Passenger Planes: Boeing 747

The first design for the cockpit enclosure was a hemispherical hump atop the fuselage. This produced too much drag, so Boeing extended the aft portion of the hump to form a teardrop. Then, in a deliberate echo of the below-deck lounge on the model 377 Stratocruiser, Boeing’s 1940s flagship, Trippe and his colleagues persuaded Boeing to turn the extra space behind the cockpit into a bar and lounge.