Who Founded Boeing?

The Boeing Company was founded in 1916 by William E. Boeing, a wealthy timber merchant, and George Conrad Westervelt, an US Navy engineer. The founding of the company occurred in Seattle, Washington, a location chosen not for its proximity to industrial centers, but for its proximity to forests, because the first airplanes were built primarily from spruce wood and canvas. William Boeing was fascinated by early aviation. In 1914, he took his first airplane ride and was convinced that he could build a better machine than the primitive, fragile aircraft of the era. Utilizing his wealth from the timber industry and his deep knowledge of wood structures, he partnered with Westervelt to design the B&W Seaplane (named after their initials). In July 1916, Boeing officially incorporated the Pacific Aero Products Co. which was renamed the Boeing Airplane Company a year later. The foundational breakthrough that ensured the survival of the early company occurred during World War I. When the United States entered the war in 1917, Boeing sent two of his new Model C seaplanes to the Navy for testing in Florida. The Navy was impressed with the engineering quality and ordered 50 aircraft, providing the sustained capital injection required to scale the business. Following the war, when military contracts evaporated, Boeing survived by pivoting into the nascent commercial airmail business, winning government contracts. William Boeing eventually built an integrated aviation empire (United Aircraft and Transport Corporation) that included airlines and manufacturers, which the US government forcibly broke up via antitrust legislation in 1934, leading a bitter William Boeing to resign and sell his stock. However, the culture of rigorous, reliable engineering he established allowed his namesake company to eventually dominate the global aerospace industry for a century.

Education: Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science; Sheffield Scientific School. William E. Boeing was born in 1881.

George Conrad Westervelt occupies an unusual position in aviation history: a co-founder of what became the world's largest aerospace company who departed before the company was officially incorporated and whose subsequent contributions to aviation, while distinguished, occurred entirely outside the enterprise he helped start. His name survived only in the W of the B&W Model 1, a small memorial to a partnership that lasted barely a year but launched one of the most consequential industrial enterprises of the 20th century. Westervelt was a trained engineer with the U.S. Navy's Construction Corps, a branch of the service responsible for the technical evaluation and management of naval vessels and, increasingly in the early aviation era, aircraft. His posting at Puget Sound Navy Yard in Bremerton, Washington, brought him into contact with William Boeing around 1915, and the two discovered a shared obsession with aircraft design. Westervelt provided the aeronautical engineering knowledge that Boeing lacked; Boeing provided the capital and commercial drive that Westervelt could not supply on a Navy officer's salary. Their collaboration produced the B&W Model 1 design, which Westervelt developed primarily from an aeronautical standpoint, calculating lift, drag, and structural requirements, while Boeing focused on materials procurement and manufacturing. The aircraft's successful first flight in June 1916 validated both men's work. Westervelt was recalled to active naval duty shortly thereafter, when the U.S. Entry into World War I made his engineering expertise urgently needed. He left Seattle before the formal company incorporation on July 15, 1916, and while Boeing apparently made some effort to maintain his involvement from a distance, the demands of wartime naval service made that impossible. Westervelt continued a distinguished Navy career, retiring as a rear admiral, and remained connected to the aviation industry through various advisory and consulting roles, but he never returned to the company his technical expertise had helped create.

George Conrad Westervelt was born in 1879 in Corpus Christi. Education: United States Naval Academy; TMI — The Episcopal School of Texas.