Midway Airlines (1976–1991)
Midway Airlines was a United States airline founded on August 6, 1976, by investor Kenneth T. Carlson and joined by Irving T. Tague and William B. Owens in October 13, 1976, filing with the Civil Aeronautics Board for an airline operating certificate. Although it received its operating certificate from the CAB prior to the passage of the Airline Deregulation Act in 1978, it is recognized as the first post-deregulation start-up; the airline commenced operations on October 31, 1979. The airline was intended to breathe new life into Midway International Airport called Chicago Midway Airport, which had lost most of its scheduled flights to O'Hare International Airport. Midway Airlines and the revitalized airport were advertised as a trouble-free alternative to O'Hare, both of these spurred re-development and growth on Chicago's South Side; the airport was billed as a convenient ten- to fifteen-minute drive from downtown Chicago. Following the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, Midway first emerged as a discount carrier.
It was ease of connections at Midway Airport. The airline purchased three Douglas DC-9s from Trans World Airlines and began service on October 31, 1979, flying to Cleveland, Ohio's Cleveland Burke Lakefront Airport, Kansas City and Detroit, Michigan; the scheduled service was an instant success. In 1980, Midway bought five more DC-9s and added flights to St. Louis, New York City's La Guardia Airport, Washington National Airport in Arlington, outside Washington, D. C.. The airline briefly served Minneapolis, but dropped this service shortly after it began. During the 1980s, the airline adopted a combination of all-leather two-by-two seating to business markets and all-coach seating to vacation destinations, it dropped this idea due to the impact on revenue caused by eliminating seats, the confusion it created in the minds of connecting passengers. The carrier expanded into the Caribbean via the purchase in 1984 of the assets of Air Florida, which had gone into bankruptcy, it proved to be good mix of vacation travel revenue.
Midway flourished under the leadership of David R. Hinson, its chief executive officer from 1985 to 1991. In 1984, Boeing 737-200 flights to the Caribbean were being operated by subsidiary Midway Express while DC-9 domestic jet service was flown Midway Metrolink. In 1986 the company assisted in setting up a successful regional affiliate, Midway Connection, as a feeder operating commuter turboprop aircraft with service to small communities in Illinois, Indiana and Michigan; this carrier was established following the bankruptcy of Chicago Air, a regional carrier which attempted a similar, but independent, feeder operation earlier in 1986. On a June 1988 weekday, Midway scheduled 116 nonstop flights into Midway Airport from 25 airports, along with 75 Midway Connection nonstops from 17 other airports, they flew Chicago Midway - Miami - Saint Croix - St. Thomas round trip as well as Chicago Midway - Fort Lauderdale - Nassau round trip. Midway Airlines′ peak year was 1989, when it flew 10.1 billion revenue passenger-kilometers, compared to 0.6 billion in 1981.
Midway Airlines was noted for friendly employees and attentive service, its Chicago South Side passengers were fiercely loyal to their hometown airline. Some of the signature in-flight service items were after-dinner chocolate wafer mints and hot hand towels for the entire cabin, both of which had caught on with Midway's business clientele. In June 1989, Midway Airlines agreed to purchase a hub operation at Philadelphia International Airport in Philadelphia, for $100 million along with $100 million worth of DC-9 jets from the bankrupt Eastern Air Lines; the company began hub operations in Philadelphia in November 1989. However, less than a year competition with the US Airways Philadelphia hub, coupled with rising jet fuel prices following the August 1990 IraqI invasion of Kuwait, caused the company to quit its Philadelphia hub. In October 1990 it sold its Philadelphia assets to USAir for $67.5 million. Citing the high price of jet fuel during the 1991 Gulf War and a drop in passengers in the recession that followed, the airline filed Chapter 11 in March 1991.
