Industry
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Completed in 1904, the Piquette Avenue Plant was the first factory built by the Ford Motor Company. Designed by the Detroit firm of Field, Hinchman and Smith, it produced Models B, C, F, K, N, R, S, and T between 1904 and 1910, a period when Ford became the world’s largest producer of automobiles. In 1908, Henry Ford, C. Harold Wills, Joseph Galamb, and others designed the Model T there as the first automobile built for the masses. Seeking more efficiency, Ford experimented at Piquette with aspects of the moving assembly line, but new technology and demand for the Model T made the plant inadequate. In 1910 production moved to a much larger plant in Highland Park, where the moving assembly line was implemented, and the Studebaker Corporation purchased the Piquette Avenue Plant in 1911.
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Detroit, Michigan · United States
