American industrialist (1863–1947) whose moving assembly line and mass production of the automobile are the explicit model behind Fuller's argument that houses should be produced industrially, like cars.

Henry Ford

American industrialist (1863–1947), founder of the Ford Motor Company, whose moving assembly line and the Model T made the automobile a mass-produced consumer good and reshaped twentieth-century industry.

Ford's system drove the price of a complex machine down through standardization, scale, and flow production, proving that sophisticated goods could be made affordable to ordinary people.

Relationship to Fuller

Relationship: forebear (mass production). Ford is the direct model behind one of R. Buckminster Fuller's central arguments: that shelter should be industrially produced like automobiles — designed once, mass-manufactured, and shipped — rather than hand-built on site. The Dymaxion House's mast-hung, factory-made scheme is Fuller applying Ford's logic to housing; Fuller repeatedly invoked the automobile industry as the standard the building industry failed to meet.

Sources

Compiled from general knowledge and corpus mentions; no single work anchors this figure.

Henry Ford

Henry Ford

Relationship to Fuller

See Also

Sources