In reorganization, Midway attempted to sell itself to Northwest Airlines. Northwest pulled out of negotiations on November 12, 1991, Midway ceased operations the next day, its bankruptcy was re-filed as a liquidation under Chapter 7 bankruptcy laws. Canada Montreal Toronto Caribbean Nassau St. Croix St. Thomas United States Albany Atlanta Boston Chicago Hub Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Cleveland Cleveland Columbus Dallas/Fort Worth Denver Des Moines Detroit Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood Fort Myers Hartford Indianapolis Jacksonville (Jacksonville Internation
Chicago
Chicago the City of Chicago, is the most populous city in Illinois, as well as the third most populous city in the United States. With an estimated population of 2,716,450, it is the most populous city in the Midwest. Chicago is the principal city of the Chicago metropolitan area referred to as Chicagoland, the county seat of Cook County, the second most populous county in the United States; the metropolitan area, at nearly 10 million people, is the third-largest in the United States, the fourth largest in North America and the third largest metropolitan area in the world by land area. Located on the shores of freshwater Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed and grew in the mid-nineteenth century. After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless, the city made a concerted effort to rebuild; the construction boom accelerated population growth throughout the following decades, by 1900 Chicago was the fifth largest city in the world.
Chicago made noted contributions to urban planning and zoning standards, including new construction styles, the development of the City Beautiful Movement, the steel-framed skyscraper. Chicago is an international hub for finance, commerce, technology, telecommunications, transportation, it is the site of the creation of the first standardized futures contracts at the Chicago Board of Trade, which today is the largest and most diverse derivatives market gobally, generating 20% of all volume in commodities and financial futures. O'Hare International Airport is the one of the busiest airports in the world, the region has the largest number of U. S. highways and greatest amount of railroad freight. In 2012, Chicago was listed as an alpha global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, it ranked seventh in the entire world in the 2017 Global Cities Index; the Chicago area has one of the highest gross domestic products in the world, generating $680 billion in 2017. In addition, the city has one of the world's most diversified and balanced economies, not being dependent on any one industry, with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce.
Chicago's 58 million domestic and international visitors in 2018, made it the second most visited city in the nation, behind New York City's approximate 65 million visitors. The city ranked first place in the 2018 Time Out City Life Index, a global quality of life survey of 15,000 people in 32 cities. Landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Grant Park, the Museum of Science and Industry, Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicago's culture includes the visual arts, film, comedy and music jazz, soul, hip-hop and electronic dance music including house music. Of the area's many colleges and universities, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of Illinois at Chicago are classified as "highest research" doctoral universities. Chicago has professional sports teams in each of the major professional leagues, including two Major League Baseball teams; the name "Chicago" is derived from a French rendering of the indigenous Miami-Illinois word shikaakwa for a wild relative of the onion, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum and known more as ramps.
The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as "Checagou" was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir. Henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the eponymous wild "garlic" grew abundantly in the area. According to his diary of late September 1687:...when we arrived at the said place called "Chicagou" which, according to what we were able to learn of it, has taken this name because of the quantity of garlic which grows in the forests in this region. The city has had several nicknames throughout its history such as the Windy City, Chi-Town, Second City, the City of the Big Shoulders, which refers to the city's numerous skyscrapers and high-rises. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, who had taken the place of the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples; the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable arrived in the 1780s, he is known as the "Founder of Chicago".
In 1795, following the Northwest Indian War, an area, to be part of Chicago was turned over to the United States for a military post by native tribes in accordance with the Treaty of Greenville. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn and rebuilt; the Ottawa and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis; the Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833. On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people. On June 15, 1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. Receiver of Public Monies; the City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4, 1837, for several decades was the world's fastest-growing city. As the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States.
Chicago's first railway and Chicago Union Railroad, the Illi
West Chicago, Illinois
West Chicago is a city in DuPage County, United States. The population was 27,086 at the 2010 census, it was named Junction and Turner, after its founder, John B. Turner, president of the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad in 1855; the city was established around the first junction of railroad lines in Illinois, today is still served by the Union Pacific / West Metra service via West Chicago station. West Chicago is located at 41°53′18″N 88°12′35″W. According to the 2010 census, West Chicago has a total area of 15.141 square miles, of which 14.8 square miles is land and 0.341 square miles is water. Erastus Gary, of Pomfret, Connecticut homesteaded 760 acres on the banks of the DuPage River, just south of West Chicago's present day city limits in the 1830s, his son became "Judge" Elbert Henry Gary, the first CEO of America's first billion-dollar corporation, U. S. Steel, for whom Gary, Indiana, is named. Gary helped bring brothers Jesse and Warren Wheaton, founders of nearby Wheaton, the DuPage County seat, from Connecticut to the Midwest.
