The Ford Barn

mhsprecher · 03-25-2015, 03:51 AM

I am reading Wheels for the World by Douglas Brinkley. I have read a number of other books on Ford that I have enjoyed and I am loving this one, too.

As we all know, Henry Ford was an experimenter and, according to Brinkley, was an early proponent of ethanol.

"Throughout World War I Henry Ford, while settling into Fair Lane, caused eyebrows to be raised as he searched for a substitute for gasoline. Conducting agricultural experiments in Dearborn ...he began his quest to have Model Ts and Fordson tractors run on denatured alcohol....Ford believed that mashed cornstalks or squeezed German potatoes could get 15 percent more power than petroleum. 'Gasoline is going-alcohol is coming,' he told a reporter for the Detroit News in 1916. 'It is coming to stay, too for it's in unlimited supply. And we might as well get ready for it now. All the world is waiting for a substitute for gasoline. When that is gone, there will be no more gasoline, and long before that time, the prices of gasoline will have risen to a point where it will be too expensive to burn as a motor fuel. The day is not far distant when, for every one of those barrels of gasoline, a barrel of alcohol must be substituted.' " ... "If only Model Ts could run on grains for vegetable substances, he reasoned, the farmers could profit instead of Standard Oil."

Wheels for the World by Douglas Brinkley pp 220-221.

03-25-2015, 03:51 AM	#1
mhsprecher Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2012 Location: Takoma Park, MD Posts: 2,963	Henry Ford on Ethanol I am reading Wheels for the World by Douglas Brinkley. I have read a number of other books on Ford that I have enjoyed and I am loving this one, too. As we all know, Henry Ford was an experimenter and, according to Brinkley, was an early proponent of ethanol. "Throughout World War I Henry Ford, while settling into Fair Lane, caused eyebrows to be raised as he searched for a substitute for gasoline. Conducting agricultural experiments in Dearborn ...he began his quest to have Model Ts and Fordson tractors run on denatured alcohol....Ford believed that mashed cornstalks or squeezed German potatoes could get 15 percent more power than petroleum. 'Gasoline is going-alcohol is coming,' he told a reporter for the Detroit News in 1916. 'It is coming to stay, too for it's in unlimited supply. And we might as well get ready for it now. All the world is waiting for a substitute for gasoline. When that is gone, there will be no more gasoline, and long before that time, the prices of gasoline will have risen to a point where it will be too expensive to burn as a motor fuel. The day is not far distant when, for every one of those barrels of gasoline, a barrel of alcohol must be substituted.' " ... "If only Model Ts could run on grains for vegetable substances, he reasoned, the farmers could profit instead of Standard Oil." Wheels for the World by Douglas Brinkley pp 220-221.