Ford River Rouge Plant: "Harvest Of The Years" 1939 Ford Motor Company
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Manufacturing the
1939 Ford automobile at the
River Rouge plant, where Ford made their own electricity, steel, tires, etc. "Shows mass production of Ford cars in an assembly line; the research necessary to carry on the work; materials that go into the making of the Ford."
Reupload of a previously uploaded film with improved video & sound.
Public domain film from the
US National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/
3.0/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ford_Motor_Company
Ford Motor Company is an
American automaker and the world's fifth largest automaker based on worldwide vehicle sales. Based in
Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of
Detroit, the automaker was founded by
Henry Ford, and incorporated on June 16, 1903. Henry Ford was 40 years old when he founded the Ford Motor Company, which would go on to become one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world, as well as being one of the few to survive the
Great Depression. The largest family-controlled company in the world, the Ford Motor Company has been in continuous family control for over
100 years. Ford now encompasses several brands, including
Lincoln and
Mercury...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Ford
The Ford line of cars was updated in
1937 with one major change — the introduction of an entry-level 136
CID (
2.2 L) V8 in addition to the popular 221 CID (3.6 L) V8 unit. The model was a refresh of its predecessor, itself based on
Ford's V8-powered
Model 40A and was the company's main product. It was redesigned more thoroughly in
1941. The cost was $850 ($13003 in today's dollars) in the beginning of production.
The 1937 Ford featured a more rounded look with fine horizontal bars in the convex front and hood-side grilles. The front grille was V-shaped, rather than following the fenders into a pentagon shape, as on the 1936 model. Faired-in headlights were a major modernization found on both the
Standard and DeLuxe trim versions, though much of the rest of the design was shared between Ford's two lines. 'Slantback' sedans gained a rear trunk door, though space was limited, and 'Trunkback' versions continued gaining sales...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_River_Rouge_Complex
The
Ford River Rouge Complex (commonly known as the
Rouge Complex or just
The Rouge) is a Ford Motor Company automobile factory complex located in Dearborn, Michigan, along the
Rouge River, upstream from its confluence with the
Detroit River at
Zug Island. Construction began in
1917, and when it was completed in 1928 it had become the largest integrated factory in the world.
The Rouge measures 1.5 miles (
2.4 km) wide by 1 mile (1.6 km) long, including 93 buildings with nearly 16 million square feet (1.5 km²) of factory floor space. With its own docks in the dredged Rouge River, 100 miles (160 km) of interior railroad track, its own electricity plant, and ore processing, the titanic
Rouge was able to turn raw materials into running vehicles within this single complex, a prime example of vertical-integration production. Over 100,
000 workers were employed there in the
1930s.
Some of the Rouge buildings were designed by
Albert Kahn. His Rouge glass plant was regarded at the time as an exemplary and humane factory building, with its ample natural light coming through windows in the ceiling. More recently, several buildings have been converted to "green" structures with a number of environmentally friendly features. However, many vehicular skeletons remain buried on the grounds of the Rouge
..
It was not until
1927 that automobile production began there, with the introduction of the
Ford Model A.
Later Rouge products included the 1932
Model B, the original Mercury, the
Ford Thunderbird, and four decades of Ford Mustangs. The old assembly plant was idled with the construction and launch of a new assembly facility on the
Miller Road side of the complex, currently producing
Ford F-150 and
Lincoln Mark LT pickup trucks.
On May 26, 1937, a group of workers attempting to organize a union at the Rouge were severely beaten, an event later called the
Battle of the Overpass.
Peter E. Martin's respect for labor led to
Walter Reuther, a
UAW leader, allowing
Martin to be the only Ford manager to retrieve his papers or gain access to the plant...