Summary of Arthur Herman's Freedom's Forge

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 In early February 1900, the SS Norge arrived in New York harbor, carrying five hundred Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish passengers. The ship was carrying young William McKinley, the president. Theodore Roosevelt, the governor of New York, had signed a treaty for building a canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

#2 Knudsen was a skilled mechanic, and he knew America was the place where he could flourish. So he set off for New York, with his suitcase and thirty dollars stuffed in his pocket. He landed a job not far from where he had disembarked, in the Seabury shipyards in the Bronx’s Morris Heights.

#3 Knudsen spent years working with machine tools and steel alloy, and in 1911 he was hired by Ford to help build the Model T. He was shocked to find all the machines idle one morning, as Ford had already sold the company.

#4 Ford’s Model T was made up of nearly four thousand parts. Eight years earlier, Walter Flanders, a veteran machinist, had shown Ford the value of making as many parts as possible interchangeable. He had learned other things at Keim, especially from its manager William Smith.

© 2022 IRB Media (Ebook): 9781669380740

Release date

Ebook: 1 April 2022