When was Boeing founded?

William Edward Boeing, son of a timber and iron businessman, took up an interest in flying after attending an air show in Los Angeles in 1910. Together with naval engineer George Conrad Westervelt, he designed a biplane seaplane, the B&W, which first flew in June 1916 over Seattle's Lake Union. A month later, on 15 July, Boeing incorporated the Pacific Aero Products Company in a former shipyard on the banks of the Duwamish River, the building known as the Red Barn, now preserved at the Museum of Flight. In April 1917 the company was renamed Boeing Airplane Company.

The United States' entry into the First World War brought the first major contract: 50 Model C trainers for the Navy. In the 1920s the company lived off fighter aircraft and airmail, operated through its own airline, Boeing Air Transport. In 1929 the whole group became United Aircraft and Transport Corporation, which built aircraft, Pratt & Whitney engines and propellers and operated them through its airlines. A 1934 law banned that integration and forced the group to split: United Airlines was born, and William Boeing left the company.

The 1933 Boeing 247 and the Second World War's B-17 and B-29 bombers cemented the company's standing in Seattle. The 707 and 747 followed, along with the merger with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Headquarters moved to Chicago in 2001 and to Arlington, Virginia, in 2022, though commercial aircraft manufacturing remains in Everett, Renton and Charleston.