The Chain That Changed the Factory

In 1913, Ford installed at Highland Park the first mobile assembly line. The Ford Model T chassis, previously assembled in over twelve hours, was now finished in an hour and a half. The idea reversed work: instead of the worker moving toward the piece, it's the piece that comes to him, carried by a conveyor at regulated height and speed. Each station repeats a single operation, reduced to a few gestures.

The productivity gain was colossal and made the Model T's price plummet, which became accessible to middle classes. To retain workers worn down by monotony, Ford doubled the daily wage to five dollars in 1914—a decision as social as strategic, intended to stabilize a workforce exhausted by the pace.

The chain imposed a new relationship to time and body: the pace was no longer fixed by the human but by the machine. This "Fordism" shaped the industrial 20th century and also nourished its critique, from Chaplin's Modern Times to postwar sociology of work. Understanding Highland Park means seeing the birth of the factory as flow system—and the worker's body as an adjustable component of this flow.