The Boeing company was founded
On this day · 15 July 1916
On 15 July 1916, timber heir William Boeing incorporated a small Seattle seaplane venture that became an aviation giant.
On 15 July 1916, William E. Boeing filed articles of incorporation in Seattle for the Pacific Aero Products Company — the modest beginning of what would become Boeing, one of the world’s two dominant aircraft manufacturers.
Boeing, heir to a Midwestern timber fortune and a Yale-educated engineer at heart, had caught the flying bug only a few years earlier. With Navy officer Conrad Westervelt, he designed a twin-float seaplane, the B&W, which first flew in June 1916, just weeks before the company was formally registered. He renamed the firm the Boeing Airplane Company the following year.
What began as a Seattle workshop building floatplanes grew, across a century, into a colossus of commercial jets, military aircraft, and spacecraft.
A timber heir’s side project in a lakeside hangar became half of global aviation’s duopoly.
The original incorporation date, 15 July, remains the company’s official birthday.
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