♪ announcer: detroit was the world on wheels. these and other names created america's number one industry. first place on the production line. the idea that everybody can ride. vision -- that is the joint. announcer: up next, we learn about the inventions and the people that helped make detroit the motor city. we are at the detroit historical museum about to walk into a wonderful exhibit called america's motor city -- called "america's motor city." detroit has been the motor city capital of the world since 1915 when there were over 42 companies making cars and another 75 companies making parts.

so, we had been, while other towns built cars, we built lots of cars. prior to 1900, the detroit area enjoyed a wealth of strong manufacturing. a lot of it, based in building carriage bodies, railroad cars, stoves, railroad cars, railroad wheels. detroit understood the manufacturing process, but also understood how to deal with steel, iron, wood, rubber. detroit had all of the talent and designers and toolmakers and the things it took to make an automobile. why don't we go inside? let's see the first car that traveled on the streets of detroit. what we are looking at here looks very much like an old-fashioned wagon. we just do not have a horse in front of it. the horses are sitting inside the vehicle. it is a motorized carriage, a horseless carriage.

this was the very first car to operate on the streets of detroit. charles brady king, not henry ford, was the guy who designed this car, designed the engine inside of it. it is an unusual engine, a four-cylinder engine, when most people were using single or double cylinder engines. a powerful vehicle. charles brady king and oliver bartel, who helped him with the engine, drove this down the streets of detroit in 1896. henry ford was there on a bicycle about 25 feet behind chasing them. starting in the 1870's and 1880's, people started to understand that you could take a steam engine and apply it to an automobile. eventually, electricity was used to do that. electric cars existed before gasoline engines. a gentleman from grand rapids also here in michigan since developed a gasoline-powered engine and took it to the

colombian exhibition in 1893 in chicago. he showed it off to everybody. a lot of guys from detroit, from lansing, chicago, milwaukee, cleveland, all of these people saw this gasoline engine. all of a sudden, the gasoline engine became the most popular way of powering cars. probably the biggest problem these early vehicles ran into was the lack of decent roads. the bicycle folk had started a movement called the good road movement to make the roads better. bicyclists kind of got some of the roads paved. but once you got outside of the city center, which in downtown detroit would have been a mile or two outside the core of the city, you were back on country roads. and in detroit, it is mostly clay. if it rains, you are in trouble. that was probably the biggest challenge for early motorists. they were constantly getting stuck in the mud. charles brady king started the

king car company and put out a number of cars. most of them, handbuilt. he had not adapted the assembly line yet. eventually, he sold the company out and went on to other things. in fact, on the 50th anniversary of his ride down the streets of detroit came up, he had this replica built so people can see it. he drove this car right down the middle of town on woodward avenue to show off what was his big invention 50 years before. what you are looking at here is the 1903 curvedash runabout made in detroit. ransom started a company, one of the first to get in for manufacturing business. -- get into the manufacturing business. unfortunately, his factory burned down as he was about to go into production on several different models. the only one that survived was the curvedash olds. started producing it in 1901. it became the first

mass-produced automobile in the united states. he figured out the assembly line, something most people credit henry ford with. both of those gentlemen learned about assembly line from other products that were mass-produced. in detroit's case, we learned a lot from the chicago stockyards. where the used assembly lines to disassemble meet. -- meat. ransom olds was able to get a patent on the assembly line. he brought it to detroit. he started mass-producing the olds. it became the most popular and one of the most affordable early cars in detroit and in the united states. while ransom olds started his motor works in detroit, he eventually lost the company and it became an offshoot of the general motors corporation which -- motors organization, which was being formed about this time. general motors renamed the company oldsmobile, which was a popular brand in the united states for many decades. ransom olds, not to be outdone,

returned to his hometown of lansing and started up reo automobiles. most people would recognize that from the reo speedwagon model he produced, and was later adapted as a name by a band in the 1970's. there were a number of companies trying to get going at this time. charles brady king was trying to get his company going. there was a company making beautiful luxury automobiles prior to 1910. curiously, both companies were out of business as the rest of detroit's automobile business started growing quickly. henry ford stumbled through it. he had three different companies. the first two kind of went out of business. the first went really out of business. the second was taken away from him and eventually adapted into the cadillac motorcar company. with his third company, ford motor company, he started

developing several different models not far from this museum. each one of them had a d -- a letter denomination. he was doing a's, b's, and eventually, he got to the model t. but it was a long time coming before his business manager said henry, you have a good car, let's market it, let's sell it, and he did. they made most of the model t's in highland park north of the museum. they were turning out thousands, millions of cars during that decade. there was a point, 1915, 1920 when half of the automobiles on the roads of the united states were made by the ford motor company and highland park. by the time henry ford was making model t's, a lot of other companies were starting up. they decided this was a great idea.

