In the Seattle of 1955, there was no Space Needle to give the city a signature skyline. Tucked away in that quiet upper left-hand corner of the map, Seattle was still seven years away from hosting the World's Fair. Yet the city had something to show the world, and in recent months the eye and ear had been drawn upward toward it: a large, loud, fast-moving blur of metal soaring over the waters of Puget Sound and above the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges. This 95-ton silver, brown and canary yellow-colored bird was the prototype for a passenger jet being developed by the local aircraft company. That firm happened to have been started in Seattle nearly 40 years before on the whim of a young Michigan lumber and mining magnate.

Pacific NW | The tale of Boeing's high-risk flight into the jet age | Seattle Times Newspaper