Edsel Bryant Ford was an American business executive and philanthropist who was the only child of pioneering industrialist Henry Ford and his wife, Clara Jane Bryant Ford. He was the president of Ford Motor Company from 1919 until his death in 1943.

Henry Ford was an American industrialist and business magnate. As the founder of the Ford Motor Company he is credited as a pioneer in making automobiles affordable for middle-class Americans through the system that came to be known as Fordism. In 1911 he was awarded a patent for the transmission mechanism that would be used in the Model T and other automobiles.