Name: ボーイングライト兄弟から火星までの航空の世紀 (Boeing: A Century of Aviation from the Wright Brothers to Mars)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T06:55:37.000Z
Duration: 16 min 57 s
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程度の副詞

Almost 10 million people board over 100,000 flights every single day.

Between them and the 17.5 billion dollars worth of goods that are flown around the world

daily, it’s safe to say that aviation is one of the pillars of the modern world.

That’s why this week on Behind the Business we’ll be taking a look at the largest aircraft

Our story begins at the turn of the 20th century.

Back then the world was in many ways a larger place than it is now.

Most people got around on horseback, except the wealthy few who could afford the earliest

A trip across the Atlantic took at least six days, and the average person wouldn’t travel

In short, travel was time-consuming and expensive.

Then, on December 17th 1903, two brothers did what was for most of human history considered

to be impossible: The Wright brothers made the first successful

flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft, ushering in the pioneer era of aviation.

In the span of a single decade, aviation stopped being a fringe hobby for wealthy enthusiasts

and became one of the most competitive industries of the time.

It is in the middle of this dramatic advance in technology that a young entrepreneur saw

For William Boeing, aviation felt like an industry he was born to develop.

He was the son of a wealthy German-American industrialist, who held the rights to huge

swaths of timberland around Lake Superior.

William had already obtained an engineering degree from Yale by the time he inherited

these lands, and in his 20s he established a very successful logging business.

The profits from that business went into various side-ventures of his, like buying a shipyard

in Seattle to build himself a yacht, or outfitting several expeditions to Alaska.

One particular field that caught his interest was aviation.

He got his first chance to fly in an airplane in 1914, and he liked it so much that he signed

up for flying lessons and ordered a Martin TA floatplane.

William then got in touch with his friend George Westervelt, a U.S. Navy engineer who

Together they created an improved floatplane, whose most prominent feature was the addition

They tested it out in MIT’s newly built wind tunnel, and it flew much better than

This was all the validation William needed and on July 15th, 1916 he incorporated the

business as the Pacific Aero Products Company.

He called the first airplane model the Bluebill, and before the year was over he had another

He was more than ready to pour capital into this new venture, and in just under six months

he hired 30 employees and converted his Seattle shipyard into a makeshift airplane factory.

When the US entered World War 1 in 1917, Westervelt decided to leave the company after being deployed

William took the chance to name the company after himself, and he set about filling the

newly created demand for military aircraft.

William’s first independent airplane was the Model C, in which he introduced several

By tilting the wings two degrees upward, and by placing the upper wing slightly in front

of the lower one, the Model C outperformed its competitors by a wide margin.

The US Navy was very impressed and it ordered 50 aircraft, which prompted William to expand

By 1918 Boeing’s workforce had increased elevenfold, and they were manufacturing the

airplanes of several other companies: not out of generosity, but due to wartime cooperation

When the war ended that November, however, Boeing saw half of its orders cancelled.

Worse yet, there was almost no demand for civilian airplanes, since the military had

dumped a large portion of its older models onto the free market.

William was left with hundreds of idle workers, but instead of firing them he repurposed his

Seattle factory to produce residential furniture using the ample supply of spruce wood nearby.

Nevertheless, the company was losing money, and William had to pay 700 dollars in weekly

In 1919 Boeing signed a modest contract with the US Army to modernize 300 Havilland DH-4

fighter planes, but no bank was willing to extend the company a line of credit.

The early 1920s saw Boeing’s first attempt at designing an airplane specifically for

They called the plane the BB-L6, a single aircraft custom built for a local pilot doing

Despite being eager to enter the commercial sector, Boeing’s biggest client by far was

still the military, both in war and peace.

The recently-established US Army Air Service, the forefather of the US Air Force, was responsible

for saving William’s company for bankruptcy.

They ordered 200 open-cockpit biplanes in 1921, and Boeing happily provided them with

the MB-3A at 7,240 dollars a piece one year later.

At around that time Boeing’s engineers got their hands on the Fokker D. VII, an advanced

They greatly improved upon the plane’s design, replacing its wooden fuselage with one welded

This prototype fighter could reach a top speed of 159 miles per hour, and the US military

One year prior to that William had made the lucrative decision of getting into the airmail

Now, the US Post Office had created the first regularly scheduled airmail service in 1918

The signing of the Air Mail Act of 1925 gave the US Post Office the ability to grant contracts

to private companies, and William seized the opportunity by creating the Boeing Air Transport

It’s first airplane was the Boeing Model 40A, whose light 420-horse-power engine allowed

it to carry twice the usual payload for its size.

Unlike its competitors it would carry mail and passengers at the same time, and by the

end of the year it the BAT had transported almost 2000 people and 67 tons of mail.

In 1928 William negotiated a deal to buy out his only big airmail competitor and a few

months later he also acquired Pratt & Whitney Aircraft, the company that made Boeing’s

By the end of the decade Boeing had become a near-monopoly in aviation.

During the early 1930s commercial air travel was finally starting to take off, and William

capitalized on this by developing the Model 80, a 12-passenger biplane.

Boeing had designed the plane with comfort in mind, and it was the first aircraft to

have registered flight attendants on board.

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ボーイングライト兄弟から火星までの航空の世紀 (Boeing: A Century of Aviation from the Wright Brothers to Mars)

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