Tucked inside a 17,000 square-foot building, with vaults protected by a high security system of checkpoints and keypads, lie the treasures of a corporation that has changed the very world in which we live. The collection includes four million photo negatives, 100,000 rolls of motion picture film, scores of model airplanes, crates of flight memorabilia, and documents going back more than a century. Welcome to the Boeing Archives, where senior corporate historian Michael Lombardi is in charge.

Lombardi supervises a staff of four who work in three Boeing archival facilities around the country. The main archive, which preserves the corporate history of Boeing as well as North American Rockwell, is housed in a warehouse in Bellevue, Wash., outside Seattle. A second location near Long Beach, Calif., preserves the Douglas Commercial Aircraft archive, while a third facility in St. Louis is responsible for McDonnell Douglas and Hughes Aircraft. Over the years, as Boeing acquired these aviation giants, the company inherited their archives as well.