THE LITTLE FACTORY AT EDGE OF TOWN

[Music] old men thought science had gone about as far as it could go while young men dreamed and planned and turned their curious ideas into a real practical workable flying machine after century later we have special reason for dwelling on that odd and unsettled time of 1916 because in Seattle remote from the seats of power or the miserable fields of European war some of those young man would dream met William II boy with him embarked on the new and untried the age of flight so today we salute the young man of 1916 and the dreamers of the years between and the young in heart to follow them now Boeing people more than a hundred thousand Boeing people scattered across the United States and around the world in Washington State Utah Montana California Munich Paris New Orleans Alabama Florida Pennsylvania Mississippi this is the story of those people managers technicians artists who give shape and form to ideas [Music] Electronics experts scientists [Music] people who measure and people who adjust people in crowds and people almost alone men who study how one would fly beyond where men applauded before even Acrobat [Music] I think he got out alright but we'll never be positive they build airplane 26000 or a few more the last time we counted with their proud lines known around the world always with new ideas new technology airplanes built to the demands of the men who fly them [Applause] always there is one idea make everything from sparse to Rivet to the maze of wiring to the instruments to the windows and the lights just a little better than it really needs to be these boring people who build missiles the same way [Music] a Minuteman that must not fail and does not pay [Music] they're involved with dreams and innovation [Music] with helicopters Chinook's for the free world Armed Forces vertol 107's for civilians and the military pennsylvania sending its products to Canada Europe Asia and to do their strange maneuvers over the oceans [Music] [Applause] Moin people bill planes to fly fast helicopters to fly slow and strange boats that fly on the water I prefer and study the moonscapes over which Boeing products fly [Music] a Boeing team constructs huge saturn stages for rockets to send man to the moon and beyond [Music] the man who worried about airplanes only yesterday now study the inching progress of the world's largest rocket to its launching pad this is boy factories in Seattle and Wichita [Music] at the camp and offered in Washington in Pennsylvania and Renton Boeing men are interested in anything which moves men or machines or materials planes or space vehicles or mrs. engineering offices to develop ideas wind tunnels to prove or disprove those ideas [Music] laboratory test areas [Music] even specialists in miniatures [Music] workers at missile ranges and that distant test sites [Music] specialists working hominy [Music] and experts in Japan [Music] Boeing business is serious [Music] well it is most of the time some Boeing business is quiet some not so fine obviously thawing men must travel constantly using the fastest planes the most modern method speed is essential [Music] exactly [Music] bowing men like the u.s. mail always get through somehow fortunately not too many trips and this way bowing men many of them do keep their bags packed but no matter how far they go or how often they still cannot begin to match the records of the planes they fill these planes in the colours of fifty-eight Airlines circle the globe somewhere in the world every 13 seconds or less 24 hours a day seven days a week a Boeing jet takes off for land because of them the world is smaller because of those flying and those soon to fly no spot today is too far away and no man needs say flying is not for me [Music] and while they fly the facilities to build airplanes and missiles and rockets and helicopters spread and spread and spread but we mentioned history and the title of this film said something about a little factory on the edge of town on its fiftieth anniversary the Boeing Company is a sort of elder statesman in the huge aerospace industry and like any elder your grandfather for example Boeing has to be allowed a little rambling some reminiscence the world certainly wasn't young when Boeing began but aviation was not much more than a gleam in the eyes of fanatics an extension of cavalry for the military a stunt for civilians and for Boeing in 1916 there was indeed a little factory at the edge of town not much of a place because Boeing wasn't much of a company some of the workers there were 21 of them and all gay to work on streetcars and reach the factory on a boardwalk across the tide flat some details of the early history of course have been forgotten but William Boeing very early wrote one statement nobody has forgotten I've tried to make the men around me feel as I do but we're embarked as pioneers upon a new science and industry in which our problems are so new and unusual that it behooves no one to dismiss any novel idea with a statement that it can't be done our job is to keep everlastingly at research and experiment to adapt our laboratory results and those of other laboratories to production as soon as practicable to let no new improvement in flying and flying equipment passes by among a good many other things the pioneering company did not possess was a movie camera understandably in that day so we must if we would picture this bit of history at all turn to replicas such as my friend here a Boeing B&W seaplane built in 1966 from the plans drawn in 1916 this B&W seaplane which carried two people had a top speed of 75 miles an hour was not enough he in the eyes of its builders it was out of date today at flew so were those which came after it two versions of the B&W with its 52 foot wingspan and 2,800 pounds weight were bought by the New Zealand flying school for pilot training and experimental airmail fly so soon Boeing was an international company after the B&W there was the b1 design from