Henry Ford poses in one of his early prototypes outside his car plant in Detroit in 1907.

When Henry Ford died at age 83 in 1947, The Times published his obituary at the top of the front page with a two-column headline. The Times said, "Henry Ford was the founder of modern American industrial mass production methods, built on the assembly line and the belt conveyor system. As the founder and unchallenged master of an industrial empire with assets of more than a billion dollars, he was one of the richest men in the world. He was the apostle of an economic philosophy of high wages and short hours that had immense repercussions on American thinking. He was a patron of American folkways and in later years acquired a reputation as a shrewd, kindly sage. But these were all relatively minor compared with the revolutionary importance of his contribution to modern productive processes."