Though the concept of assembly line production – where instead of one individual crafting all parts of an object a team of individuals would craft one part each and then assemble the final product – existed as early as 200 BC, most things were still manufactured the craftsman way during Henry Ford’s day. The technological breakthroughs of the Industrial Revolution enabled the first real assembly line, built by the Ford Automobile Company, to come into being.

On this day, January 14, 1914, Ford introduced his first full-fledged assembly line in his production plant in Michigan. It wasn’t yet to create a whole car – just a small component of it. A conveyor was looped around motors, and 29 workers stood along its length, each attaching one single part of the component. Even in the modest trial, production time dropped dramatically, and Ford instituted the technique at other points.

A strong believer in the workplace providing benefits to the workers, Ford instituted a “five-dollar-day” in his factories. Workers over 22 years of age would get five dollars — the equivalent of about $110 today — for eight hours of work a day if they proved themselves “sober, saving, steady, industrious,” and that their earnings “will not be wasted in riotous living.” Despite criticism and predictions of ruinous losses, Ford doubled his profits in just two years after the change.