They built the shed before they had the aeroplane to put in it. Everett, out of the trees, the biggest building in the world by volume — and then the 747 came out of it in 1968 with the paint barely dry on both. That's the wrong order, and it worked.
What I keep in mind is the christening. Twenty-six airlines had ordered it, and each sent flight attendants to stand there for the rollout, one apiece. Then everybody went home and the ground crews started the real arithmetic: the door sat far higher than anything they'd serviced, so the stairs had to grow, the loaders had to grow, the tugs had to be rated for a great deal more aeroplane. Joe Sutter's people drew the wing. Somebody in a yard at an airport had to work out how to reach the doorway with a set of steps by Tuesday.
Harold, the hinged nose is the bit that changed my life on the freight side. Pallets go in from the front in one straight line, no turning them in the cabin, and you can run a load nearly 19 metres long through the doorway. Loading plans got shorter and the arguments on the apron got a lot shorter too.
Harold, the Everett building still gets quoted by volume rather than floor area, which is a slightly odd way to measure a shed until you see the thing. They closed the roof over the site before most of the tooling had arrived, so the first jigs went up indoors, out of the rain.