Boeing 747

The 747 was born from the explosion of air travel in the 1960s. The era of commercial jet transportation, led by the enormous popularity of the Boeing 707, had revolutionized long distance travel and made possible the concept of the "global village." Boeing had already developed a study for a very large airplane while bidding on a US military contract for a huge airlifter. Boeing lost the contract to Lockheed's C-5 Galaxy but came under pressure from its most loyal airline customer, Pan Am, to develop a giant passenger plane that would be over twice the size of the 707. In 1966 Boeing proposed a preliminary configuration for the airliner, to be called the 747. Pan Am ordered 25 of the initial 100 series. The original design was a full-length double-decker fuselage. Issues with evacuation routes caused this idea to be scrapped in favor of a wide-body design.

1960: 1960 was a leap year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar)....

Boeing 707: The Boeing 707 is a four engined commercial passenger jet aircraft developed by Boeing in the early 1950s. Although it was not the first commercial jet airliner in service (that distinction belongs to the De Havilland Comet), it was the first to be commercially successful, and is credited by many as...

Global village: Global village is a term, coined by Marshall McLuhan in his book The Gutenberg Galaxy, describing how electronic mass media collapse space and time barriers in human communication, enabling people to interact and live on a global scale. In this sense, the globe has been turned into a village by the ...

Boeing 747 related Images and Photos (experimental)

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Boeing B-314 Passengers Arrive at La Gaurdia 1939