AVIATION
JANUARY 24, 2022
Fly Away With Boeing History
Fly away with Boeing history, a giant company that manufacture airplanes and aerospace system with more than a hundred years of experience.
Boeing’s origin dates back to 1916 when William Edward Boeing founded the Pacific Airplane Company on July 15, 1916 in Seattle, Washington, United States. Boeing was an American timber merchant and was fascinated with airplanes.
In 1910 he bought the Heath Shipyard a wooden boat manufacturing facility which would become his first airplane factory.
On April 26, 1917 Boeing changed the name to the Boeing Airplane Company. It was later incorporated in Delaware on July 19, 1934.
Boeing’s first plane was the Boeing model 1 also known as the B & W Seaplane. It was a single-engine biplane seaplane aircraft and carried the initials of its designers : William E Boeing and Lt Conrad Westervelt of US Navy.
In 1917 the company moved its operations to Boeing’s Duwamish boatworks and became Boeing Plant 1. The first engineer was Wong Tsu from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) who designed the Boeing Model C, the first financial success plane. US Navy liked the plane and ordered 50 more when US declared war and entered the World War I.
During World War II, Boeing built a large number of B-17 and B-29 bombers. They ranked 12th among United States corporations in the value of wartime production contracts. In 1944 the production had been scale up that 350 planes were built each month.
In 1966, Boeing started to manufacture the legendary Boeing 747. It was a monumental engineering and included building the world’s biggest factory to build the 747 at Everett, Washington. It is a plant which is the size of 40 football fields.
In 1967, Boeing introduced a short and medium range airliner, the twin engine Boeing 737. This serie has since become the best selling commercial jet aircraft in aviation history.
Today, Boeing is the world’s largest aerospace company and leading manufacturer of airplane and defense systems. They produce commercial and military aircrafts, weapon systems, strategic defense and intelligence systems and related products and services. The US government is one of Boeing’s largest customers.
Their passenger planes, such as Boeing 747 and Boeing 737 are the most common jets used by airlines. Recently the defense, space and security revenue have overtaken commercial airplanes revenue as the main source.
When Boeing shifted from propeller planes to jets in the late fifties they began with new numbering for the next generation series, so they took the number 7 for the starting number.
Boeing planes named with number 7 was a pure marketing strategy. As the jet plane was about to revolutionize the way people traveled, their marketing team felt that the name 700 sounded boring, uninteresting. So they suggested changing the name to 707 just to make it sounded much better.
Like pi, the number is familiar to many engineers : 7, 0 and 7 are the first three digits in both the sine and cosine of 45 degrees. It’s all just about gimmick of marketing.
In US, Boeing receives subsidies from NASA and Department of Defense programmes and contracts (estimation of $22 billion) as well as the Department of Commerce and the Department of Labor.
Boeing competitors in the market today including Airbus, Raytheon Technologies, Lockheed Martin, KEYW Corporation and BAE Systems.
GE (General Electric) Aviation is the primary engine maker for the Boeing and has supplied engines for new Boeing airplanes and playing dominant role in launching their new models.
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