Praising Henry Ford for Creating Mass Production Is Really Jumping the Gun

Your Oct. 7 article, “Ford’s Assembly Line, 75 Today, Altered the World as Well as Autos,” praises Henry Ford for instituting a moving assembly line and mass production--the first point is right, the second isn’t.

The “Second Industrial Revolution” dawned some hundred years earlier when gun maker Eli Whitney started making interchangeable gun parts for the mass production of firearms at his factory in New Haven, Conn., in the 1790s.

Until that time, guns were individually handcrafted with little commonality among supposedly similar products. In other words, until Whitney came along, components were not interchangeable. So, it can be seen that Eli Whitney--not Henry Ford--was the father of mass production, an element of the “Second Industrial Revolution.”

W. F. CORET

Woodbine, Iowa