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That is one of the most beautiful, well designed, and capable planes ever made. I read a book about the development of the plane, and it was fascinating! 747: Creating the World's First Jumbo Jet and Other Adventures from a Life in Aviation

There is a story in there about how everyone (except Joe Sutter) thought the 747 would be a double-deck aircraft (it was what Juan Tripp, head of Pan Am wanted, and everyone thought it was the only way to do it) but Joe Sutter came up with the wide body approach, and sold his company on it, but they had to convince Juan Tripp since he was their biggest and most important customer.

From GoodReads:
...Every aspect of the plane’s design was the subject of intense discussion within an extensive community of people representing different interests, objectives and opinions.No doubt one of the most heated debates concerned the basic shape of the fuselage.

The general belief, one shared by many of Sutter’s personnel as well as by PanAm CEO Juan Trippe, was that the design process would inevitably produce a double-decker craft: a tall, narrow airplane with two floors. This was mainly due to cues taken from ship design and the general idea that the passenger airplane was a flying ocean liner. Words like ‘crew’, ‘captain’ and ‘purser’ still bear witness to this association.(Photo courtesy of the Boeing Company)Giant passenger ships are made larger by adding decks, and indeed this was the idea that Sutter started with, but as he continued to draft and design this model it began to present problems.

In freight applications, for example, the height of the fuselage would make it difficult to load and unload containers. In passenger applications, the height of the upper cabin would make completing an emergency evacuation within the required 90 seconds dangerous, if not impossible. Searching for alternatives, Sutter and his payload engineer Milton Heinemann started to think along ‘heretical lines’ as they put it, developing the idea of a wider, double-aisle fuselage. They started to explore this novel concept and discovered that although it might be somewhat heavier, the spacious cabin would be much more comfortable for passengers. And loading freight into such a wide body would be much easier. The cockpit would sit above the front loading door in the nose, trailed by a fairing, a curved surface to reduce drag, creating a modest extra deck and the 747’s characteristic bulge.The design process included the construction of a gigantic new production facility, the Boeing Everett Factory, to this day by far the largest building in the world.

The engineers realized that they would have to work hard to convince double-decker believers to accept this radical departure from the traditional approach, and that it was possible that after the first rumors of the wide-body solution started to circulate, Sutter could suddenly find himself replaced by someone willing to pursue the double-decker concept. Fortunately, by that time he had gained sufficient authority to weather that conflict.With Boeing finally more or less behind him, the next, even more crucial, step was to gain the support of Juan Trippe. A meeting in New York with Pan Am representatives was arranged for this purpose, and Heinemann, more diplomatic and less explosive than Sutter, was chosen to present the new concept. Heinemann went about it cleverly, reserving a conference room 6m (19.7 ft) wide, exactly the width of the proposed cabin design, so that the executives present could experience it directly. He let the space speak for itself, and it was a convincing argument..."

When Heinemann told Tripp it was not going to be a double-deck plane, Tripp started to sputter about passengers being cramped, etc., and Heinemann said something like "Would you approve if it was as wide as this conference room?" and when Tripp said it couldn't be done that wide, Heinemann told him they had a mock up that was as wide as the room...