A common myth is that Henry Ford invented the automobile. This is not true. While he may not have invented the automobile, he did offer a new way of manufacturing a large number of vehicles. This method of production was the moving assembly line.
The most common feature of this assembly line was the conveyer belt. The belts were in use within other industries, including slaughterhouses. Moving the product to the worker seemed like a better use of time and resources. The Ford Motor Company team decided to try to implement the moving assembly line in the automobile manufacturing process.
After much trial and error, in 1913 Henry Ford and his employees successfully began using this innovation at our Highland Park assembly plant. What made this assembly line unique was the movement element. Henry Ford famously remarked that the use of the moving assembly line allowed for the work to be taken to workers rather than the worker moving to and around the vehicle. The vehicle began to be pulled down the line and built step-by-step. At first it was pulled by a rope, and later it became a simple moving chain mechanism. The new process made it so that the Model T was now built in only ninety minutes.
See The Moving Assembly Line and the Five-Dollar Workday: