To listen to this post, click here – 

On this day in 1908 Henry Ford introduced the Model T Ford, the first mass produced car.

It went on to sell over 15 million. Ford was able to achieve this by developing his car assembly line through mass production, the first significant industrialist to do so. He got the idea for an assembly line for cars by observing the meat packing industry.

Brought up on a farm, Henry Ford realised the changes that he was causing and assembled one of the largest collections of pre-mass production machinery in the United States. Industrialisation can have negative as well as positive effects on life.

Almost exactly one hundred years before the Model T was produced, the English poet William Blake was expressing his concerns for the English countryside in this famous poem – Jerusalem:

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England’s pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England’s green & pleasant Land

Today I will strive to understand, rather than to fear change.