some of them were companies not necessarily involved initially in automobile manufacturing. the folks who ran the detroit news decided to start their own company. the guys who had the biggest music store and piano manufacturer in detroit decided to start an automobile company. the hudson company, which was a, basically detroit's large department store, think macy's or marshall fields, the hudson company decided to start its own auto manufacturer. and hudson motors, for many years, was a hardcharging leader of the automobile business in detroit. in 1915, detroit had 42 manufacturing companies making automobiles and another 70-some making parts. we also saw, in the latter part of the 19-teens, we saw a lot of organizations coming together.

general motors, at this time, was buying other companies and incorporating them into the general motors brand. ford had consolidated his plant in highland park and was developing his future plant, which became the largest industrial manufacturing facility in the world. and we also had walter chrysler, who was picking up the maxwell and frisco names and coordinating those into the chrysler brand. two or three of them bubbled to the top. they eventually became the big three detroit is so well known for: the ford motor company, general motors, and chrysler. detroit's early industrial history, prior to the turn of the last century, brought in many immigrants mostly from western europe. they settled here and help build the industry's they were involved in. following the turn of the 19th

century, we had quite an influx of people from mediterranean countries and eastern europe that helped the old detroit into this wonderful melting pot of various neighborhoods, very polish neighborhoods, serbian, russian, hungarian. there were lots of folks living amongst each other and working together in the car companies. in fact, i've heard one plant described as the tower of babel because there were so many different languages being spoken on the same assembly line. many of those people who came here had settled and their families have worked in the plants for years, many generations, one after another. in the 1920's and 1930's, the great migration brought both white and black workers into the factory arena. black workers tended to be in kind of the dirtier and tougher

jobs in the foundries and wheel works, things like that. the white workers tended to get the assembly-line jobs. during world war ii, much of this changed. a lot of younger guys took off to go fight in the war. and the whole process within the plants started to include older workers, started to include women, handicapped workers. there was a real change in the dynamic on the factory floor. this dynamic is reflected today in the people who are still working in the business. we still have immigrants coming into detroit to work in the automobile business or working for many of the suppliers that were started here or have satellite offices here because of the strength of the automobile business. detroit is still a very dynamic town as far as the folks who live here and the different backgrounds. it's given detroit a stronger

community. sometimes there are some battles. sometimes there's lack of acceptance. but over time, we have worked to get through those problems. what we see behind me now is an assembly line, a real assembly line. this is the body drop portion of the cadillac clark street assembly plant. when the plant was closed, cadillac donated this to us. we brought it into the museum , set it up, and you can now watch an actual 1970's era body drop in operation. the assembly line was an idea that had already been established. detroit manufacturers really took advantage of it to a wonderful degree. when ford got going with his model t, he had efficiency experts that came in and made sure his moving assembly line was the most efficient way to make a car. and i think they took the number of hours necessary to build an automobile from somewhere near 30 down to about two. it was a tremendous change.

and it made it possible for henry ford, who had started selling model t's at $800, to bring the price down to about $500. so it made it much more affordable for the normal working man to be able to get an automobile. while the assembly line was great for the manufacturing process, for actually turning out a car very, very quickly, assembly lines were very tough on the workers who had to be in the factories. and the factories themselves changed. when the automobile business got started here, most of the factories were built along the old new england mills style of architecture. and they found that just was not going to work for all of the oil and heavy machinery they needed. they needed a different kind of architecture. and oliver kahn kind of became the foremost industrial architect in the united states by building a feasible floor plan for automobile plants. and they got big. and the assembly line kind of

took over these big plants. and they would employ thousands of people. in highland park, we have great postcards where about every three years, the number of people working there goes up about 10,000 to the point he has 50,000 employees working in one major plant. these people are working hard. and it's dangerous work. it's very repetitive. they're doing the same thing every day. today, they try to change of test change up jobs. -- change up jobs. they've come up with ergonomic ways of designing the machinery. back then, there was not that. initially, these jobs paid living wages. with anhui for decided one of the best things he could do if he wanted to get the best workers, he would raise the wages. not everybody got $5 a day. you had to be a very good worker. you had to sign some papers and agree to do some things.

