William E. Boeing

He had his first solo and then received his private pilot's license while attending U of W at the age of 20.

The school continues its prestigious aviation curriculum today, just as it did almost 100 years ago, thanks to funding from William Boeing, a name familiar even to the non-aviation fans listening to this podcast, I'm sure.

Mr. Boeing was the founder of, of course, the Boeing Company in 1917.

The aviation program at the university, under the guidance of the university's Department of Aeronautical Engineering, began in 1929.

So let's start right at the beginning.

So Boeing was founded in nineteen sixteen by William Boeing, who was captivated by the rise of aviation.

These were very much fabric planes, I think they used to call them.

Uh, and he started out delivering mail, and then obviously the World Wars came along and really got into shift... a, shifting from wooden and fabric to metal aircraft and then supporting the government in a World War II effort.

After all the lonely and authoritarian years in Switzerland, one thing is clear for Wilhelm: he's an American.

He signs his name as William Boeing.

[pencil scribbling] William enrolls at the elite university Yale, but one year before graduation, he drops out and takes a steamship west to Washington State.

[steam hissing]

[crowd murmuring] In many ways, it must have been very similar to Wilhelm Boeing's, uh, you know, experiences back, uh, in Michigan when he first came over as an immigrant.

I mean, for a kid who'd been raised in, in luxury, sent to boarding schools, uh, uh, had gone to Yale, it must've been a shock.

At about the same time on the East Coast of America, thousands of miles away from William Boeing, and at first unnoticed by the world, a technical quantum leap, a revolution that would change the world is taking place.

[bright music] Brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright have been studying flying devices for years.