[originaltext] The first automobile race in history took place in Chicago in

The first automobile race in history took place in Chicago in 1895. Six cars took part, two powered by electricity and the others by petrol (26) . At least one car maker, however, was unable to participate. Henry Ford, who lived in the nearby state of Michigan, had a car and wanted to compete, but he did not have any money, so he could not get to Chicago.
    Ford did not win that race, but later he achieved some far more important victories. He was an excellent automobile engineer, but what really made him different from other auto makers were his ideas about the manufacturing process and about the rewards employees should receive for their labor.
    Ford’s most famous idea, of course, was to introduce the assembly line. This meant that instead of. workers’ moving about, it was the product that moved while workers remained still (27) . Today, the idea seems quite obvious, but at the beginning of the century, even Ford’s supporters thought he was mad.
    Ford, however, was not mad and, in the end, he succeeded in producing his famous Model-T. It was ugly and it was always black, but it was cheap and simple and Ford’s factories produced 15,000,000 Model-Ts between 1908 and 1927 (28) , so Ford most certainly was right.
    In 1914, Ford introduced another extraordinary idea. He decided that the workers who made his cars ought to have enough money to buy one, and he began paying them $5.00 per day. That was double what other car manufacturers were paying and everyone again thought Henry Ford was mad. His workers could now buy a cay--and, naturally, most of them bought Model-Ts--which partly explains how he managed to sell 15,000,000 (28) .