Katherine Lee - History

History

Formed with a Huff-Daland Duster, the first true crop duster, the plane was deployed to combat the boll weevil in 1925 and was nicknamed "The Puffer" due to the clouds of white pesticides it emitted. Delta Air Corporation owned the plane (now in the Southern Museum of Flight), eventually ferrying single passengers from one Southeastern state to another, in a chair placed in the bin where the pesticide was usually kept). Delta Airlines was born as Huff Daland Dusters, Incorporated, an aerial crop dusting operation on May 30, 1924, in Macon, Georgia. The company moved to Monroe in Ouachita Parish in northeastern Louisiana, in 1925, and began carrying passengers in late 1929. Collett E. Woolman purchased the company on September 13, 1928, and renamed it Delta Air Service, with headquarters in Monroe.

Delta grew through the addition of routes and the acquisition of other airlines; it replaced propeller planes with jets in the 1960s and entered international competition to Europe in the 1970s and across the Pacific in the 1980s. The company logo of Delta Air Lines, reminiscent of the swept-wing design of the DC-8 airplanes, consists of two 3D triangles.