![]() Tiring of little hops, he gunned the engine, lifted the craft into the sky and flew over the city to Lake Washington. Over the next few days, under Boeing’s orders, the pilot taxied the plane around the lake to test the controls. The test pilot was late arriving at Lake Union, so an impatient Boeing hopped into the plane and took it for a brief flight skimming over the water. Boeing president William Allen asked an industry guest for one of his heart pills at that moment, and called Johnston into his office the next day for a stern reprimand.īill Boeing's own heart probably fluttered in June 1916 during testing of the first plane he and a friend designed. In a headline news event in August 1954, test pilot Tex Johnston put the Boeing Dash-80 prototype for the 707 passenger jet into two dramatic, slow, and unauthorized barrel rolls over the Seafair crowd on Lake Washington. This act of generosity and foresight was the first courtship gesture in a long relationship now honored through the naming of the department. In return, the university committed to offer aeronautics courses to train engineers for work at his fledgling company. In 1917 Bill Boeing made a personal gift of $6,000 to the UW to construct a wind tunnel to test plane models. Both rose to top management, the first in a line of UW alumni who helped build a global industry. Boeing hired two new engineering graduates, Clairmont Egtvedt and Philip Johnson. In 1916, with a first plane barely off the drawing boards, William E. Boeing leaders are visionaries and risk takers, test pilots are bold, and engineers take pride in designing the best aircraft heading into the skies.Īnother immutable is the intertwined history of The Boeing Company and the University of Washington. After nearly a century developing airplanes, through tremendous industry growth and technology advances, some things seem immutable.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |