Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
Speaker 1: are you. It's time for a tech Stuff tidbits episode.
Speaker 1: Been a while since we've done one of those, and
Speaker 1: this one's all about the first light simulator. And you know,
Speaker 1: we use computers to do a lot of stuff, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff we do with computers is
Speaker 1: super cool. Now a lot of it is super uncool too,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna focus on the cool bits for this episode.
Speaker 1: And while I can't point at any one use case
Speaker 1: of computers as my favorite, like I can't say using
Speaker 1: computers to do this is my absolute favorite use simulations
Speaker 1: have to be way up there. So for a computer
Speaker 1: to simulate anything, it has to take a lot of
Speaker 1: factors into account. A really good simulation won't just figure
Speaker 1: out how these factors will impact whatever it is you're simulating,
Speaker 1: it'll also figure out how the factors influence each other.
Speaker 1: So when you talk about stuff like weather simulations, computer
Speaker 1: models that you know crunch tons of numbers to attempt
Speaker 1: to predict future weather, it goes a little bit beyond Well,
Speaker 1: historically when the weather was like this, then it rained
Speaker 1: more often than it didn't. So there's a greater than
Speaker 1: fifty percent chance of rain today. That's kind of where
Speaker 1: we got started with weather predictions. But you using historical
Speaker 1: data to predict future conditions. But now we've got much
Speaker 1: more sophisticated models that run on supercomputers essentially in order
Speaker 1: to project out what the weather is going to be. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the world of simulations is enormous, right. It covers all
Speaker 1: sorts of different things. It's got a very complicated history.
Speaker 1: It's not like we can point to one thing and
Speaker 1: say this was the first simulator. There are simulators that
Speaker 1: are used for their tainment, you know, like maybe you
Speaker 1: drive a virtual car around a racetrack, or maybe you
Speaker 1: pit an army of computer controlled zombies against an army
Speaker 1: of one a nearly invincible computer controlled john Wick. But today,
Speaker 1: like I said, I really wanted to talk about the
Speaker 1: origins of the flight simulator, which is interesting because no
Speaker 1: computers are involved whatsoever. You see these days flight simulators
Speaker 1: are incredibly sophisticated. There are some that require you to
Speaker 1: get into a cockpit that has a virtual screen, it's
Speaker 1: got a billion dials and indicators in it. It's got
Speaker 1: complex controls that precisely mimic specific aircraft. It's mounted on
Speaker 1: a platform that can be precisely controlled by various components
Speaker 1: to manage the tilt and all of these factors. Right.
Speaker 1: But then there are also some home PC flight simulators
Speaker 1: that are really astounding, of the most famous being Microsoft
Speaker 1: Flight Simulator. Modern flight simulators can create all sorts of
Speaker 1: flight conditions. They can rely on hefty computing power to
Speaker 1: get it all done in the process, but again, that's
Speaker 1: not how they got started. It's very useful for violets
Speaker 1: now to be able to step into a safe space
Speaker 1: and practice flying in different conditions. But when it all
Speaker 1: got started, it was taking a much less technically sophisticated approach. Now,
Speaker 1: what most folks acknowledge as the first flight simulator had
Speaker 1: no computer components at all. In fact, it didn't even
Speaker 1: rely on electronics. It was a purely mechanical system that
Speaker 1: used air and designed to teach pilots how to fly
Speaker 1: by instruments alone. Now by that, I mean pilots would
Speaker 1: learn how to read the various instruments in their cockpit.
Speaker 1: You know, the various dials and things in order to
Speaker 1: understand things like their altitude they're heading, the pitch, the yaw,
Speaker 1: the speed at which they were traveling, both you know,
Speaker 1: in a forward direction and vertically, and to use all
Speaker 1: this information to pilot their aircraft, even if they are
Speaker 1: otherwise in conditions that would prevent the pilot from seeing
Speaker 1: their surroundings. In the earliest days of heavier than air flight,
Speaker 1: pilots relied solely on their own sense of sight to
Speaker 1: navigate and take off, and to land, they relied often
Speaker 1: on their own body position to control the aircraft. The
Speaker 1: Right Brothers built a plane with had some control surfaces,
Speaker 1: and that allowed the pilot to have some ability to
Speaker 1: control the aircraft in three dimensions, though in many cases
Speaker 1: the pilot was also having to use their own body
Speaker 1: to do that, not just like a control but to
Speaker 1: physically shift in order to help move the aircraft where
Speaker 1: they wanted it to go. But there were no real
Speaker 1: dials or gauges or anything like that, so these first flights.
