The Boeing Company Was Founded
On this day · 15 July 1916
A Seattle timber baron turned a lakeside boathouse into a seaplane workshop, launching what became the world's largest aerospace company.
On July 15, 1916, wealthy timber merchant William E. Boeing incorporated the Pacific Aero Products Company in Seattle, Washington. He had caught the flying bug after a barnstorming ride and, frustrated by the flimsy aircraft of the day, decided to build better ones himself, working out of a former boathouse on the shore of Lake Union.
The new firm grew from a seaplane Boeing developed with U.S. Navy officer Conrad Westervelt, the twin-float B&W. To staff his shop, Boeing in 1916 hired the Chinese-born aeronautical engineer Wong Tsu, one of the few formally trained aircraft designers in the country.
A pleasure-flying hobby became one of the great industrial enterprises of the twentieth century.
The following year the company was renamed the Boeing Airplane Company. World War I and later airmail and airliner contracts propelled its growth, and over the next century Boeing produced era-defining aircraft from the B-17 and 747 to modern jetliners, becoming a cornerstone of global aviation.
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