Hey, prime members. You can listen to business wars at free on Amazon music. Download the app today.

It's around midnight June 4th, 1896.

In a dank shed behind a Detroit row house, a skinny man makes the final adjustments on a machine.

He's been crafting out of bicycle parts wood and nuts and bolts from the hardware store.

He's 32 years old, short on money and big on dreams. His name is Henry Ford.

And he calls his invention a quadrace cycle.

It's basically a bench mounted on four bicycle wheels with a little motor behind the bench that will generate the power equivalent of four horses.

The quadrace cycle has taken him six years to build and tonight he'll road test it.

Henry wheels his vehicle out of the shed that smells of gasoline and oil and into the rain.

His wife Clara waits patiently holding an umbrella over her and their two-year-old child Edsel.

Henry sets the choke and the fly wheel starts spinning.

The engine sputters and roars to life.

Here I go. Henry, be careful.

Whoever got anywhere by being careful.

He waves to Clara as he begins his drive through the dark streets of Detroit, his quadrace cycle making popping sounds.

The vehicle has two driving speeds, no reverse, no brakes and poor steering ability.

A doorbell button serves as a horn.

As he picks up speed, he feels the wind blowing through his hair.

He has no idea that the age of coal and steam is ending and that he'll lead a revolution in transportation.

That sound of the four-horsepower motor, why that's the sound of a new machine age.

As he rolls by people wave, here comes that crazy Henry Ford.

Ford mutters to himself.

...