However, as it turned out, an unexpected event exercised such an influence that Pratt and Whitney not only did not lose money on the first contract but even made an embarrassingly high profit. It all started the morning William E. Boeing, of Seattle—not “Addison Sims”—arrived in the Engine Section. Bill Boeing, founder of the Boeing Airplane Company, and a successful operator in lumber and real estate, had drawn his airplane-company staff from versatile young graduates of the aeronautical-engineering course of the University of Washington and had picked some good ones. Foremost among these were Claire Egtvedt, his chief engineer, and Phil Johnson, his factory manager. Bill, a pilot himself, had opened an air line between Seattle and Victoria, using a couple of Boeing-built flying boats under the management of Eddie Hubbard. Eddie had persuaded Bill, against the advice of Phil Johnson, to enter a bid for the new Chicago-San Francisco contract air-mail route, and Bill had won the competition with a bid considered absurdly low by his competitors. As Bill took a chair by my desk that morning, he promptly launched into the background of his low bid. It seems that Claire Egtvedt, who had designed the single-seat fighter F2B around the Wasp, had also made a study of that engine in a completely new mail plane, to be called the “40-B.” By doing away with the heavy cooling system of the Liberty in the new design, and availing himself of the other features of the Wasp, he had turned out a mail plane capable of carrying double the pay load on the same horsepower. By converting several hundred pounds of dead load into as many pounds of paying load, he had demonstrated the fact that no operator could afford to use war-surplus airplanes—even as a gift—in face of that kind of competition. Furthermore, Boeing could build the new planes dirt cheap with the same overhead needed for the military business. He thought the Wasp would revolutionize air transport. His problem was how to get hold of about twenty-five new Pratt and Whitneys right away with the entire production booked for the Navy. This was a matter on which the admiral had already set Bureau policy. Having in mind the fact that if government and commercial business could be lumped, the increased volume could bring reduced costs for both, he had issued instructions to cooperate with commercial operators wherever practicable. All Bill needed was a letter of introduction to F. B. Rentschler.