Auto Workers

At Henry Ford’s auto plant, 45,000 machines helped in production before a vehicle flowed by way of conveyors to an assembly line of workers in 1927. The workers put the parts together and built 10,000 cars a day.

This photograph was published with The Times full-page article, “The Dramatic Story Behind Ford’s New Car,” on December 18, 1927. The “new car” was the Model A, which replaced the wildly successful Model T, nicknamed the “Tin Lizzie.” Between 1908 and 1927, about 15 million Model T cars were sold.

When the assembly line first went into full swing in 1913 in Dearborn, Mich., it reduced the time needed to build a Model T from 14 hours to 93 minutes, a vast gain in production that enabled Henry Ford to repeatedly cut the price of the car.