Speaker 1: The Right brothers first flight was in nineteen oh three,
Speaker 1: but over the next two and a half decades, early
Speaker 1: aviators and engineers began to build more sophisticated aircraft that
Speaker 1: had more control systems so that you could do finer
Speaker 1: tuned maneuvers in the air. They also included instruments to
Speaker 1: help pilots maintain proper control of their aircraft. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: instruments would indicate something that might feel counterintuitive to a pilot,
Speaker 1: and then the pilot has to make a choice, right
Speaker 1: do they choose to control their aircraft in tune with
Speaker 1: how they feel, or do they choose to do it
Speaker 1: in tune with how the instruments are reading. And this
Speaker 1: did not always turn out so well. When the pilots
Speaker 1: chose to go with their gut feeling, that actually would
Speaker 1: become an issue because would undergo certain stresses as a
Speaker 1: pilot in an aircraft that would make you feel a
Speaker 1: certain way that was convincing you that one thing was
Speaker 1: happening when in fact that wasn't happening. But if you
Speaker 1: act on that, then you could end up creating a
Speaker 1: dangerous situation. The instruments were there to tell the pilot
Speaker 1: what's really going on. You know, assuming the instruments are
Speaker 1: in working order, which is why you have to go
Speaker 1: through that long preflight checklist, then you need to trust
Speaker 1: in that data and make your decisions based on that.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen twenty nine, a pilot named Jimmy Doolittle
Speaker 1: performed a pretty daring task. He flew in an aircraft
Speaker 1: in which his view of the outside world was obstructed. Now,
Speaker 1: some versions of the story say that he flew with
Speaker 1: a safety pilot who presumably could see, but Doolittle was
Speaker 1: in control for the whole flight and he could not see.
Speaker 1: So he felt that pilots were relying too heavily on
Speaker 1: their own senses, and as I said, those can be
Speaker 1: fooled in the environment of a cockpit. Doolittle recognize that
Speaker 1: pilots encounter situations that can trick them into thinking that
Speaker 1: they're heading in a different direction, or that they were
Speaker 1: suddenly climbing or diving, when perhaps they're not so. Doolittle
Speaker 1: was a big believer in flight instruments and how reliable
Speaker 1: they can be, and in nineteen twenty nine he proved it.
Speaker 1: He flew by instruments alone, so he couldn't see anything.
Speaker 1: He was just using the instruments to figure out when
Speaker 1: he could take off, where he was going, how high
Speaker 1: he was, how fast he was going. He flew a
Speaker 1: course and then came back down and landed the plane
Speaker 1: without ever being able to see the world around him.
Speaker 1: It actually reminds me of how submarine operators work, right
Speaker 1: Like submarines. You're big submarines, the ones that go deep.
Speaker 1: They don't have windows. You can't see outside to the
Speaker 1: world around you. You are basing everything on your instrumentation
Speaker 1: and math. You're keeping track of how long you are
Speaker 1: on a course and how quickly you're moving, and you're
Speaker 1: using charts to understand what the sea around you, what
Speaker 1: those conditions are like, and you make your decisions based
Speaker 1: off that. Like it's you can't see anything, same sort
Speaker 1: of thing, but in an aircraft, and his point, Doolittle's
Speaker 1: point was a really important one. Aircraft travel in all
Speaker 1: sorts of conditions. You know, you're not just flying in clear,
Speaker 1: well lit conditions. You could be flying at night, or
Speaker 1: maybe there's fog or other precipitation, maybe there's smoke. So
Speaker 1: in those kinds of conditions, the instrument panel might be
Speaker 1: all the information you can rely upon while you're trying
Speaker 1: to operate the aircraft. So you have better darnwell know
Speaker 1: how to fly by instruments. Now the problem is learning
Speaker 1: to fly by instruments is challenging. Typically, you would need
Speaker 1: to secure an aircraft right First, got to have an aircraft.
Speaker 1: Then you need to have an instructor who can help
Speaker 1: you as you are learning, and you have to spend
Speaker 1: lots and lots of hours learning how to trust those
Speaker 1: instruments and to make decisions based on their readings. Plus
Speaker 1: you needed aircraft that actually had those instruments installed. This
Speaker 1: was a non trivial challenge in the early days of aviation. Yes,
Speaker 1: we had invented and engineered these instruments, things like altimeters
Speaker 1: that would tell you how high you were. Now we
Speaker 1: had these things, but a lot of aircraft just didn't
Speaker 1: have them on there. Even the Army Air Corps had
Speaker 1: instruments that were kind of sitting in storage waiting to
Speaker 1: be installed an aircraft. But to do that you have
Speaker 1: to make time to install it and test it and
Speaker 1: make sure it works and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: And in the meanwhile, the aircraft you are upgrading isn't
Speaker 1: in service, and often they were needed in service. So
Speaker 1: there was a long stretch where a lot of the
Speaker 1: aircraft that the Army Air Corps was using didn't have
Speaker 1: these instruments at all. Okay, when we come back, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the guy who came up with
Speaker 1: a solution or a potential solution for the challenges you
Speaker 1: face training pilots to fly by instruments alone. A guy
Speaker 1: named Edwin Albert Link. We'll talk more about him when
Speaker 1: we come back after this quick break. Okay, before the break, guy,
Speaker 1: I was talking about Doolittle and how he was demonstrating
Speaker 1: that a pilot could fly just using instruments without having
Speaker 1: any view of the outside world at all. And then
Speaker 1: I mentioned that there was this enterprising inventor who came
Speaker 1: up with a device that would let prospective pilots train
Speaker 1: without ever having to leave the ground. And again that
Speaker 1: inventor was Edwin Albert Link. So Link was born just
Speaker 1: one year to the right brothers took flight for the
Speaker 1: first time. So by that, I mean he was born
Speaker 1: in nineteen o four, Just in case you forgot that
Speaker 1: I had mentioned the right brothers flew in nineteen o three.
