William Boeing - Biography

Biography

Boeing was born in Detroit, Michigan to a wealthy German mining engineer named Wilhelm Böing who had made a fortune and who had a sideline as a timber merchant. Anglicizing his name to "William Boeing" after returning from being educated in Switzerland in 1900 to attend Yale University, William Boeing left Yale in 1903 to go into the lumber side of the business. He bought extensive timberlands around Grays Harbor on the Pacific side of the Olympic Peninsula. He also bought into lumber operations. He also owned a race track for horses. While president of Greenwood Timber Company, Boeing, who had experimented with boat design, traveled to Seattle, where, during the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1909, he saw a manned flying machine for the first time and became fascinated with aircraft. He soon purchased an airplane from the Glenn L. Martin Company, and received flying lessons from Martin himself. Boeing soon cracked up the plane. When he was told by Martin that replacement parts would not become available for months, Boeing blew up. He angrily told his friend Cdr. G.C. Westervelt USN that "We could build a better plane ourselves and build it faster". Westervelt agreed. They soon built and flew the B&W Flying Boat, an amphibian biplane that had outstanding performance. Boeing decided to go into the aircraft business and bought an old boat works on the Duwamish River near Seattle for his factory.