Excerpt from The Triumph of an Idea: The Story of Henry Ford H alf A century has passed Since Henry Ford's attention was attracted to a contrivance called a silent gas engine. A German named Otto was the inventor, and a description Of the primitive affair in an English magazine caught the eye Of the Michigan farm boy, who had now become a machinist in Detroit. He got a chance to repair an Otto engine at the Eagle Iron Works in, 1885. The dissection Of that single-cylinder machine, run by illuminating gas, marked the start Of patient investigations which were to launch the era Of motor transport. It marked, also, the beginning Of the fifty years which we of today appraise as the period most productive of scientific achievement in the world's his tory. Along with the gasoline engine, the automobile and good roads, our generation has seen' the conquest of the air, the development of radio and motion pictures, the increase of safeguards for sea travel, the perfection of farming machinery, the upheaval Of autocratic govern ments, and, perhaps most important Of all, the Spread Of education through which the minds and hearts of men are diverted into new channels of thought and feeling. Progress in invention and industry has with stood wars and panics, has defied the periodic hysterias afflicting humanity in their wake. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.