If several thousand of these watches could be made, each one exactly alike, they would cost only thirty-seven cents apiece.

"Then," said Ford to himself, "everybody could have one." He had fairly elaborated his plans to start a factory on this basis when his father's illness called him back to the farm.
This was about 1880; Ford's next conspicuous appearance in Detroit was about 1892.

This appearance was not only conspicuous; it was exceedingly noisy.

Detroit now knew him as the pilot of a queer affair that whirled and lurched through her thoroughfares, making as much disturbance as a freight train.

In reading his technical journals Ford had met many descriptions of horseless carriages; the consequence was that he had again broken away from the farm, taken a job at $45 a month in a Detroit machine shop, and devoted his evenings to the production of a gasoline engine.