ford would send people out to look at your house and make sure you were living in good conditions and taking care of your children and maybe even going to church. so the $5 a day wasn't for everyone, but did change the dynamics of working detroit. when people heard about these jobs, they started flowing into job to take them. initially, people who got those jobs worked in other industries. they might have worked in the shipbuilding industry which was big in detroit. because the automobile jobs paid better, they were pulling workers away from those industries to the detriment of those other industries. many of them went away. in the 1920-1924 period, the federal government shutdown immigration. they put a closure on it. they didn't close it altogether, but they made it harder for automobile companies to get those valuable employees. so, the automobile companies were starting to recruit down south. they were going to the

appalachian area recruiting whites, and pulling blacks off the hardscrabble farms in georgia and mississippi and bringing those folks up here. that very much changed the dynamic of the city of detroit. we had a large number of immigrants, many of whom didn't speak english or were first-generation english speakers. we also had a lot of blacks and whites from the south who brought some of their own baggage with them. some of it was good. the music, the food was wonderful. some of the other baggage not so great. of course, the american south has had a long history of racial discrimination. in the 1920's, the whites who had come out of the appalachian states brought that with them. detroit had a huge contingent of the ku klux klan here, probably second only to the southern states. and we were the northern stronghold. and they would have marches that would include 10,000 people in white robes.

they burned crosses on the front lawn of city hall, on the front lawn of the courthouse. they really helped get a really bad mayor elected. there was some serious baggage that came up with those folks. it took many years until well after world war ii to start to address some of those issues. some of those issues we're still living with today. labor unions -- living with today. >> labor unions are a voice, a bargaining agent, a source of protection. >> the formation of unions within automobile factories and plants came relatively late. there were enough immigrants in detroit, and people coming in constantly, that it was pretty easy to replace either poor workers or workers who fought the corporation for pay and days off and things like that. most workers worked six days a week and sometimes would even go

in for the seventh and stay for the extra money. it was during the depression when times were the toughest in detroit that the automobile manufacturing workers started pushing back. it was in the 1934, 1935, 1936 time period when the growth of the u.a.w. and teamsters union in detroit changed attitudes within the plants. there were big strikes. ford being the last one to go was quite a contentious change. these were not happy times. union workers were fighting hard against automobile management that didn't want to give up any kind of control within the plant. they wanted worker bees to get paid and go home and not talk back. and the union guys thought that they had a pretty good feel for what was wrong with some of the manufacturing, both from the injury standpoint, the pay standpoint, and just ways of

doing things better. these things turned into battles. they turned into fights that involved clubs. we've had a couple of clubs that were loaned to us from the library across the street. these were basically automobile parts that were co-opted to be weapons. these were the things the union guys who were fighting back and shutting down these plants, saying unless we get what we need, you're not going to get your cars. eventually, cooperation became the byword. during the 1950's and 1960's, the automobile unions started working with the corporations. the automobile workers' union started supporting african american and white workers in the same plant. they started getting cooperation from the corporations as far as how things could run better.

corporations were actually asking how this could happen. today, the u.a.w. folks, the teamsters, the people working in the plants, and the executives are all kind of working together. unions are now partners in the manufacturing process. the auto industry today in detroit is so much different than it was even 50 years ago. 50 years ago, almost all the cars in north america were built here in southeast michigan. now, they're built around the world. they're built in other countries. they're built in other states. there are foreign countries building in this area. many of the companies that now reside in detroit are from japan and germany that bring their technology here. of the big three, ford, general motors, and chrysler, chrysler is now owned by an italian company. there's been a real change in the nature of the business as far as manufacturing goes. of course, the profit margins are so thin that the efficiencies in design,

manufacturing efficiencies, in sales practices, all of those things have to be well refined for a company to remain viable. detroit has always had ups and downs in the automobile business. we became a one trick pony as far as what we hung our hats on for the economics of the city. and of course, when there's a recession, the first thing people don't buy is an automobile. we always say when the country catches a cold, detroit catches pneumonia. the last recession was tough on detroit. ford motor company had kind of seen it coming and consolidated and were able to ride it out. general motors and chrysler had to declare and curtsy to survive and get a bailout from the taxpayers. that was tough on both the egos and outlook of the people in detroit, so tied to the automobile industry.

