Henry Ford’s 1893 Kitchen Sink Engine

Original Article Source: Posted on December 5, 2019 by MCG

In Ford Motor Company lore, the date is held to be December 24, 1893, Christmas Eve. The place was the kitchen of Henry and Clara Ford, in their apartment at 58 Bagley Avenue near present-day downtown Detroit. Henry worked the ignition and and spun the flywheel, while Clara fed the gasoline into the intake valve one and two drips at a time. When the simple, hand-built engine sputtered to life over the sink, Ford’s earliest dream was realized and his remarkable automotive career began.

The story of Ford’s kitchen sink engine is equal parts fact and folklore, raising many questions, starting with the date of its creation. In the photo above taken at Ford’s Greenfield Village many years after the fact, the claimed date of invention is 1887, which is unlikely in the extreme. Ford made a habit of backdating his historical accomplishments, both to strengthen his legal case against the Selden patent and to burnish his own image as an automotive pioneer. Indeed, many folks believed that Ford had personally invented the automobile, and while he never made that claim himself, he seldom went out of his way to debunk it. The first car many Americans ever saw or rode in was a Ford, and in that sense the idea was true enough.

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