A pioneer cemetery on the old Gary Homestead, where a sawmill had been built by the Garys, just north of Gary's Mill Road, north of its terminus at Illinois Route 59, was built over with apartment buildings in the 1960s. In 1849, the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad reached the site of present-day West Chicago continued northwest to Elgin. In 1850, the Aurora Branch Railroad built southwest, making America's first railroad junction point west of Chicago. In 1854, the G&CURR opened the “Dixon Air Line” branch West thru Geneva; because of the number of trains passing through town and fuel facilities for locomotives and a roundhouse were built here, as well as an early eating-house and hotel for travelers. As a result, a number of new employees and their families located to this community; the original settlers were English and Irish, with Germans arriving in the 1860s and Mexican immigrants by the 1910s. John B. Turner, president of the G&CU and a resident of Chicago, owned several acres of land in what is now the center of town.
As more people settled in Junction, Turner recognized the chance to make a profit by platting his land and selling off lots. He therefore recorded the community’s first plat in 1855 under the name of Town of Junction; the community continued its growth, although the one-room schoolhouse built a mile outside town in 1835 would become the state's last surviving one-room schoolhouse when it closed in 1991. Meanwhile, in 1857, Dr. Joseph McConnell and his wife Mary platted a second portion of town just north of John B. Turner’s plat, they recorded their plat as the Town of Turner in honor of the railroad president. These two “towns” became informally known as Turner Junction. By 1873, the community had taken on a substantial and permanent character, so the residents incorporated as the Village of Turner. In 1888, a new railroad, the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern, built a freight line through town, it offered free factory sites for any industry willing to locate along its right-of-way. As part of the effort to attract industry, the community changed its name in 1896 to the Village of West Chicago.
Area businessmen Charles Bolles, reasoned that the new name sounded more cosmopolitan, would help draw prospective factory owners. As industry located in West Chicago and new jobs opened up, the population increased. At the turn of the century, West Chicago was number two in population in DuPage County, behind Hinsdale. By 1910, the population was 2,378 and several new industries had located here, including the Borden’s milk condensing plant, the Turner Cabinet Company and the Turner Brick Company; the community continues to attract quality business and residential development that contributes to the culturally diverse community that exists today. In 1909, one more railroad came to West Chicago; the Chicago and Western Railway, a built interurban electric railway, came in from the east, running down the middle of Junction and Depot streets curved back west toward Geneva. Soon bought by the Chicago Aurora and Elgin Railroad, the “country trolley” was used, abandoned in 1937; the right of way is now the Geneva Spur of the Illinois Prairie Path.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the city received a nuclear-waste contamination scare. Harmful waste from the Rare Earths Facility had been spread around the community since the 1930s, when the Lindsay Light and Chemical Company built a plant. Reed-Keppler Park was built on top of a landfill. Kerr-McGee, which had bought the facility in 1967 and operated it until 1973, settled with the city, cleaned up the waste; the movie Reach the Rock, written by John Hughes, was filmed in downtown West Chicago in 1998. The city has undergone a massive face-lift since 2001 in the downtown area, the corner of Route 59 and Main Street; the United States Postal Service operates the West Chicago Post Office. As of 2010, West Chicago had a population of 27,086; the population was 67.6% White, 2.5% Black, 0.6% Native American, 5.9% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 2.7% from two or more races. 51.1 % of the population was Latino of any race. As of the census of 2000, there were 23,469 people, 6,379 households, 5,230 families residing in the city.
The population density was 1,695.9 people per square mile. There were 6,567 housing units at an average density of 474.5 per square mile. The racial makeup of the city was 77.85% White, 1.68% African American, 0.36% Native American, 1.95% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 15.11% from other races, 3.01% from two or more races
Chicago Loop
The Loop, one of Chicago's 77 designated community areas, is the central business district in the downtown area of the city. It is home to Chicago's commercial core, City Hall, the seat of Cook County. Bounded on the north and west by the Chicago River, on the east by Lake Michigan, on the south by Roosevelt Road, it is the second largest commercial business district in the United States after Midtown Manhattan and contains the headquarters of many locally and globally important businesses as well as many of Chicago's most famous attractions. In what is now the Loop, on the south bank of the Chicago River near today's Michigan Avenue Bridge, the United States Army erected Fort Dearborn in 1803, the first settlement in the area sponsored by the United States. In the late nineteenth century cable car turnarounds and a prominent elevated railway encircled the area, giving the Loop its name. Around the same time some of the world's earliest skyscrapers were constructed in the area. In 1908, Chicago addresses were made uniform by naming the intersection of State Street and Madison Street in the Loop as the origin of the Chicago street grid.
