Flight Simulation

Dan Fleming

In the late 1920s, Ed Link worked for his father at the Link Piano and Organ Factory in Binghamton, New York, and became interested in the systems of bellows and pumps inside organs. On an airfield in Ohio in 1927, pursuing his passion for aviation, Ed had one of those moments of lateral thinking, when he realized that a similar pneumatic system might be constructed to move a wooden cockpit in a way that emulated aircraft movements in flight. In the basement of his father's factory, he connected an electric pump to some organ bellows, constructed a basic cockpit on top of the apparatus, and built his first “pilot trainer,” patented in 1929. Born in France of Morrocan parents and brought up by his mother on her cleaner's wages (after she left his abusive father), 33-year-old Zacarias Moussaoui was in the United States by 2001, paying for lessons on a ...

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