of course, there has been a tremendous rebound and detroit is doing quite well. detroitres are kind of a different animal. we've dealt with these ups and downs, incredibly resilient. people who love cars really love cars. there's an ingenuity and intuition about how an automobile ought to be made, what it ought to do for you. of course, this whole new world with autonomous vehicles and they return to hybrids or electric is really exciting. it's an exciting time to be in the automobile business. there's no better place to watch and the automobile business than here in detroit. inside the made in america exhibit at the henry ford museum. we are here to learn about the power of steam. >> we are now standing at the

beginning of what is the power exhibit at henry ford. this is an exhibit that traces power.gins of the steam as itrpose of the power relates to hear relates to the beginning and of the development of the industrial revolution. these were all machines that were involved in the industry one way or another. it was started by henry ford. henry ford himself was interested in steam power. he was very mechanically inclined. to him, it meant something emotional, but it meant something specific. all of it powered by steam or internal combustion engines.

none of this happened accidentally. a lot of it didn't happen intentionally. steam engines are initially developed in england to pump water out of mines. things are produced for one specific reason and of interest who have other ways of applying them. it's not the 19th century. its the 18th century, a little older than we think. this is the oldest surviving steam engine, absolutely the representative type of engine of the initial ones that were built in england and deployed in coal mines. without getting lost in the technical details, basically it's a rocking beam and the operating cycle allows this pump rod to go up and down and pump water out of a mind. it is straightforward. it's actually cutting edge. it looks quite.

most all of this might have been recognizable from centuries prior. the difference is the cylinder at the end and what is going on courtesy of the steam by the boiler. this could pump water and possible through any other name. it was a game changer. essentially pumping water out of mines. byl still being mined humans, still young, still crude, still dangerous. it was a matter of mining out of deep mines. i think it's no different than what happens now. people look at something and say it's doing that, but if i took it this way, i could make it do this other thing. you get an entrepreneurial streak, kind of innovation alt-right mindset and before you know it, something doing one thing specifically could be made to do something else. probably the two key individuals early on would be matthew

baldwin and james long. was an ingenious manufacturer. initially oftion steam engines seems like policy machines come anything with a mechanical drive. that sets off a sequence of events. this dates to 1796 and designed by james and bill by the bowl and what company. what is important, the engines are efficient. you think about looking at a mine engine, this is a great example. this was used for pumping water. if you think of a canal system on various levels, you always have water running out of the

system, you have lots of vessels to go up or down. unit pumping engines in order to restore and maintain that system. now you're talking about a steam engine tethered to an infrastructure, which has its own needs, the equilibrium of a canal system is much more finely honed thing. engines like this would be a fundamental part. that's an interesting conceptual lead. a network power source associated with a large transportation and restructure. the earliest steam engines are imported from england. they're not a huge success. amount of the application of steam powered england had to do with mining. there was a lot of mining going on. a lot of what was extracted was very wood-based economy, and a lot of coal, a lot of iron or

visible on the surface. how do you apply steam power to a power? the biggest problem in the united states, it wasn't extracting things out of the ground. it was distance. traveling distance. transporting goods over distance. that's how it could say foothold in the united states. coastal vessels, river vessels like on the hudson, but more particularly, the mississippi and missouri and ohio. if you think about in terms of western rivers, that was a huge potential transportation infrastructure. it's very easy to get from pittsburgh down to new orleans. very difficult to go the other way unless you propel yourself. steam power gets a foothold here in a way that sells problems that are real. this was one of the earlier engines we have in a collection built in the united states. steam power gets adopted in the united states in a leaner affair than we've seen in england.

