Every month, we feature a video from Film Source, The Henry Ford’s online collection of historic motion picture films shorts. The films were originally produced by Henry Ford’s motion picture department at Ford Motor Company, which began in 1914. These clips illustrate the impact of the automobile, industrial manufacturing and design, and many other aspects of American culture and everyday life, as well as glimpses of Henry Ford and his family and activities and scenes from Greenfield Village and The Henry Ford Museum. Staff at the Benson Ford Research Center continue to digitize, catalog, and upload more of these clips to our online catalog and to YouTube in order to make them accessible to a wider audience.
We close out January looking at another video showing Ford Motor Company’s assembly line processes—plus a whole lot of Model T. “Ford Automobiles, 1903-1917″ shows Model Ts—and more Model Ts—being driven everywhere under a variety of conditions: in the United States, at other spots around the globe, in cities, on winding country roads, in the desert, up in the mountains, in races and on parade (well, it’s Ford tractors here), off-road in the mud, and in the snow—including being pulled like a sleigh by a team of horses. We also see the different body styles available plus changes to the car over about half of its long production run (along with views of its predecessors, including the Quadricycle—Henry Ford’s first car, the 1903 Model A, and possibly the Model N).
Even though it wasn’t the main theme of the film, what jumped out at me—besides the ubiquity and versatility of this car, which I presume was the theme here—was the ‘hacking’ of the Model T, as seen in its conversion to a camper, riding on train rails, and to a certain extent the aforementioned sleigh ride. Indeed, it was not just the garage tinkerers at work here; a whole industry sprang up around the “Universal Car,” offering various modifications to, and in a related vein, aftermarket accessory components for the Model T, in both areas using the Tin Lizzy’s barebones state as a canvas for welcome and often creative customizations. Today, as we see a reemergence of the DIY movement, it’s interesting to look back at earlier generations doing similar things. One subset of DIY includes ‘modding’ or ‘hacking’ readily available mass-produced objects. Today, that near-universal brand, IKEA, is a popular target. As we’ve seen in this trip down Memory Lane, the Model T was a favorite of yesteryear. (Our Video of the Month isn’t even the best example of Model T or other Ford vehicle hacks. I’ll leave it to the viewers to discover some of the others!) This very particular form of engagement with a product speaks to that product’s popularity, utility, and versatility—and to human ingenuity.
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