Located at the Museum of Flight are a large number of static aircraft on display. One of them is a Link Model C-3 trainer. A nearby placard highlights this trainer and it reads:
Link Instrument and Radio Trainer, Type C-3
The "Blue Box"
In 1936, Link Aviation Devices, Inc. created the "C" series of flight simulators, which specialized in teaching pilots to navigate and land by instruments alone, with no visibility outside the "cockpit," The Museum's Link Trainer is a Model C-3.
During World War II, Link Aviation Devices, Inc. delivered some 10,000 Link Trainers to American and Allied armed forces. Known to as "the Blue Box," Link Trainers helped the Allies to produce the pilots who eventually won air superiority in every theater of operations. In addition to training military pilots, Link Trainers have also been used to train airline pilots, beginning with American Airlines in January, 1937. Now based in Arlington, Texas, Ed Link's company lives on as Link Simulation & Training division of L-3 Communications.
Pilot Maker
When Edwin Albert "Ed" Link left school in 1927, he went to work for his family's organ-manufacturing company in Binghamton, New York. But Ed dreamed of flying, which, even in the 1920s, was expensive. Moreover, Ed concluded that the cockpit of an airplane was actually a very inefficient place in which to learn to fly. Seeking a better way, Ed designed the "Pilot Maker," the world's first practical three-axis flight simulator, in 1929. Ed used organ bellows, driven by an electric air pump, to control the Pilot Maker around the three axes for flight pitch (up and down), roll (banking from side to side), and yaw (slewing from side to side).