MANAGEMENT IN AVIATION HISTORY BENCH MARKS
After WWII, sales of the “blue box” trainer declined. Link then designed a simulator to be used in high schools and had initial support for textbook materials from commercial airlines like TWA and American. Shown here with a student is Link’s step-sister, Marilyn, who had experience as a teacher as well as a pilot. The ambitious program shut down after four years. Photo: “The Pilot Maker,” by Lloyd L. Kelly and Robert B. Parke.
In 1910, when Link was six years old, his family moved from Indiana to Binghamton, NY, where his father kept the music going at the Link Piano Company. At the turn of the 20th century, player pianos and organ recitals were popular family entertainment, keeping the Link Piano Company busy. Young Link mastered the art and the mechanical engineering that combined bellows and gears to produce the variable sounds of musical instruments.
By 1927, the sound of an aircraft engine lured Link away from the sound of the piano. During 1928, he worked as crew for barnstormers, learning to fl y by observing and an occasional lesson. He determined quickly that the cost of training in an aircraft was not only expensive but could also be dangerous. Link knew he needed more fl ying experience without the inherent risk. “He began to construct a simulated cockpit that could be set
Women took over jobs as Link trainer fl ight instructors at U.S. schools during WWII, as did those shown here in the British Commonwealth Air Training Program (BCATP). The BCATP trained nearly half of the pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, air gunners, wireless operators and fl ight engineers who served with the air services of the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Photo: North American Museum of Flight Simulation.
06 2014 22
up anywhere, yet could move and respond to controls similar to that of an airplane,” wrote Link’s biographers Robert B. Parke and Lloyd L. Kelly. In 1929, Link built the invention that would change fl ight instruction forever. “Link applied the principles he had mastered in building fi ne organs to the design of his new fl ight training device,” wrote an authority on the history of simulators. “The pilot trainer’s stubby wooden cockpit fuselage was mounted on organ bellows that Link had borrowed from his father’s piano factory. An electric pump drove the organ bellows that allowed the trainer to bank, climb and dive as a pilot operated the controls in the cockpit.”
DOMmagazine
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64
