Edwin Albert Link

Early life

Edwin Link was born in Huntington, Indiana in 1904, the son of Edwin A. Link, Sr., and Katherine (Martin) Link. In 1910, he moved with his family to Binghamton, New York.

Aviation

He took his first flying lesson in 1920. In 1927, he obtained the first Cessna airplane ever delivered and eked out a living by barnstorming, charter flying and giving lessons.

As a young man, Edwin Link used apparatus from his father's automatic piano and organ factory (of the Link Piano and Organ Company) to produce an advertising airplane. A punched roll and pneumatic system from a player piano controlled sequential lights on the lower surfaces of the wings to spell out messages like "ENDICOTT-JOHNSON SHOES". To attract more attention, he added a set of small but loud organ pipes, also controlled by the roll.

In the 1920s, he developed the Link Trainer, "a fuselage-like device with a cockpit and controls that produced the motions and sensations of flying." Much of the pneumatic system was adapted directly from technology used in the organ factory. (In the 1970s, Link used parts scavenged from an inoperative trainer to help rebuild a Link pipe organ.) He formed the Link Aeronautical Corporation in 1929 to manufacture the trainers. His few early customers were amusement parks, not flight training schools; the early models served as amusement rides. Finally, in 1934, the United States Army Air Corps bought six. During World War II, more than half a million airmen were taught using the Link Trainer.

Together with his wife Marion Clayton Link, whom he had married in 1931, Edwin Link managed the very successful Link Aviation, Inc. He contributed a great deal to the Binghamton, New York area, where he set up a production facility that at one time employed thousands of workers. Although the company later passed through different ownership, its legacy can be traced to the current L3 division known as Link Simulation and Training, now headquartered in Arlington, Texas (though it still maintains some operations in Binghamton).

In 1953, Edwin and Marion Link established The Link Foundation. The foundation continues to provide grants and fellowships in aeronautics, simulation and training, ocean engineering, energy, and organizations of interest to the Links.

Man-in-Sea project

After Link sold his company to General Precision in 1954, he addressed himself to underwater archeology and underwater research. Link worked at developing equipment for deeper, longer lasting and more secure diving. To this end he designed several submersible decompression chambers. On August 28, 1962, at Villefranche-sur-Mer on the Mediterranean Sea, Link inaugurated his "Man in Sea" project by spending eight hours at a depth of sixty feet in his submersible decompression chamber (SDC), becoming the first diver to be completely saturated with a mixture of oxygen and helium (Heliox) while breathing underwater. This dive served as a test run for a dive the following month by Robert Sténuit, who spent over 24 hours in the SDC at a depth of 200 feet and thus became the world's first aquanaut. In June–July 1964, Link conducted his second Man in Sea experiment in the Berry Islands (a chain in the Bahamas) with Sténuit and Jon Lindbergh, one of the sons of Charles Lindbergh, who made the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic. Sténuit and Lindbergh stayed in Link's SPID habitat (Submersible, Portable, Inflatable Dwelling) for 49 hours underwater at a depth of 432 feet, breathing a helium-oxygen mixture. Dr. Joseph B. MacInnis participated in this dive as a life support specialist.

Submersibles

In March 1967, Link launched Deep Diver, the first small submersible designed for lockout diving, allowing divers to leave and enter the craft while underwater. Deep Diver carried out many scientific missions in 1967 and 1968, including a 430-foot lockout dive in 1967 (at the same location as the 1964 Sténuit-Lindbergh dive) and a 700-foot lockout dive near Great Stirrup Cay in 1968. Dr. MacInnis participated in both of these dives as an observer in Deep Diver's forward chamber.

Later in 1968, after Deep Diver had been requisitioned by the United States Navy to help search for the lost submarine USS Scorpion, the Bureau of Ships determined that Deep Diver was unsafe for use at great depths or in extremely cold temperatures because of the substitution of the wrong kind of steel, which became brittle in cold water, in some parts of the sub. Link proceeded to design a new lockout sub with a distinctive acrylic bubble as the forward pilot/observer compartment. In January 1971 the new sub was launched and commissioned to the Smithsonian Institution. It was named the Johnson Sea Link after its donors, Link and his friend John Seward Johnson I.

Death of son

In June 1973, Link's 31-year-old son, Edwin Clayton Link, and another diver, 51-year-old Albert D. Stover, died during a seemingly routine dive off Key West. They suffered carbon dioxide poisoning when the Johnson Sea Link became trapped in debris around a Navy destroyer, the Fred T. Berry, which had been sunk to create an artificial reef. The submersible's other two occupants survived. Over the next two years, Edwin Link designed an unmanned Cabled Observation and Rescue Device (CORD) that could free a trapped submersible.

Death

Edwin Link died in his sleep on September 7, 1981 in Binghamton, New York, where he had been undergoing treatment for cancer.

Honors

Link was awarded the Howard N. Potts Medal in 1945 for developing training devices for aviators, and the Royal Aeronautical Society Wakefield Gold Medal in 1947. He received an honorary degree from Binghamton University. In 1976, he was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame.

Edwin Link is the namesake of Link Hall on the campus of Syracuse University. The building houses offices, classrooms and laboratories of the Syracuse University College of Engineering and Computer Science.

The field on which Greater Binghamton Airport lies is named after him, and there is an original "Blue Box" on display in the terminal.