, Michigan. Thank you, Mr. Ford for your better ideas…

PS => The NTC 2016 calendar has the date wrong. Henry Ford's birthday is July 30, not July 28 as noted on the calendar.