distributors, stores, manufactures, restaurants etc these respond directly to those desires. One of the most important decisions we make concerns the way we move ourselves and our commodities. Our system of transportation greatly affects how we use energy, develop technology , affect the economy and environment, and shape our social relationships.When Henry Ford was starting out on his remarkable career in Detroit, a bustling town which gave full vent to the creative energies of some amazing innovators, the economy of was showing enormous cracks. But at the time, even the most prescient of fortune-tellers would have had trouble forecasting what was about to happen. Carriage and buggy-whip makers were still turning handsome profits in a growing market, and the few cars on the dusty, unpaved roads were little more than fanciful toys for the adventurous rich. Some of the communications technologies pioneered toward the end of the nineteenth century must have seemed just as esoteric to the leading financiers and industrialists of the day, who were doing fine bankrolling the traditional industries they knew so well. Yet, within a few short years, Ford and others would shape consumer products out of the new technologies that would set in motion an awesome economic transformation.Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile. Nor did he invent mass production or the assembly line. Ford is famous because he took these existing concepts and incorporated them into a n efficient, large-scale system of manufacturing inexpensive, reliable cars."I'm going to democratize the automobile." Ford said, "and when I'm through, everybody will have one." (Chase, 1997, 47)Cars have made a big difference in the way communities have been designed. Street layout, the design of homes, and traffic laws have changed as methods of transportation has changed throughout history.Automobiles are responsible for more than half the airborne pollution in the western world. Many ...