Some believe the origin of the term Loop is derived from the cable car, those of two lines that shared a loop, constructed in 1882, bounded by Van Buren, Wabash and Lake. Other research has concluded that "the Loop" was not used as a proper noun until after the 1895–97 construction of the Union elevated railway loop. Fort Dearborn was established in the first American-backed settlement in the area; when Chicago was platted in 1830, it included what is now the Loop north of Madison Street and west of State Street. Except for the Fort Dearborn reservation and land reclaimed from Lake Michigan, the entirety of what is now the Loop was part of the Town of Chicago when it was incorporated in 1833 and the area was bustling by the end of the 1830s. Passenger lines reached seven Loop-area stations by the 1890s, with transfers from one to the other being a major business for taxi drivers prior to the advent of Amtrak in the 1970s and the majority of trains being concentrated at Chicago Union Station.
The construction of a streetcar loop in 1882 and the elevated railway loop in the 1890s gave the area its name and cemented its dominance in the city. Afterwards, suburbanization caused a decrease in the area's importance. Starting in the 1960s, the presence of an upscale shopping district caused the area's fortunes to increase; the area has long been a hub for architecture. The vast majority of the area was rebuilt quickly. In 1885 the Home Insurance Building considered the world's first skyscraper, was constructed, followed by the development of the Chicago school best exemplified by such buildings as the Rookery Building in 1888, the Monadnock Building in 1891, the Sullivan Center in 1899. From the 1890s to the 1940s, local aldermen "Bathhouse John" Coughlin and Michael "Hinky Dink" Kenna led the so-called "Gray Wolves" of Chicago, a notoriously corrupt group of aldermen, they hosted the First Ward Ball in the area at the Chicago Coliseum, an event that brought together various people of ill repute and by the time of its forced closure in 1909 raised over $50,000 a year for the aldermen.
Coughlin served from 1892 until his death in 1938. He was from the area and owned several bathhouses in it, although in his years he lived in the nearby Near South Side. Kenna served as alderman from 1897 to 1923, when he stepped down in favor of Coughlin when the number of aldermen per ward decreased from two to one, again from 1939 to 1943 upon Coughlin's death. Corruption in the area would continue throughout the 20th century. Subsequent aldermen John D'Arco Sr. and Fred Roti were accused of being fronts for the mob, the 1st ward was moved in 1992 from the Loop up north to its current position in West Town in an effort to stymie corruption, the Loop itself being dispersed across several wards. Loop architecture has been dominated by high-rises since early in its history. Notable buildings include the Home Insurance Building, considered the world's first skyscraper; some of the historic buildings in this district were instrumental in the development of towers. Chicago's street numbering system – dividing addresses into North, South and West quadrants originates in the Loop at the intersection of State Street and Madison Street.
This area abounds in shopping opportunities, including the Loop Retail Historic District, although it competes with the more upscale Magnificent Mile area to the north. It includes Chicago's former Marshall Field's department store location in the Marshall Field and Company Building. Chicago's Downtown Theatre District is found within this area, along with numerous restaurants and hotels. Chicago has a famous skyline which features many of the tallest buildings in the world as well as the Chicago Landmark Historic Michigan Boulevard District. Chicago's skyline is spaced out throughout the downtown area; the Willis Tower known as the Sears Tower, the second tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, stands in the western Loop in the heart of the city's f
University of Illinois Willard Airport
University of Illinois Willard Airport is south of Savoy in Tolono Township, Champaign County, Illinois. It is owned and operated by the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and is named for former University of Illinois president Arthur Cutts Willard; the airport was dedicated on 26 October 1945. The terminal building built in 1960 was used until the present terminal was completed in 1987. By 1969 Willard was the second-busiest airport in the state of Illinois. Ozark Airlines arrived at Champaign in 1950; the first jet flights were Ozark DC-9s in 1968. Piedmont was the next jet airline, with 737s from its Dayton hub starting in 1983; until 2014 the airport was home to the University of Illinois Institute of Aviation, a research and pilot training facility. The university trustees voted to shutter the institute in 2011 while allowing enrolled students to complete their studies. In 2013, the university agreed to transfer the pilot training function of the institute to Parkland College, a local community college.