scratch because boeing was convinced it could build a reliable commercial flying boat a pilot and two passengers could ride in it it flew the first international air mail route and one plane ran up 350 thousand miles but it too soon was obsolete outmoded by the pw9 the company's answer to the government designed wooden pursuit planes of the day park welded steel tubing was its frame and it flashed through the skies at 163 miles an hour nearly four miles above the earth then came the model 40 a plane designed specifically for united states air mail routes passengers sat in luxury in its cabin as it carried airmail from Chicago to San Francisco at 137 miles an hour the forties lasted and lasted and lasted outmoded by the foreman of the air the model ad with three great motors to lift its 12 passengers who sat in leather upholstered seats and hot and cold running water available miles above the earth a trained nurse as a stewardess and 80-foot wide wings to carry 17,500 pounds but Boeing still had in mind the needs of the military the b9 a bomber faster than any fighters flying carried 2,400 pounds of bombs under its 76 foot wingspan its existence brought about a new generation of fighters to catch this frightening invader one of these was the P 26 with 234 miles per hour speed and an all-metal structure to resist the most ferocious dives the between war generation of fighter pilots many of them learned their trade on P 26 s for civilians meanwhile there was 1933 is model 247 first of the low wing to engine transports soon to be known around the world it's ten passengers were secured from storms in the first airplane equipped with de-icers to guard against the most frightening aerial danger of the day but the need for speed and comfort was not only overland boeing in 1936 built the 314 the famous boeing clipper in which 74 passengers and a crew of six to ten could safely cross the north atlantic called a pacific these Clippers pioneered the sky routes over the world's oceans for those flying over land there was still more to come the model 307 Stratoliner the world's first pressurized transport reached American air routes before world war ii did Yeomans service during it and continued for years after but the needs of the military were paramount during the war years for these needs boeing again had an answer the b-17s first designed in the mid 1930s were rushed to the war fronts by the thousands in the 1940s heavily armed able to fly high and with heavy bomb loads the b-17 became the most famous of world war ii aircraft for the war in the pacific there was still another need a longer stronger higher Flying Fortress of the skies this was the b-29 rushed into combat to deal a decisive blow in the Pacific at first a single airplane than a dozen then hundreds and thousands this was the parade of progress peace brought knowin the largest single aircraft program of world war ii b-29 production was succeeded by the C 97 Strato freighter and the kc-97 aerial tanker hundreds of them providing the means whereby bombers could circle the globe and strike any target always there were two lines of effort one civilian and one military on the military front there were the b-50 superfortress and the tiny L 15 Scout plane but the jet age was dawning jet fighters had fought in the war Boeing adapted the technology to huge globe-girdling jet bombers the workhorse b-47 with its swept-back wings its six engines high speed and continuing threat to aggressors 2040 b-47s protected the united states during the critical 1950s there was another bomber still to the most powerful of all the b-52 Strategic Air Command had as its motto peace is our profession and to preserve peace it had the eight jet b-52s with their fantastic range and they're terrifying bombing capabilities the parade of progress is wide as well as long and the day of the Boeing commercial jets was beginning these were the Jets civilians all which shrank the globe but Buenos Aires a few short hours from New York and made neighbors of the most distant cities in the world jets for intercostal roots short segments the tracklist courses linking continents 707 720's 727 737 flying and flying and fly 50 years less than the span of one man's life a moment in the world's history a tiny speck in time but in it man has moved from the earth to the skies to space the sad arts of war demand globe-girdling machines [Applause] [Music] not horses but cavalry of the air to scout jungles rescue wounded [Music] not stone ports in Canada but missiles Minuteman on guard ready for instant retaliation at 15,000 miles an hour [Music] Aviation has advanced from primitive aerial refueling and hard-to-believe airborne radio to automatic landing systems while lunar orbiter provides close-up photographs of the moon force have changed two million five hundred thousand pounds of thrust our harness unloosed so that man may travel his universe with Saturn five [Music] so the high button shoes of God the open cockpit mail plane the dashing pilots with her scarf the world has shrunk jets fill the air space vehicles crowd the orbital pathways around the globe the little factory at the edge of town has grown some from 21 workers to a hundred and fifteen thousand from space a hundred feet square the buildings covering 32 - all the things shown in these last minutes and others still unfinished still secret mind stretching the things of imagination so Boeing the company that for years lacked even a movie cameras celebrates its first half century and still lacks the camera it really needs some marvelous camera to record the future to sort off the dreams from the fantasy galactical from that which is not yet but can be a cameras are show us which of these may come tomorrow or in another 50 years we have no such on its anniversary can only refer once more to the words of its founders still appropriate our job is to keep everlastingly at research and experiment to let no new improvement pass us by we are embarked as pioneers [Music]