Henry Ford revolutionized the automotive industry by developing the assembly line process for building his cars. A little interesting sidebar to this story is his selling of charcoal briquettes. Ford did not invent the charcoal briquette but was the first to mass produce and sell. He had a lot of leftover scrap wood/sawdust from his sawmill that made lumber for his Model T's. He found out adding tar and cornstarch to charcoal and pressed would make briquettes. Edward G Kingsford was a real estate agent who was related to Ford by marriage to a cousin Minnie. He ended up running Fords charcoal briquette plant. Fast forward 100 years and you may have a blue bag on your patio.
4 comments:
Gotta admire the man's ingenuity. Turning by-product into profit.
Dear Zio, Ford was an innovator for his time. I am grateful for charcoal briquettes. I do not think Ford would be received very well in this cancel culture society. He was anti-labor and a bigot but I still use Kingsford charcoal briquettes.
I admire his ingenuity Chiliebrown but not necessarily the man. And yes Kingsford is still my preferred grilling fuel. For smoking I really liked the Weber briquettes but sadly those are no more :(
I talked about this in my CBBQA history presentations. There was a marketing synergy- on the way to your camping trip in your Ford, stop by the dealership for a bag of charcoal.
Also a local angle- my old office is next door to Clorox HQ; the new one is across the street.
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