The university continues to operate the airport and provides an annual subsidy of $433,000 for its operations. Traffic at Willard airport declined from 2005 to 2013. Overall traffic declined to 54,653 total Combined TRACON / Tower operations in CY 2013 compared to 123,341 in CY2005; the airport has had problems with delays. In 2013 the airport ranked 285th out of 320 airports for on-time performance according to government statistics and was ranked 251st out of 324 airports for the first 11 months of 2014; the airport gained some notoriety for a January 21, 1998, incident in which Air Force One became stuck in mud, requiring a backup aircraft to transport President Bill Clinton from a speaking engagement at the University of Illinois' Assembly Hall. The pilot opted to enter the main taxiway from the ramp using a feeder taxiway with an unusually large angle. Due to the wide turn, the right main gear left the taxiway and slipped into the soft turf, causing the aircraft to be lodged in the mud; the Air Force dispatched backup aircraft SAM26000, which first entered service during the Kennedy Administration and would be retired in 1998.
Willard Airport covers 1,799 acres and has three runways: 4/22: 6,501 by 150 ft, concrete 14L/32R: 8,102 by 150 ft, concrete with ILS 14R/32L: 3,817 by 75 ft, asphaltThe terminal has five gates. American Eagle has two daily flights to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport on 50-seat ERJs, four daily ERJ flights to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, one daily non-stop to Charlotte Douglas International Airport on ERJ 140s. Delta Air Lines dropped Willard Airport on August 31, 2010. Vision Airlines dropped Willard Airport on January 6, 2012 after three weeks of service, United Airlines dropped Willard Airport on September 5, 2018 after a year of service. Four car rental agencies have offices in the terminal; the airport is reached from U. S. Route 45, five miles south of downtown Champaign; the nearest expressway exit is Exit 229 on Interstate 57, about four miles from the terminal. Parking facilities include a paid parking lot, rental car parking lot, curbside loading zone. In 2016 the Champaign County Economic Development Corporation commissioned an Economic Impact Report with support from community sponsors.
The report found that the airport had a total of $74,325,994 annual economic impact and a $204,000 daily impact within Champaign County. The 23,266 visitors coming to the area each year because of the airport helped created 112.8 jobs locally. Further, the airport was found to generate $10.2 million in annual tax receipts, $2.3 million in annual local taxes. More than $800,000 of these local tax dollars goes to local schools. Willard Airport, official website FAA Airport Diagram, effective March 28, 2019 FAA Terminal Procedures for CMI, effective March 28, 2019 Resources for this airport: FAA airport information for CMI AirNav airport information for KCMI ASN accident history for CMI FlightAware airport information and live flight tracker NOAA/NWS latest weather observations SkyVector aeronautical chart, Terminal Procedures
Helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, to fly forward and laterally; these attributes allow helicopters to be used in congested or isolated areas where fixed-wing aircraft and many forms of VTOL aircraft cannot perform. The English word helicopter is adapted from the French word hélicoptère, coined by Gustave Ponton d'Amécourt in 1861, which originates from the Greek helix "helix, whirl, convolution" and pteron "wing". English language nicknames for helicopter include "chopper", "copter", "helo", "heli", "whirlybird". Helicopters were developed and built during the first half-century of flight, with the Focke-Wulf Fw 61 being the first operational helicopter in 1936; some helicopters reached limited production, but it was not until 1942 that a helicopter designed by Igor Sikorsky reached full-scale production, with 131 aircraft built. Though most earlier designs used more than one main rotor, it is the single main rotor with anti-torque tail rotor configuration that has become the most common helicopter configuration.
