The legend goes that on a fishing trip, Juan Trippe turned to William Allen and said, "If you build it, I'll buy it." Allen replied, "If you buy it, I'll build it." The handshake gave birth to the largest civilian aircraft the world had yet seen. On February 9, 1969, beneath a grey Everett sky, Boeing chief test pilot Jack Waddell released the brakes of RA001, the prototype 747-121 registered N7470 and named City of Everett. Four Pratt & Whitney JT9D engines roared; after only 4,500 feet of runway, the nose wheel lifted, and a second later the first wide-body airliner was climbing away from Paine Field. Brien Wygle rode the right seat, Jesse Wallick watched the systems from the engineer's station, and the era of mass transit took wing. The fuselage was a tale of two levels; the hump a crown that would become the most recognizable silhouette in aviation. Pan Am took the first commercial flight on January 22, 1970. Over five decades, 1,574 Boeing 747s would be built—passenger queens, cargo workhorses, and presidential chariots. The jumbo jet did not merely carry more people; it carried the dream that the whole world could afford to fly.