Travel Experience Uncovers Aviation Connection

People used to call all facial tissue "Kleenex" because the product invented by Kimberly-Clark was so ubiquitous that the name became generic.

Pilots did the same thing with flight simulators calling the devices "Links" even if they were made by another manufacturer.

In 1929 Edwin Link invented his first device for training pilots on the ground. He used pumps, valves and bellows from his father's organ manufacturing company to build a "full motion" simulator. The thing "pitched and rolled" in response to the trainee's control inputs and even had short wings and a vestigial tail.

Genuine full motion simulators are still built by L-3/Harris Technologies a direct descendant of Link Aviation. Link Aviation as well as the Link Piano and Organ Company were located in Binghamton, New York, until the 1970s.

When I was doing my initial instrument training, we spent 20 hours in the "Link."

I have no idea who actually built the devices, but they didn't move and were thus called "Procedural Trainers" instead of Simulators. I was clueless about the connection between the Link and my hometown until I arrived on an airline flight from Detroit one day in 1980 to discover the Binghamton Airport was now called Edwin Link Field – Broome County Airport. The terminal had displays of Mr. Link and his training devices. I found it all really interesting, but became starkly aware of how ignorant I was about aviation history, a situation I've spent 40-plus years trying to correct. "Greater Binghamton Airport- Edwin A. Link Field" is what the name is now, but most of the Link memorabilia is still on display.

Link held 27 patents. That's a remarkable number, but even more amazing is most of the stuff he invented was put to use.

The first thing he patented was the training device that became famous in World War II as the "Blue Box" because it was painted in U.S. Army Air Corps colors.

In 1920 Link became interested in aviation. He earned his pilot certificate and purchased the first aircraft manufactured by Cessna. Link Aviation was founded in 1929 to manufacture the training device. He saw it as an inexpensive way to learn to fly, but the initial customers were all amusement parks.

The first student to use the device to learn to fly was Edwin's brother. Finally in 1934 the Air Corps bought six of Link's trainers and an industry was founded. During the War over half-a-million Army and Navy pilots learned the basics of instrument flying in the "Link" of which 10,000 were manufactured.

Most students considered it a device for torturing fledgling aviators. Link Aviation later built simulators for gunnery and navigation.

Later in life Link invented many pieces of equipment for underwater research and exploration. He was a philanthropist who endowed a number of engineering scholarships, the engineering building at Syracuse University, and a chair for a professor of organ music at Binghamton University.

Renaissance Man sounds like a good description of Edwin Link.