![Boeing Model 247D in Flight over New York City Boeing Model 247D in Flight over New York City](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/150708-boeing-04.jpg?quality=85&w=2400)
It was only about a decade after the Wright Brothers’ first flight that Bill Boeing, who was in the timber business in Seattle, decided to learn how to fly planes. After he ordered a plane of his own, Boeing decided the design left room for to be improved upon. So he did. In 1934, TIME called him “a hard-headed industrialist who turned to flying as a hobby, began making airplanes as a whim and ended up by giving the world a new standard of aircraft performance.”
The eponymous company he founded in 1916 has been part of nearly every step of the aviation industry’s evolution, from wood-and-canvas contraptions to the jets of the modern age.
![100 Years of Boeing](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/150708-boeing-bookjacket.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
In a new book, Higher: 100 Years of Boeing, by Russ Banham (available Aug. 4), 200 photos—mostly from Boeing’s company archives—are used to trace that history, and all of the pit-stops in between.
![A Boeing Model C awaits flight in Boeing's Lake Union boathouse in Seattle.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/150708-boeing-01.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Boeing Factory Workers Sewing a MB-3A Wing Boeing Factory Workers Sewing a MB-3A Wing](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/150708-boeing-02.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Passengers pose in front of the Model 80, built by Boeing Air Transport.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/150708-boeing-03.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Boeing Model 247D in Flight over New York City Boeing Model 247D in Flight over New York City](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/150708-boeing-04.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Overview of B-17 Flying Fortress Manufacturing Overview of B-17 Flying Fortress Manufacturing](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/150708-boeing-05.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![P-51D Mustang in Flight P-51D Mustang in Flight](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/150708-boeing-06.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Dash 80 707 Prototype Rollout Dash 80 707 Prototype Rollout](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/150708-boeing-07.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![First 737-100 in Factory First 737-100 in Factory](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/150708-boeing-08.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
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Write to Lily Rothman at lily.rothman@time.com