He was the producer and purveyor of some of the first automobiles in America, but Ford’s genius lay in a slighly different area – mass production. He developed the assembly line method, standardized part manufacture for easy replacement, and created numerous other advancement to speed up the manufcaturing process. Upon finding that the fastest-drying paint on cars was black, he switched to that color exclusively. As he said later in his autobiography, his motto was “Any customer can have a car painted any colour he wants so long as it is black.”

On this day, January 13, in 1942, Ford was granted another patent on his far-reaching vision of mass production – for use of plastic body moulding.

Plastic, made from soybeans, was just recently discovered, but Ford already saw the material’s advantages. “Plastic parts,” his patent said, “produce quiet body, may be molded to exact sizes” and “may be readily replaced in case of an accident.” They were also comparable to steel in sturdiness – Ford demonstrated that famously by swinging an axe at the trunk of one of his Fords. Reportedly, after two swings the trunk was fine but the axe broke.