Henry Ford pioneered the first moving assembly line, building on earlier iterations of the manufacturing method

The Model T's simple but functional design helped the car become popular

Thanks to its low manufacturing costs, the Model T made it so many Americans could actually afford a personal vehicle. The car was produced as a simple, open-air vehicle that could be upgraded with aftermarket additions (like window wipers or better headlights).

Read how Fordism helped invent the American middle class

Henry Ford's revolution of the assembly line and American manufacturing as a whole gave rise to the American middle class. The introduction of the $5 workday (in exchange for eight-hour days of highly repetitive work) raised factory workers' wages enough to reorient the economy around consumer demand.

One of Henry Ford's early failed business ventures later became Cadillac

Before founding the Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford started two businesses that ultimately failed because he didn't get a product to market quickly enough. The Henry Ford Company pushed Henry Ford out in 1902, only to later reform and be renamed after the founder of Detroit, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac.

Henry Ford built a plastic car from soybeans in 1941

To pursue his goal of marrying industry with agriculture, among other reasons, the automobile giant oversaw the design and creation of a vehicle with 12 panels made from plastic. At 2,000 pounds, the car was much lighter than all-steel ones, but production stopped during World War II.

Tesla's production of a high-performance electric vehicle revived the EV industry

The Model 3 shifted public perception by showing that EVs could be fast and desirable, and built at scale. However, at one point, Tesla built an entirely manual production line in a tent outside its main factory to keep up with demand.

Motown Records used the assembly line for songwriting

In the 1960s, Motown Records was the world's most reliable rock 'n' roll label and the home of the Supremes. That success was largely due to its songwriting process, a finely tuned assembly line model inspired by Motown owner Berry Gordy's time working at the Ford Motor Company.

Walt Disney's visit to a Ford factory helped inspire the layout for Disneyland

Walt Disney visited Henry Ford's Greenfield Village and the Ford Motor Company's River Rouge manufacturing plant on a trip to the 1948 Chicago Railroad Fair. The layout of Greenfield Village inspired the different, distinctly themed sections of Disneyland in Anaheim, CA.

Tesla's first successful AC prototype used a metal shoe polish tin for a rotor

After leaving his position working with Thomas Edison, Tesla partnered with George Westinghouse to promote alternating current systems as a more viable, scalable solution to electricity transmission.

Learn about how General Motors dismantled America's streetcars

This documentary argues that GM systematically bought up and destroyed streetcar networks across the US in the 1930s, replacing them with buses and helping put the automobile at the center of American culture.

Nearly 40% of American cars were electric in 1899

They were most common in cities, where battery swap stations allowed drivers to "refuel" their vehicles reliably. Innovations in combustion engines caused electric cars to lose ground until environmental policies and advances in battery technology revitalized interest.

Thomas Edison inadvertently spurred the film industry's move to Hollywood

The inventor's patent on the motion picture camera included several stipulations that required independent movie studios to work with Edison's Motion Picture Patents Co., making the East Coast undesirable for aspiring filmmakers.

Watch a video of Henry Ford giving square dancing lessons

In the 1920s, Henry Ford did his best to promote square dancing—particularly dances that he learned in his childhood—by teaching lessons twice a week. He believed square dancing was the "correct" way of dancing and was fiercely opposed to jazz music, which was rising in popularity at the time.

The recorded history of crude oil use, starting with Babylonians waterproofing boats

The ancient civilization located in modern-day Iraq also used crude oil as mortar in construction, while the Egyptians used it to treat human remains during the mummification process. After the invention of the first motorcar in 1885 and the introduction of the affordable Model T in 1908, demand for crude oil skyrocketed.

Building the first atomic bomb required unprecedented coordination

Creating the first atomic bombs demanded breakthroughs in physics, engineering, and logistics—uniting elite scientists with tens of thousands of workers across the US. This in-depth history explains how the Manhattan Project overcame those challenges.

Amateur engineers built America’s first great infrastructure project

With no engineering schools in the US, the Erie Canal was designed and built by self-taught amateurs who improvised new methods and became known as the “Erie School of Engineering.”

