Hi MMDers.  I love finding connections between mechanical music
technology and modern technology.  When I was on the patent review
committee at work, hardly a year went by when I didn't discover
someone re-inventing some sort of mechanical music technology and
trying to patent something that was known 100 years ago.  My favorite
was using pneumatics to track a moving band.

I suspect that lots of music related museums have Link trainers on
display because of their connection to the Link orchestrions that
Ed Link produced.  There is one in a museum in Binghamton, New York.
We visited it when Harvey and Marion Roehl hosted an MBSI chapter
meeting there many years ago.  There is also one in the great Glenn
Curtis Museum on Hammondsport, New York.

Last fall I attended a reunion at Syracuse University.  As a graduate,
I got a tour of all the sections of the Engineering College, including
the Aeronautical Engineering School.  One of the labs had a full size,
2-seat flight simulator, fully operational.  Right next to it was a
small, working model of a Link trainer.  They had the control console,
too.

The guide (from the Electrical Engineering department) was surprised to
learn where the original technology originated.  I'm not sure if Link
made this model as part of the original system or if the students made
it to show how it works.  Here's a picture of me standing between the
modern system to the left and the Link model to the right.

Regards,
Craig Smith

 [ Craig Smith with a model of the Link Trainer - Syracuse University 2014
 [ http://www.mmdigest.com/Attachments/14/12/29/141229_081349_Aeronautical%20simulator%20lab%20s.jpg