William Edward Boeing
| William Boeing | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
William Edward Boeing October 1, 1881 Detroit, Michigan |
| Died | September 28, 1956 (aged 74) Seattle, Washington |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Yale University |
| Occupation | Industrialist |
| Known for | Aircraft industry |
| Title | Founder of Boeing Company |
| Awards | Daniel Guggenheim Medal (1934) |
William Edward Boeing (/ˈboʊɪŋ/; October 1, 1881 – September 28, 1956) was an American aviation pioneer who founded The Boeing Company.
Boeing was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Catholic parents, Marie M. (Ortmann), from Vienna, Austria, and Wilhelm Böing, a wealthy mining engineer, from Hagen-Hohenlimburg, Germany. Boeing Sr. had made a fortune from timber lands and mineral rights near Lake Superior. Anglicizing his name to "William Boeing" after returning from being educated in Vevey, Switzerland in 1900 to attend Yale University, William Boeing left Yale before graduating, in 1903 to go into the lumber side of the business. He moved to Hoquiam, Washington state, and purchased extensive timberlands around Grays Harbor on the Pacific side of the Olympic Peninsula and also bought into lumber operations. He made a success of the venture, in part by shipping lumber to the East Coast via the new Panama Canal, generating funds that he would later apply to a very different business.
While president of Greenwood Timber Company, Boeing, who had experimented with boat design, traveled to Seattle, where, during the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1909, he saw a manned flying machine for the first time and became fascinated with aircraft. Boeing decided to take lessons at the Glenn L. Martin Flying School in Los Angeles and he purchased one of Martin's planes. Martin pilot James Floyd Smith traveled to Seattle to assemble Boeing's new Martin TA hydroaeroplane and continue to teach its owner to fly. Huge crates arrived by train, and Smith assembled the plane in a tent hangar erected on the shore of Lake Union. William Boeing became a pilot. Boeing's test pilot, Herb Munter, soon cracked up the plane. When he was told by Martin that replacement parts would not become available for months, Boeing told his friend Cdr. George Conrad Westervelt (USN), "We could build a better plane ourselves and build it faster". Westervelt agreed. They soon built and flew the B & W Seaplane, an amphibian biplane that had outstanding performance. Boeing decided to go into the aircraft business and bought an old boat works on the Duwamish River near Seattle for his factory.
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