William Boeing

William Edward Boeing founded the Pacific Airplane Company in 1916—a month after his first design, the Boeing Model 1 seaplane, flew. A year later the company took his name. In 1929 he helped create United Aircraft and Transport Corporation and chaired it until the government forced its breakup in 1934, the same year he received the Daniel Guggenheim Medal. He died in September 1956. A decade later he was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame, by which point the enterprise he started had grown into one of the largest aerospace manufacturers on earth.