In 1965, Joe Sutter’s Boeing team began shaping the 747 around a future they thought would belong to supersonic jets, lifting the cockpit onto a hump so the nose could open for cargo once the giant subsonic passenger plane had outlived its brief moment

Joe Sutter’s Boeing team began shaping the 747 around a future they thought would pass it by: a supersonic age in which the huge, slower jumbo would eventually make its real living as a freighter. That assumption is why the cockpit sits on a hump. By lifting the flight deck above the main deck, Boeing