Tandem rotor helicopters are in widespread use due to their greater payload capacity. Coaxial helicopters, tiltrotor aircraft, compound helicopters are all flying today. Quadcopter helicopters pioneered as early as 1907 in France, other types of multicopter have been developed for specialized applications such as unmanned drones; the earliest references for vertical flight came from China. Since around 400 BC, Chinese children have played with bamboo flying toys; this bamboo-copter is spun by rolling a stick attached to a rotor. The spinning creates lift, the toy flies when released; the 4th-century AD Daoist book Baopuzi by Ge Hong describes some of the ideas inherent to rotary wing aircraft. Designs similar to the Chinese helicopter toy appeared in some Renaissance paintings and other works. In the 18th and early 19th centuries Western scientists developed flying machines based on the Chinese toy, it was not until the early 1480s, when Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci created a design for a machine that could be described as an "aerial screw", that any recorded advancement was made towards vertical flight.
His notes suggested that he built small flying models, but there were no indications for any provision to stop the rotor from making the craft rotate. As scientific knowledge increased and became more accepted, people continued to pursue the idea of vertical flight. In July 1754, Russian Mikhail Lomonosov had developed a small coaxial modeled after the Chinese top but powered by a wound-up spring device and demonstrated it to the Russian Academy of Sciences, it was powered by a spring, was suggested as a method to lift meteorological instruments. In 1783, Christian de Launoy, his mechanic, used a coaxial version of the Chinese top in a model consisting of contrarotating turkey flight feathers as rotor blades, in 1784, demonstrated it to the French Academy of Sciences. Sir George Cayley, influenced by a childhood fascination with the Chinese flying top, developed a model of feathers, similar to that of Launoy and Bienvenu, but powered by rubber bands. By the end of the century, he had progressed to using sheets of tin for rotor blades and springs for power.
His writings on his experiments and models would become influential on future aviation pioneers. Alphonse Pénaud would develop coaxial rotor model helicopter toys in 1870 powered by rubber bands. One of these toys, given as a gift by their father, would inspire the Wright brothers to pursue the dream of flight. In 1861, the word "helicopter" was coined by Gustave de Ponton d'Amécourt, a French inventor who demonstrated a small steam-powered model. While celebrated as an innovative use of a new metal, the model never lifted off the ground. D'Amecourt's linguistic contribution would survive to describe the vertical flight he had envisioned. Steam power was popular with other inventors as well. In 1878 the Italian Enrico Forlanini's unmanned vehicle powered by a steam engine, rose to a height of 12 meters, where it hovered for some 20 seconds after a vertical take-off. Emmanuel Dieuaide's steam-powered design featured counter-rotating rotors powered through a hose from a boiler on the ground. In 1887 Parisian inventor, Gustave built and flew a tethered electric model helicopter.
In July 1901, the maiden flight of Hermann Ganswindt's helicopter took place in Berlin-Schöneberg. A movie covering the event was taken by Max Skladanowsky. In 1885, Thomas Edison was given US$1,000 by James Gordon Bennett, Jr. to conduct experiments towards developing flight. Edison built a helicopter and used the paper for a stock ticker to create guncotton, with which he attempted to power an internal combustion engine; the helicopter was damaged by explosions and one of his workers was badly burned. Edison reported that it would take a motor with a ratio of three to four pounds per horsepower produced to be successful, based on his experiments. Ján Bahýľ, a Slovak inventor, adapted the internal combustion engine to power his helicopter model that reached a height of 0.5 meters in 1901. On 5 May 1905, his helicopter flew for over 1,500 meters. In 1908, Edison patented his own design for a helicopter powered by a gasoline engine with box kites attached to a mast by cables for a rotor, but it never flew.
In 1906, two French brothers and Louis Breguet, began experimenting with airfoils for helicopters. In
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, United States. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group, with the biggest circulation in Chicago and the 9th overall in the US; the Chicago Sun-Times claims to be the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city. That claim is based on the 1844 founding of the Chicago Daily Journal, the first newspaper to publish the rumor, now believed false, that a cow owned by Catherine O'Leary was responsible for the Chicago fire; the Evening Journal, whose West Side building at 17–19 S. Canal was undamaged, gave the Chicago Tribune a temporary home until it could rebuild. Though the assets of the Journal were sold to the Chicago Daily News in 1929, its last owner Samuel Emory Thomason immediately launched the tabloid Chicago Daily Illustrated Times; the modern paper grew out of the 1948 merger of the Chicago Sun, founded December 4, 1941 by Marshall Field III, the Chicago Daily Times. The newspaper was owned by Field Enterprises, controlled by the Marshall Field family, which acquired the afternoon Chicago Daily News in 1959 and launched WFLD television in 1966.
