Henry Ford was born on July 30, 1863, and grew up on his family's prosperous farm in Springwells Township about seven miles due west of Detroit. He attended school through the sixth grade and in 1879 at age sixteen, without his father's consent, walked into Detroit and obtained work at the Michigan Car Company Works where streetcars were built. Henry's father then arranged for Henry to become an apprentice machinist at the James Flower & Brothers Machine Shop. In 1881, Ford was working for the Detroit Dry Dock Company where he learned a great deal about heavy industry. By 1882 he was back on the farm operating a small steam traction engine for a neighboring farmer, and soon after repairing such engines built by the Westinghouse Company. While home on the farm Henry Ford met Clara Bryant and the two were married on April 11, 1888. They set up housekeeping on an 80-acre farm given to Henry by his father.
Henry, however, had no intentions of farming the land as his father would have expected. Instead, Henry spent the next two years using a steam engine to cut wood off his land and that of his neighbors. After having built a "honeymoon" cottage on their farm, it was rather shocking to Clara to find Henry, in September 1891, wanting to move to Detroit to accept a $40 a month position as night operating engineer at a substation of the Edison Illuminating Company. The position at Edison appealed to Henry because he would be learning electrical engineering. By October of 1892, Henry was called upon to take charge of maintenance of steam engines in the main downtown Edison Illuminating Power Plant at $75 per month.
Ford was intrigued with gasoline engines. His first simple and crude engine was operating by December 1893, on the kitchen sink of the Ford's rented Bagley Avenue home. On Christmas Eve 1893, with Clara dripping in the fuel, Henry ran the little engine for less than a minute. Thus, Henry had now determined the principles of the gasoline engine.
Henry's maintenance position at Edison now allowed him a great deal of time to experiment in building a variety of gasoline engines. With help from his friends Ford experimented with various engine designs. In considerable secrecy, his first vehicle, the "Quadricycle", was assembled in June of 1896 in the woodshed behind #58 Bagley Avenue.
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