Second City evolved from the Compass Players, a 1950s cabaret-style revue show. The troupe chose the self-mocking name "Second City" from the title of a disdainful article about Chicago by A.J. Liebling that appeared in The New Yorker magazine in 1949. In 1959 the first Second City revue show premiered. The style of comedy has changed with the times, but the format has remained constant. Second City revues feature a mix of semi-improvised and scripted scenes (known as blackouts). New material is developed during unscripted improv sessions, where scenes are created based on audience suggestions. A Second City innovation is the inclusion of live, improvised music in the performance.
A number of important performers got their start here, and later moved on to television and movie careers. In the late 1970s Second City Chicago became a source of players for the Saturday Night Live television show, which borrowed many of the writing and performing techniques pioneered by Second City and other improv groups. Shortly thereafter members of the Toronto troupe created the "SCTV" television show.
Perhaps the most poignant scenario the CompassPlayers produced during the summer of 1955 was May’s “Georgina’s First Date.” Unlike the great majority of scenarios and scenes that the Compass and its male-dominated successors performed in the 1950s and early 1960s, this piece focused solely on the experience of a female character.
The fact that Compass actors uttered obscenities and the undisguised names of national politicians confirmed that their enterprise was boldly out of step with the rest of 1950s cold war America.
Like the alienated, rebellious Compass goys (many of whom emulated and in some cases envied their Jewish colleagues), they were articulate outsiders well poised to observe the follies of America’s middle class and the shallow promises of the American Way.
By the 12th century, European navigators were using compasses consisting of a needle-shaped magnet floating in a bowl of water.
The most commonly used is a magnetic compass, consisting of a thin piece of magnetic material with the north-seeking pole indicated, free to rotate on a pivot and mounted on a compass card on which the points of the compass are marked.
Compasses not dependent on the magnet are gyrocompasses, dependent on the gyroscope, and radiocompasses, dependent on the use of radio.
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