As Ford Motor Company honors its 118th anniversary this week, we’re going back to 1953 to revisit the company’s semicentennial celebration, which included the work of Norman Rockwell, some of the best-known national publications and entertainment acts of the time, as well as a two-hour television special.

Ford Motor Company was incorporated on June 16, 1903, in Detroit – later, a Michigan state historical marker would be used to mark the company’s 75th anniversary at that spot. On the evening prior to the company’s 50th anniversary, an estimated 16 million people tuned in to watch “50 Years Forward on the American Road,” which aired on NBC and CBS.

The film had been screened for managers, dealers and their wives, and was shown to employees and their families at Ford family birthday parties throughout the summer of 1953. Employees, suppliers and customers also received a copy of “Ford at Fifty.” More than a history book, it was a forward-looking pictorial of the company. They also received special editions of Ford Times and Lincoln-Mercury Times.

Rockwell had been commissioned to illustrate a 1953 calendar (see below) that featured an image of Henry Ford at work on his first vehicle, the Quadricycle, in 1896, years before he and 11 other investors established Ford Motor Company. The calendar featured other nostalgic Rockwell paintings of Ford and American life.

Issues of Time, Life and Cosmopolitan magazines also featured stories about the company and its history. With a combined readership of some 20 million subscribers, these publications also ran “American Road” ads featuring Rockwell’s Quadricycle image, which was reproduced 24 million times that year in various forms, including a jigsaw puzzle. Rockwell also produced a charcoal rendering of the profiles of Henry Ford, Edsel Ford and Henry Ford II, which became the official symbol of the anniversary. It was re-created for use on a commemorative medallion by a New York-based sculptor.

The reopening of the Ford Rotunda visitor center, for the first time since World War II, was marked with a ceremony two years in the making. The circular building, illuminated by gold-colored floodlights, was decorated as a birthday cake with 50 candles lining the roof. As many as 20,000 people are believed to have attended the rain-soaked party. Meanwhile, another crowd estimated at 150,000 turned out for a block party in downtown Detroit organized by metro Detroit Ford dealers. Headlined by comedian Danny Thomas, the event featured other big name acts of that era.

The biggest name to honor the company’s 50th anniversary never actually stepped foot in the Detroit area for the celebration. President Dwight D. Eisenhower appeared via closed-circuit TV from the White House in late-May 1953 to dedicate Ford’s new Dearborn research and engineering campus, which had been completed earlier that year. In another event, the company received a floral re-creation of its first vehicle, the original 1903 Model A, as a gift from the Society of American Florists.