On this day in 1916, William Boeing and George Conrad Westervelt incorporate Pacific Aero Products (later renamed Boeing). Like many, William Boeing was the son of immigrants who had recently immigrated to the United States.
In 1890, when William was eight, his father died of influenza and his mother soon moved to Europe. Marie enrolled William Jr. and his sister at schools in Switzerland. William Boeing’s mother remarried in 1898 and moved to Virginia. He enrolled at Yale University in 1898, studying in the engineering department but dropped out in 1903 to go into the lumber business.
In 1903, at age 22, Boeing moved to Hoquiam, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest. He prospered in the lumber business during a nationwide construction boom. He was successful in the venture, in part by shipping lumber to the East Coast via the then-new Panama Canal, generating funds that he would later apply to a very different business.
During the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1909, he saw a piloted flying machine for the first time and became fascinated with aircraft. Boeing took flying lessons and purchased a plane which he assembled. When it was damaged and replacement parts were not available Boeing told his friend, Commander George Conrad Westervelt of the US Navy, “We could build a better plane ourselves and build it faster.”
Portrait of Boeing
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Today is the birthday, in 1946, of American singer Linda Ronstadt who had the 1975 US No.1 single ‘You’re No Good’, and the 1989 UK No.2 single with Aaron Neville, ‘Don’t Know Much’ plus over 15 other US Top 40 hits. She has earned 11 Grammy Awards, three American Music Awards, two Academy of Country Music awards, an Emmy Award, and an ALMA Award. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp9G0zkorio
