August 12: The first Ford Model T comes together on this date in 1908

Revolutions rarely happen all at once, and such was the case for the Ford Model T. The first production version of Henry Ford's vision of a low-priced car for the masses came together by hand at his Piquette Plant in Detroit on this date in 1908 — but it wouldn't leave the factory until late September, and the first few thousand Model Ts were a melange of test parts. It wasn't until later that year that Ford would begin his march to standardize all the parts on the T and build them in massive numbers — eventually making Ford and the Model T the car that put the world on wheels. Today, a nonprofit group has preserved the Piquette building, one of the few early auto factories to survive: