Anniversary of the first Boeing 707 Flight

The Boeing 707 on display at the National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center (Image courtesy of NASM Archives Division SI 2005-5717).

In this day in history—July 15—we commemorate the anniversary of the first flight of the Boeing 707 prototype, nicknamed the "Dash 80," which took place in 1954. Its maiden flight took off from Renton Field, just south of Seattle, Washington. The Dash 80 made its mark in aviation history, paving the way for trans-Atlantic jet service between New York and Paris (which Pan American World Airways would undertake in 1958). The innovations developed on the prototype 707 led to commercial planes with longer fuselages, bigger wings and higher-powered engines.

To celebrate this achievement in aviation history, we have a wide variety of 707-related resources within our collection. Recommended titles include William Cook's The road to the 707: the inside story of designing the 707, Ugo Vicenzi's Early American jetliners: Boeing 707, Douglas DC-8 and Convair CV-880, and Barry J. Schiff's The Boeing 707. If all that has piqued your aviation interests, our own National Air and Space Museum Library preserves an extraordinary collection of older technical reports related to the development of aviation, aerospace engineering, air transport aircraft, air commerce, air traffic control, air navigation and civil aviation which have been gradually acquired by our branch over the past 30 years from all of the principle government and aerospace industry libraries, including among others: NASA, the FAA, the former Civil Aeronautics Board, and the Institute of the Aerospace Sciences.—Brett Lambert