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list was imposing in its demanding simplicity—quality materials, low price tag, uncomplicated mechanical operation, sufficient power, reliability, adequate control, inexpensive operating costs—and it found a focus in a new car model. 3
    The first sign of Ford's new project came in late 1906. One morning he asked Charles Sorensen, supervisor of the pattern department and assistant production manager at the Piquette Avenue factory, to come along as they walked up to the north end of the third floor, which had a small space unoccupied by machinery or workmen. “Charlie, I'd like to have a room built in right here,” Ford said. “You put up a wall around this and put a door in big enough to run a car in and out and get a good lock on this door…. We're going to start a completely new job.” A short time later, Ford corralled Joseph Galamb, the company's chief design engineer, and told him to install a design board and a blackboard in this special room. He issued a final directive: the room was to be off-limits to everyone except Sorensen, Galamb, and their key assistants. 4
    In 1907, the small group took its first steps toward bringing to life Henry Ford's dream of a universal car. Design work on various compo-nents—the engine, transmission, chassis, suspension, body—moved along briskly as Galamb, along with his assistant, Eugene Farkas, put in long hours in the experimental room. Ford, however, stood at the center of theprocess. According to Galamb's description, he and Farkas would draw designs on the blackboard while their boss observed intently from a special seat:
    Mr. Ford wanted to get a look at everything where he could see from his big rocking chair. He had a rocking chair in there of his mother's. He brought it up for good luck. The chair was a good, comfortable rocking chair and he would sit in it for hours studying the blackboard to see what we were doing and talking to us. He would give instructions when we were drawing on the blackboard…. He was right in there changing things that he didn't like. He followed everybody closely. 5
    Once designs had been refined and approved by Ford, Sorensen stepped in. Because blueprints were never Ford's strong suit (he preferred the finite to the abstract), he demanded a physical model of the part or component at hand so he could see it, touch it, evaluate it. “Everything they were designing, I would make a model of it and then Mr. Ford would look it over,” Sorensen recalled. The group would spend hours whittling away at the model, calculating its strength, efficiency, and efficacy before finally approving a final design. According to Sorensen, amid this painstaking process of piecing together the right parts for the universal car, Ford's enthusiasm grew steadily. “Almost daily I would hear the same comments from him,” the production supervisor related. “‘Charlie, we are on the right track here. We're going to get a car now that we can make in great volume and get the price way down.’ ” 6
    For months, Ford, Galamb, and Farkas worked late into the evening, altering and improving their designs. Then development moved into another stage when the small experimental room gained a milling machine, drill press, and lathe. Parts for the new car's chassis were machined, engine components cast outside were assembled, and everything was examined, tested, and modified. Once again, Ford dominated the proceedings. “Mr. Ford spent a lot of time in that department. He was in there every day,” reported the mechanic Charles J. Smith. “Our job was to get the advance designs, the ideas that Mr. Ford and others would bring in to us, and actually put them together and test them. We would machine them all up, even get the castings and everything, and take them and build them in a car, and take the car out and test it.” 7
    As this process of brainstorming, experimentation, and testing unfolded, the centrality of vanadium steel for Ford's universal car became evident.