André-Gustave CitroënBorn 5 Feb 1878; died 3 Jul 1935 at age 57.French engineer and industrialist who introduced Henry Ford's methods of mass production to the European automobile industry. In 1908 he helped the Mors automobile firm increase its production from 125 cars to 1,200 cars per year. At the outbreak of World War I Citroën persuaded the French army of the need to mass-produce munitions. In 1915 he built a munitions plant whose production of shells reached 55,000 per day. Upon this success he was given the responsibility of organizing the supplying of all French munitions plants with certain vital raw materials. After the war Citroën converted his original arms factory into a plant to mass-produce a small, inexpensive automobile; the first Citroën car came off the assembly line in 1919. |