When the Daily News ended its run in 1978, much of its staff, including Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Mike Royko, were moved to the Sun-Times. During the Field period, the newspaper had a populist, progressive character that leaned Democratic but was independent of the city's Democratic establishment. Although the graphic style was urban tabloid, the paper was well regarded for journalistic quality and did not rely on sensational front-page stories, it ran articles from The Washington Post/Los Angeles Times wire service. Among the most prominent members of the newspaper's staff was cartoonist Jacob Burck, hired by the Chicago Times in 1938, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1941 and continued with the paper after it became the Sun-Times, drawing nearly 10,000 cartoons over a 44-year career; the advice column "Ask Ann Landers" debuted in 1943. Ann Landers was the pseudonym of staff writer Ruth Crowley, who answered readers' letters until 1955. Eppie Lederer, sister of "Dear Abby" columnist Abigail van Buren, assumed the role thereafter as Ann Landers.
"Kup's Column", written by Irv Kupcinet made its first appearance in 1943. Jack Olsen joined the Sun-Times as editor-in-chief in 1954, before moving on to Time and Sports Illustrated magazines and authoring true-crime books. Hired as literary editor in 1955 was Hoke Norris, who covered the civil-rights movement for the Sun-Times. Jerome Holtzman became a member of the Chicago Sun sports department after first being a copy boy for the Daily News in the 1940s, he and Edgar Munzel, another longtime sportswriter for the paper, both would end up honored by the Baseball Hall of Fame. Famed for his World War II exploits, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Bill Mauldin made the Sun-Times his home base in 1962; the following year, Mauldin drew one of his most renowned illustrations, depicting a mourning statue of Abraham Lincoln after the November 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy. Two years out of college, Roger Ebert became a staff writer in 1966, a year was named Sun-Times's film critic.
He continued in this role for the remainder of his life. In 1975, a new sports editor at the Sun-Times, Lewis Grizzard, spiked some columns written by sportswriter Lacy J. Banks and took away a column Banks had been writing, prompting Banks to tell a friend at the Chicago Defender that Grizzard was a racist. After the friend wrote a story about it, Grizzard fired Banks. With that, the editorial employees union intervened, a federal arbitrator ruled for Banks and 13 months he got his job back. A 25-part series on the Mirage Tavern, a saloon on Wells Street bought and operated by the Sun-Times in 1977, exposed a pattern of civic corruption and bribery, as city officials were investigated and photographed without their knowledge; the articles received considerable publicity and acclaim, but a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize met resistance from some who believed the Mirage series represented a form of entrapment. In March 1978, the venerable afternoon publication the Chicago Daily News, sister paper of the Sun-Times, went out of business.
The two newspapers shared the same office building. James F. Hoge, Jr. editor and publisher of the Daily News, assumed the same positions at the Sun-Times, which retained a number of the Daily News's editorial personnel. In 1980, the Sun-Times hired syndicated TV columnist Gary Deeb away from the rival Chicago Tribune. Deeb left the Sun-Times in the spring of 1983 to try his hand at TV, he joined Chicago's WLS-TV in September 1983. In July 1981, prominent Sun-Times investigative reporter Pam Zekman, part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team with the Chicago Tribune in 1976, announced she was leaving the Sun-Times to join WBBM-TV in Chicago in August 1981 as chief of its new investigative unit. "Salary wasn't a factor," she told the Tribune. "The station showed a commitment to investigative journalism. It was something I wanted to try."Pete Souza left the Sun-Times in 1983 to become official White House photographer for President Ronald Reagan until his second term's end in 1989. Souza returned to that position to be the official photographer for President Barack Obama.
Baseball writer Jerome Holtzman defected from the Sun-Times to the Tribune in late 1981, while Mike Downey left Sun-Times sports in September 1981 to be a columnist at the Detroit Free Press. In January 1984, noted Sun-Times business reporter James Warren quit to join the rival Chicago Tribune, he became the Tribune's Washington bureau chief and its managing editor for features. In 1984, Field Enterprises co-owners, half-brothers Marshall Field