The cars were originally produced by European manufacturers like Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, and Maserati

Other than the four wheels and open top, the early Formula 1 cars have little in common with today’s machines. But the era has a rich history. Using historic video and photos, this hour-long documentary details the iconic drivers of the 1950s, the evolution of the premier teams, and how the era left its mark on the sport that’s still being felt today.

The hidden engineering of gas stations

Contemporary gas stations are the result of a century of engineering progress. In the early 1900s, only a few thousand cars drove around, and they used kerosene. As vehicles and cheaper gasoline became more popular, fire hazards grew, forcing the invention of fuel pumps, underground storage tanks, and the automatic shutoff valve—all engineering marvels.

Apple started out in a garage in 1976

Shifting the focus of personal computing from businesses to everyday consumers, Apple found early success with the Apple II, which sold 6 million units, and the Macintosh, which featured a user-friendly graphical interface.

An integrated circuit combines major circuit components onto a single device

Before 1958, these components were fabricated separately before manual assembly, introducing human error, delays, and higher costs. The invention of the IC laid the foundation for automated manufacturing, miniaturization, and improvements to speed and energy efficiency.

A New York farmer established the first cheese factory and revolutionized the industry

Jesse Williams, a farmer in New York state, had a passion for cheese but didn’t have the resources to produce it at the scale he desired. So, in 1851, Jesse and his son opened the first cheese factory, sourcing milk from multiple local farms and producing 100,000 pounds of cheddar—in their first season. Soon, Williams had hundreds of factories and created the prototype for cheesemaking as we know it today.

Mass transit in America began with horse-drawn omnibuses in New York City in 1827

The omnibus, a large horse-drawn stagecoach that ran a fixed route and carried a dozen riders at an affordable fare, was different from a private carriage because it carried everyone, not just the wealthy.

The treadmill was invented as a machine for prison labor

William Cubitt invented the machine in the early 1800s, imagining prisoners, usually two at a time, would use it to grind grain or pump water.

Transformer architecture was the breakthrough that made AI chatbots possible

It changed how text was translated from a sequential, "one word at a time" method to one where every word in a text is processed in parallel. Advances in positional encoding and self-attention also helped models recognize context and word order better.

The first robot in literature may have been a 'mechanical man' in 1907's 'Ozma of Oz,' a book in L Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' series.

The first robot in literature may have been a 'mechanical man' in 1907's 'Ozma of Oz,' a book in L Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' series.

View a timeline of 3D printing technology through 2019

The first working 3D printing device was invented in 1983 and utilized stereolithography, a process in which a laser triggers a chemical reaction that hardens liquid resin. Powder-based laser sintering technology was patented in 1987, with metal-based powders first being used for 3D printing in 1997.

Sears sold DIY house kits starting at $600 in its famous catalog from 1908 through the 1940s, resulting in roughly 10,000 'Sears and Roebuck houses' being built.

Walt Disney's early film 'Alice's Wonderland' was a groundbreaking innovation in the silent film era

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

The history of many kitchen appliances involves unexpected discoveries and applications, including wartime radar turned hamster defroster and replacing an 'ice king' with heat-stealing boxes.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

Trace how the Bill of Rights, inspired by centuries of political theory, took shape between 1774 and 1789.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

While the first exchange-traded fund (a 'basket' of different assets that can be bought and sold on a stock exchange) in the US only launched in 1993, the global ETF market has grown to more than $10T in the short time since.

About 2,000 US babies are born annually without some portion of their limbs, potentially leading to a lifetime of pricey prosthetics.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

See how fireworks are made and learn how metals like magnesium and copper are responsible for different colors.

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.

'Saturday Night Fever,' the 1977 film that introduced disco to the mainstream, was based on a fabricated magazine story.

The price of gas is a composite made up of several different factors, with the federal gas tax making up less than 20% of what drivers pay at the pump.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

To reduce wrinkles in clothing, research recommends gentle wash cycles with more water and tumble drying with smaller loads and longer times.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.

After her fellow cult members tried to kill her with an LSD-infused hamburger, one member of the Manson Family, the murderous cult led by Charles Manson, decided to testify against the group's leader.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.