Boeing archivist protects 100 years of history

Most Boeing Co. employees help build jetliners laden with futuristic technology.

Then there's Michael Lombardi, whose work encompasses not just carbon-fiber 787 Dreamliners but also World War II bombers and antique wood-and-linen seaplanes.

From a basement near the planemaker's Seattle-area industrial hub, Lombardi tends to shelves full of old engineering drawings, priceless airplane models and 50,000 cans of motion-picture films documenting the evolution of flight. He's the chief company historian. And as Boeing turns 100 on Friday, he's never been busier sifting through boxes of donated artifacts, dredging up historic memorabilia and helping plan the centennial events.

Not that he's complaining. Lombardi, 56, is only the third person to hold the post at Boeing and a stalwart in a small band working to preserve U.S. company records. It's a coveted job, given the low turnover and Boeing's role in shaping pivotal 20th century events such as the Normandy Invasion and the race to the moon. Since Lombardi took charge of the company archives in 1994, five chief executive officers have come and gone.

'The hard part was waiting 15 years for my predecessor to retire,” he said.

Boeing built a special pavilion at this week's Farnborough Air Show in the United Kingdom, with a mock-up of one of company founder Bill Boeing's first wood-and-linen planes dangling from the ceiling. Blown-up photos of some of the most famous aircraft designed by Boeing and the planemakers it acquired blanketed the trade show's central pavilion.

For all the interest in the past as the centennial approaches, Lombardi remains mindful of the business case for maintaining the collection and his staff of five people across three sites. His team has helped engineers trace how their predecessors solved a design problem. A recent task involved plumbing Boeing's photo collection - including 4 million photographic negatives - for images to post to a new Instagram account.

The anniversary is 'one small thing that we provide in the bigger picture,” Lombardi said. 'I don't believe we can survive, keep this program relevant, if we just focus on that one aspect.”

The number of corporate archivists in the United States has tripled to about 436 since 2000, based on Society of American Archivists' membership data. Still, not all companies see the investment as paying off. Target, whose roots date to 1902, dismissed its corporate archivists three years ago.

Maintaining a trove of documents can provide a firewall for lawyers if a company is sued or its property records challenged. Lawyers at Harley-Davidson lean on its archivists when pursuing trademark, copyright and intellectual property lawsuits.

'Archives can affect the bottom line positively, but it's also about protecting your heritage,” said Bill Jackson, who manages the motorcycle maker's archives and chairs the business section at the Society of American Archivists.