Popular Research Topics

We are often asked about the origins of The Henry Ford. What was Henry Ford thinking when he built the museum and the village? Why did he build it? What did he hope to accomplish?

Among the largest and most powerful steam locomotives ever built.

A tragic day in American history remembered.

President Abraham Lincoln was sitting in this chair when he was assassinated in 1865.

Learn more about the Herman Miller-related collections The Henry Ford holds.

When Henry Ford developed the Rouge, between 1917 and 1928, his vision was to achieve "a continuous, nonstop process from raw material to finished product, with no pause even for warehousing or storage." As history now knows, Ford succeeded on an epic scale, rolling out 4,000 vehicles a day and employing more than 100,000 at its peak.

Throughout George W. Carver’s life, he balanced two interests and talents that may seem at odds — the creative arts and the natural sciences. Skills of observation, experimentation, replication, and communication applied to both art and science, making George W. Carver as comfortable in the sciences as in the arts.

Pushed out of the electrical industry he helped create, Thomas Edison turned repeated challenges in the 1890s to his advantage and cemented his legacy as America's greatest inventor.

Rosa Parks brought together a unique blend of life experiences, a commitment to racial justice, and a flawless reputation to transform a single act of defiance into a defining moment for the modern American civil rights movement.

Despite any formal training in physics or engineering, Wilbur and Orville Wright brought an utterly original and successful approach to the problem of human flight.

Charles and Ray Eames are design legends that took the “learning-by-doing” mentality to new heights and celebrated collaboration throughout their careers.

Abraham Lincoln’s experiences on the Judicial Circuit helped him hone skills and establish relationships that prepared him to become President of the United States.

From flowers to fruits, grasses to grains, Luther Burbank introduced more than 800 plant varieties to American agriculture. But his first great plant invention — a blight-resistant potato — remains his most enduring contribution to the world.

A talented race car driver who also possessed an extraordinary gift for diplomacy created an unlikely partnership between a British sports car builder and Ford Motor Company. The result was a vehicle that revolutionized the Indianapolis 500.

When a former country store clerk from rural New York named George H. Corliss invented a revolutionary new steam engine in 1849, steam power finally overtook waterpower as a superior source of energy for American industry.

While one of Buckminster Fuller’s most ambitious inventions — the Dymaxion House — never achieved commercial success, his unconventional dwelling has inspired generations of innovators.

A triumph of human ingenuity, the Allegheny locomotive pushed the limits of what steam power could do just before the Age of Steam ended.

Fueled with profound originality and resourcefulness, a twentysomething idealist changed the world with a machine built from the cheapest parts he could find.

Lessons about the trials and triumphs of innovation from the days just before Ford finished building his Quadricycle.

In the early 1940s, Henry Ford experimented with making plastic parts for automobiles. These experiments resulted in what was described as a "plastic car made from soybeans." Although this automobile never made it into the museum's collections, it remains a good example of innovative design.

Between 1915 and 1924, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs, calling themselves the Four Vagabonds, embarked on a series of summer camping trips.

In January 1919, Henry Ford began publication of the Dearborn Independent, a small financially troubled community weekly he had purchased the previous year.

Because of his immense popularity during his lifetime and since, numerous sayings have been ascribed to Henry Ford. However, many of these quotes are difficult to properly verify or attribute.