Mass production starts other than with cars

In otl the mass production line was kind of founded by the Ford motor company.

Had cars been less significant (better public transport different population patterns in US) what could have started this pattern?
 
In otl the mass production line was kind of founded by the Ford motor company.

Had cars been less significant (better public transport different population patterns in US) what could have started this pattern?
Both Oldsmobile automobile and Hart-Parr Tractors were doing assembly line work before Ford, Henry just added the conveyor system to what had been done before
 
What’s the POD? Whatever asshole comes up with the idea of “buy public buses and trolleys and let them turn to shit so people will HAVE to buy cars?” has a sudden attack of conscience and runs off to India to join a mountaintop monastery instead and no one else thinks of this idea?
 
The United States at that time still depended upon the Railroads or Ocean transport for getting around the big big Nation. No real paved roads yet. Henry Fords success was greatly aided by cheap fuel and a booming economy. The automobile transport infrastructure came as a result of the inexpensive doable family or privately owned automobile.

Most Americans lived on the farm away from all the railroad connections. Lots of different things had to come together to enable Henry Ford's success. But what made it all work was the tremendous migration of Americans off the farm into the suburban populated areas. Thus the created need of the automobile. The rest as they say is just history.
 
Ford did not invent mass production. That was developed a century earlier, during the Industrial Revolution. His innovation was the assembly line, though he was not quite the first to employ it.
 

Kaze

Banned
How about guns or ships? Guns with Eli Whitney 1793. Ships Venice - Middle Ages / Renaissance.
 
The United States at that time still depended upon the Railroads or Ocean transport for getting around the big big Nation. No real paved roads yet. Henry Fords success was greatly aided by cheap fuel and a booming economy. The automobile transport infrastructure came as a result of the inexpensive doable family or privately owned automobile.

Most Americans lived on the farm away from all the railroad connections. Lots of different things had to come together to enable Henry Ford's success. But what made it all work was the tremendous migration of Americans off the farm into the suburban populated areas. Thus the created need of the automobile. The rest as they say is just history.


In 1904 Iowa had 102,448 miles of road. Only Missouri and Texas had more miles of road. The problem was that only 1.62 percent of those roads were surfaced with gravel or other materials.

In 1913, Iowa was #6 in the nation in auto registration, despite have no paved roads between towns til 1918

69.4% of the State's population 2.2M lived outside of cities in 1914. After WWI, Iowa was ranked 4th in the Nation for amount of rail at 9,994 miles, with and additional 720 miles being electrified.
But auto sales kept going up.
 
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