when enginesra were smaller, more efficient, built in a way that allows them to be used on river going craft. this is the example of one of those types of engines, horizontal engine, quite cheaply made. it's useful in a mill. stepping ashore from a boat and being useful in a manufacturing facility where wherever there's fuel. it's also a good example because if you look closely, you can see the valve mechanism. kind of classical collins. even the base has a paneling affect. flight will. -- fly wheel. it's red. that's the original color. it would've been in a back room. it's celebrating something. it's still what we do with technology, one way or another.

this is the evolution of an engine like that. you can barely see it. it's at the end. this was designed and built by george corliss, who the united states was celebrated as james watt was. this is pre-civil war technology. if you look at the fly wheel and the immensity of that, also understanding it is precisely manufactured. there's a massive belt that came off of this. it was a machine larger than this that there was a machine that had to make that. it is huge. in terms of reach, it's obviously massive, the moon and beyond. it's very wrong to think of mid-19th century manufacturing, whether europe or the united states, as being this pummeling, low-level, amateurish kind of affair. it was the high-tech of its day. involved,liss, he was like other manufacturers.

he took it too high extreme informs of standardized manufacturing. when people understand mass production, think of a moving assembly line, imagine the components of achievements that allow that to take place can all be traced to the 19th century with people trying to standardize screw threads, motion,, slaughterhouses were using disassembly lines to take care of meat processing. the resort and cans of interchangeability on a smaller scale desk there were certain kinds of inter--- there were certain kinds of interchangeability on a smaller scale. that starts to dovetail and converge in highland park. detroit was like many other cities in the united states. it was well-placed because of the skills that were here and the kind of capitalistic

entrepreneurial things that were here. you look at any new industry, taken on one way or another. what happens, you get one particular industry and it really holds sway. it was a critical mass effect that takes place once the moving assembly line and the approach to manufacturing and selling the cars that really changes the face of this whole area, actually makes it a real hotbed for automobile manufacturing. so, we're standing on an engine that was used to generate electricity for the highland park plant. it's not the first plant they produced model t's in. it was the first in quantities. it was where the assembly line was developed. it was a good site for many reasons for henry reason to refinedhighly manufacturing.

the powerhouse goes incrementally from a single engine to 1919. there are twin-engine's, to engine striving a single generator in the center. it was a magnificent power on woodward avenue, fully visible. temple, ifst like a you will, electricity generation. and it was fundamental to highland park's success. the level we're on originally when this was installed was street-level. everything below was out of sight. also, the original floor went up to the engine. this is kind of raised. originally, it sat on the ground, very firm, very solid looking. this is one of the nine engines generating electricity for the highland park plant for moving centerlines and all machines

being deployed there. it's a hybrid engine. this is a steam engine, compound steam engine, of our system established in the 19th century. side is internal combustion, two considerable engine again. this is an internal combustion engine. this is running very, very hot, like an engine in your car. it's got an elaborate cooling system. pistons are cool, swinging link you can see there. talk about how these two engines are integrated. one of the things they were trying to do, in addition to generate electricity, maximize efficiency. henry ford, who grew up in a farm, didn't care for farm animals, for farm work, he couldn't wait to get out of the farm, but you could never get the farm out of henry. it always seemed to inform all of these industrial enterprises.

waste andf reducing being independent, through judicious use of resources, that's an approach to design and manufacturing. the engines were built by a company from a house in ohio. the generator in the center was built out of new jersey. ford was a stickler for cleanliness, so these things worse kept in a high state of -- were kept in a high state of presentation. [no audio]

our network of distribution. of course, there is wind power, there's solar power. but huge portion of electricity we're using is generated through the medium of steam, usually through steam turbines, not steam engines. so it's part of our world now. and the world we're in right now, the expectations we have regarding technology, of availability of power, those are all stores that emerged from the engines and the equipment we have behind us. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> our cities tour staff recently traveled to detroit, michigan to learn about its rich history. to watch more video from detroit and other stops on our tour, visit c-span.org/citiestour. you're watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend on

c-span3. american history tv products are now available at the new c-span online store. go to c-span store.org to see what's new for american history tv, and check out all of the c-span products. june 6 was the 75th anniversary of the allied d-day invasion of nazi occupied normandy, france. next, world war ii army nurse grapes, talksopal about providing medical care to american soldiers wounded on the -- on d-day and how she learned to keep her emotion under control when treating traumatic injuries. the national world war ii museum in new orleans recorded the interview.