Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum here, come with me for just a moment.
Speaker 1: Back to the mid nineteen sixties, when airspace giant Boeing
Speaker 1: was preparing to build the original Boeing seven forty seven.
Speaker 1: It would be the world's first jumbo jet, two and
Speaker 1: a half times bigger than the largest existing airliners, The
Speaker 1: seven forty seven would revolutionize air transportation by making it
Speaker 1: possible to fly more people in cargo at a lower
Speaker 1: cost than ever before. But before the seven forty seven
Speaker 1: could get off the ground, Boeing and it's then president
Speaker 1: and chairman of the board, William M. Allen, needed to
Speaker 1: build a facility that was huge enough to accommodate the
Speaker 1: construction of the massive plane. Bowing considered building a new
Speaker 1: plant in California, but the seven forty seven s head
Speaker 1: engineer Joe Sutter reportedly resisted putting the facility that far
Speaker 1: away from Boeing's Seattle headquarters, arguing that all that travel
Speaker 1: time might slow the project. Instead, the company ended up
Speaker 1: picking the site of a former military airport in Everett,
Speaker 1: twenty two miles that's thirty five kilometers north of Seattle.
Speaker 1: It was a remote area filled with woods that were
Speaker 1: home to bears that occasionally had to be shoot away
Speaker 1: from the first folks who arrived. Working at breakneck speed,
Speaker 1: and a little more than a year, construction workers erected
Speaker 1: what was and still is the world's biggest factory. No
Speaker 1: report on where the bears went, but we do know
Speaker 1: that a railroad spur had to be built to the
Speaker 1: site to rush building materials there and holloway debris. It
Speaker 1: all cost more than one billion dollars, more than Boeing
Speaker 1: was worth at the time, and is considered a feat
Speaker 1: of human industry and resourcefulness. More than half a century
Speaker 1: after its completion in nineteen sixty seven, Boeing's Everett factory
Speaker 1: is still producing planes and inspiring off from the hordes
Speaker 1: of visitors who've turned it into a major Washington tourist attraction.
Speaker 1: So just how big is the plant? It covers ninety
Speaker 1: eight acres and its interior measures at four hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy two million cubic feet. That's a little over thirteen
Speaker 1: million cubic meters. For perspective, the entire Disneyland theme park
Speaker 1: could fit in side with room to spare. It's so
Speaker 1: massive than what it was initially built. Accumulation of warm
Speaker 1: air and moisture inside actually caused clouds to form just
Speaker 1: below the ceiling until equipment was set up to keep
Speaker 1: the air circulating. The ceiling is ninety feet that's twenty
Speaker 1: seven meters above the factory floor, high enough to fit
Speaker 1: an eight story office building. Inside. There are six doors
Speaker 1: on the south side of the factory. The four to
Speaker 1: the west are eighty two feet high that's about thirty
Speaker 1: meters and three hundred feet wide over nine The two
Speaker 1: to the east are about the same height but fifty
Speaker 1: feet wider that's about fifteen meters. They open at the
Speaker 1: push of a button, but it takes about five minutes
Speaker 1: for them to do so. Inside the plant has approximately
Speaker 1: one million overhead lights and twenty six overhead cranes that
Speaker 1: run on thirty nine miles that's sixty three kilometers of
Speaker 1: ceiling tracks, which lift and move big pieces and sections
Speaker 1: of planes as they're being built. The aircraft are assembled
Speaker 1: on a production line that moves about an inch and
Speaker 1: a half that's three point eight centimeters per minute. Under
Speaker 1: the floor, there's an elaborate two point three three mile
Speaker 1: that's three point seven kilometers system of tunnels which contain
Speaker 1: the water, sewer, and electrical utilities, and also allow workers
Speaker 1: to move around the facility without getting in the way
Speaker 1: of the aircraft production. They use one thousand, three hundred
Speaker 1: bicycles and tricycles to cover the distances more quickly. The
Speaker 1: Everett plant is the equivalent of a small city, with
Speaker 1: thirty six thousand workers on site every day. It has
Speaker 1: its own fire department, banks, daycare facilities, a fully equipped
Speaker 1: medical clinic, and a water treatment plant. One thing that
Speaker 1: the Everett Factory doesn't have, though, is air conditioning. If
Speaker 1: it starts to get too warm inside, workers open the
Speaker 1: factory doors and use fans to draw air inside to
Speaker 1: cool the facility. Conversely, if it gets too chilly, they
Speaker 1: turn on more of the overhead lights to heat the
Speaker 1: air inside. A Seattle's relatively mild climate enables these measures
Speaker 1: to work out just fine. The original building was expanded twice,
Speaker 1: first in nineteen seventy eight to accommodate production of the
Speaker 1: Bowing seven sixty seven, and then again in ninety nine
Speaker 1: two for the Boeing seven seventy seven program. Recently, additional
Speaker 1: buildings have been added to the factory site to handle,
Speaker 1: robotic assembly of the seven seventy seven fuselage and fabrication
Speaker 1: of the composite wings of the seven seventy seven X.
Speaker 1: The murals on the Factory six massive doors are the
Speaker 1: biggest digital graphics on the planet, covering more than a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand square feet that's over nine thousand square meters.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Patrick Jake Tiger and produced
Speaker 1: by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of
Speaker 1: other enormous topics with intricate detail, visit our home planet,
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com.