In 1903, humanity definitively learned to lift its feet off the ground and reach the sky. Forty years later, it used that knowledge to define the fate of the world. Airplanes completely changed the way war was waged, but also created the need to train pilots at great speed. The solution had already existed for more than ten years: Link Trainer, the first practical flight simulator with an analog configuration, using a combination of valves, pumps, and bellows.
History tells us that in 1910, the Antoinette company and the French army created the Tonneau Antoinette, a precursor to the flight simulator as we know it. In essence, the mechanism was a barrel cut in two, with one half on top of the other, and a series of spars that instructors used to "destabilize the airplane" or reproduce movements.
However, the technological evolution in aviation was impressive. Antoinette went bankrupt just two years later, World War I was the first large-scale conflict to use aircraft, and with each new generation, complexity increased. In World War II, flying by instruments became a necessity and an obligation, and when it came to training pilots, the main forces turned to the Link Trainer, the first flight simulator.
Link Trainer: The flight simulator that trained pilots in World War II
The latest video published by Tom Scott gives a brief but very effective review of the Link Trainer and its main features. Its creator Edwin Link loved airplanes; however, he did not have the funds to pay for flying lessons. Over the course of 18 months he built his simulator, adapting resources from the family business, dedicated to the manufacture of organs and pianos. The first model of the Link Trainer debuted in 1929, but it was in 1934 that it made its first sales to the USAAC (United States Army Air Corps), after demonstrating that pilots could be trained to fly in adverse conditions, and avoid tragedies like the "Air Mail Scandal" of that year.
The Link Trainer is completely mechanical-analog, with bellows, valves, pumps and supports of different types. At first glance it looks like a game taken from an amusement park, but it can imitate everything an airplane does, especially in terms of instruments. Only a handful of Link Trainers remain around the world (they were even adopted by Japan and the Soviet Union), and the unit Tom accessed at the New York Science and Technology Museum is only open to the public on isolated occasions, and its instruments do not work. Why? Because the original models were painted with radium, and we already know very well what that substance does…
