His first job, at the Michigan Car Works, lasted only six days, but he soon found another one at the machine shop of James Flowers and Bros., where he became a machinist’s apprentice. In this shop he learned about engines, and about the tools and machines that made parts for other machines. At night he repaired watches in the jewelry shop of James Magill. A few months later, he left the Flowers’ shop to work at the Dry Dock Engine Company where he had greater opportunity to learn about steam engines. When his apprenticeship was over, he became Henry Ford, the machinist. Instead of continuing to work at his trade in the shops of Detroit, he went back to Dearborn. William Ford lent his son eighty acres of timbered land, and Henry Ford set up a saw mill. During the harvesting season, he operated an engine for a group of threshers. He also found time to travel about southern Michigan repairing Westinghouse portable steam engines. Henry Ford was also continuing his education. For several months he attended a business college in Detroit, all the while tinkering with machines and learning still more about tools. He had an opportunity to repair, and thus become familiar with, a “gas engine” at an iron works in Detroit. As an apprentice, he had read about such an engine, invented by a German named Otto, which received its power from an explosion inside the cylinder. Several Americans were also thinking about this “internal combustion” engine. In 1888 he married Clara Bryant, whose father owned a farm near the Ford homestead in Dearborn. After their marriage, the young couple built a “square” house nearby, where they lived for nearly three years. During this time, Henry farmed as well as repaired and operated steam engines. In 1891, Henry Ford ended his days on the farm by moving back to Detroit, where he was employed by the Edison Illuminating Company, one of several companies that furnished electricity to the city. Detroit was changing—in the days of his apprenticeship, there had been no electric lights for homes and streets and shops. Henry’s new job was to keep the steam engines running at the Willis Avenue power station. The year 1893 was a good year for Henry Ford, in spite of the fact that it was a hard year of panic for many other people. At the World’s Fair in Chicago that summer, he was able to add to his knowledge of gas engines and “horseless carriages.” Late in the year, his son Edsel was born. Shortly after this, his pay was raised and he was transferred to the main plant of the Illuminating Company. To be nearer his new job, the Ford family moved to 58 Bagley Avenue in Detroit. In the back yard of the new home was a brick shed; here Henry set up his tools and continued his tinkering with gas engines.