SAT作文素材25：HENRY FORD_SAT写作

SAT作文素材25：HENRY FORD

　　So Henry turned his attention elsewhere. When he was twelve he became almost obsessively interested in clocks and watches. Like most children before and since, he became fascinated by peering into the workings of a timepiece and watching the movement of ratchets and wheels, springs and pendulums. Soon he was repairing clocks and watches for friends, working at a bench he built in his bedroom.

　　In 1876, Henry suffered a grievous blow. Mary died in childbirth. There was now no reason for him to stay on the farm， and he resolved to get away as soon as he could. Three years later, he took a job as a mechanic in Detroit. By this time steam engines had joined clocks and watches as objects of Henrys fascination.

　　According to an account given by Henry himself, he first saw a steam-driven road locomotive one day in 1877 when he and his father, in their horse-drawn farm wagon, met one on the road. The locomotive driver stopped to let the wagon pass, and Henry jumped down and went to him with a barrage of technical questions about the engines performance. From then on, for a while, Henry became infatuated with steam engines. Making and installing them was the business of the Detroit workshop that he joined at the age of sixteen.

　　A chance meeting with an old co-worker led to a job for Henry as an engineer at the Edison Detroit Electricity Company, the leading force in another new industry. Power stations were being built and cables being laid in all of the United States major cities; the age of electricity had dawned. But although Henry quickly learned the ropes of his new job so quickly that within four years he was chief engineer at the Detroit power plant his interest in fuel engines had come to dominate his life. At first in the kitchen of his and Claras home, and later in a shed at the back of their house, he spent his spare time in the evenings trying to build an engine to his own design.