He had a lifelong friendship with Thomas Edison
One of the interesting facts about Henry Ford is he had a lifelong friendship with Thomas Edison. He and Clara returned to Detroit in 1891, where he was employed by the Edison Illuminating Company as an engineer. He advanced swiftly through the ranks, and two years later he was named chief engineer. Being on call around-the-clock for his position at Edison, Ford used his sporadic free time to work on developing a gasoline-powered horseless vehicle, or automobile. He finished the "Quadricycle," which he dubbed it, in 1896. It had a light metal frame with four bicycle wheels and a two-cylinder, four-horsepower gasoline engine.
When Ford met Thomas Edison in 1896, Edison endorsed his experiments and pushed Ford to create and construct more cars. Ford left the Detroit firm in 1899 to start his own auto manufacturing company with the money provided by his investors. The two men began a lifetime relationship as Ford rose to fame and fortune over time. They were no longer neighbors in 1916 when Ford bought a property close to Edison's vacation house in Fort Myers, Florida. Additionally, Ford and Edison made a series of camping trips in Ford vehicles between 1914 and 1924 while touring the eastern United States. As a result of the vacations, Ford automobiles and Firestone tires received publicity with headlines like "Millions of Dollars Worth of Brains off on a Vacation."
