The American industrialist Henry Ford is famous for inventing the Model T Ford, the world’s first affordable mass produced car. The Model T Ford was not Henry Ford’s most astonishing invention. In 1914, Ford shocked the world by announcing that he was raising the rate of pay in his plants to $5 an hour. This more than doubled his workers’ wages. At the same time, Ford decided to limit the number of hours that his workers were allowed to work. Initially, he limited his workers to six eight hour shifts from Monday to Saturday, which he further reduced in 1926 to five eight hour shifts from Monday to Friday. In doing so, Ford invented both the modern conception of the working week and the idea of leisure time.