Speaker 1: He was born in Indiana, but when he was still
Speaker 1: a young kid, his family moved to Binghampton, New York,
Speaker 1: and his father was the owner of the Link Piano
Speaker 1: and organ company. And yes, this does matter, So young
Speaker 1: Eddie grew up around mechanical systems, and these were systems
Speaker 1: that we're using pumped air to generate results. In the
Speaker 1: case of oregans and pianos to generate musical notes. The
Speaker 1: pianos that Link the Elder were making were automatic or
Speaker 1: player pianos. Those use air power to work. I've done
Speaker 1: episodes about how these player pianos work, so I'm not
Speaker 1: going to go over it all again. But if you've
Speaker 1: ever seen player piano roles, it's like this long roll
Speaker 1: of paper that has holes punched into the paper in
Speaker 1: different spots. Those holes are where air can pass through,
Speaker 1: and it was the air that would power the mechanical
Speaker 1: system within the piano to have keys pressed down and
Speaker 1: produce a note. So the pianos and organs were using
Speaker 1: bellows to pump air through systems to generate sound, and
Speaker 1: that would end up being the basis for links invention
Speaker 1: later on down the road. In fact, he was using
Speaker 1: actual parts from his father's piano and Oregon company in
Speaker 1: order to build this first simulator, so much so that
Speaker 1: later on down the line there was a point where
Speaker 1: the Oregon Company needed to salvage parts from a simulator
Speaker 1: in order to repair an organ. So that's kind of
Speaker 1: incredible anyway, link the younger Eddie baby, he was fascinated
Speaker 1: by flying early in the nineteen twenties. He took some
Speaker 1: flying lessons. You know, this is when at this point
Speaker 1: he's still a teenager and even purchased Assessna in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty seven. But he also recognize the challenges I've already
Speaker 1: mentioned about flying, particularly about how to learn to fly
Speaker 1: by instruments. Like lessons, were also expensive, right, Not everybody
Speaker 1: could afford to hire out an aircraft and an instructor
Speaker 1: and take all that time to fly up in the
Speaker 1: air and learn how to fly by instruments. He saw
Speaker 1: that there was an opportunity here to create something that
Speaker 1: would make the training process simpler, and he knew that
Speaker 1: these skills were really important to be a dependable pilot,
Speaker 1: to be able to be a really capable pilot, you
Speaker 1: needed to learn how to fly by instruments. So he
Speaker 1: came up with this crazy idea, and that was to
Speaker 1: build a mechanical flight simulator. It consisted of a wooden
Speaker 1: cockpit and it was just big enough really to hold
Speaker 1: a person and then have the various instrumentation fed through
Speaker 1: to the rest of the system. But yeah, it was
Speaker 1: not huge. It was little wooden cockpit you'd climb in,
Speaker 1: had a door that you could open and climb through,
Speaker 1: and also had a hardtop cover that would completely enclose
Speaker 1: the pilot inside, and there was no way to view
Speaker 1: the outer world. You could just see the instrument panel.
Speaker 1: That's it. But the instrument panel would provide all the
Speaker 1: information needed to the pilot inside. The instrument panel actually worked,
Speaker 1: it was connected to the rest of the system. The
Speaker 1: whole cockpit was mounted onto a universal joint that could
Speaker 1: tilt in various ways so that the simulator could simulate
Speaker 1: changes in pitch. That's when the nose of the plane
Speaker 1: is going up or going down, that's your pitch. And
Speaker 1: also roll roll is the rolling to the left or
Speaker 1: to the right. The actual base of the apparatus could rotate,
Speaker 1: so that could simulate yaw yaws rotating right or left
Speaker 1: as opposed to rolling right or left. Air pumps would
Speaker 1: supply pressurized air to the bellows underneath the universal joint,
Speaker 1: so by inflating or allowing to deflate bellows, you could
Speaker 1: tilt the cockpit, so you know, you inflate the bellows.
Speaker 1: More on one side, and they push up and tilt
Speaker 1: the plane in the opposite direction, so the bellows on
Speaker 1: the right no up, the plane ends up tilting to
Speaker 1: the left, And this was actually controlled by the controllers
Speaker 1: stick inside the simulator. As you moved the controllers stick,
Speaker 1: it would allow valves to open and close, and so
Speaker 1: the bellows would get more air or be allowed to
Speaker 1: release air, and that would actually change the orientation of
Speaker 1: the simulator itself. So the response wasn't immediate because this
Speaker 1: is all air powered, but it would reflect whatever the
Speaker 1: pilot was doing inside the cockpit, so it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: quite the same sort of responsiveness you would experience with
Speaker 1: an actual aircraft, but it did simulate it, just at
Speaker 1: a slightly slower response time. Now, officially, the simulator would
Speaker 1: become known as the link trainer, or at least the
Speaker 1: whole line of these would be known as link trainer.
Speaker 1: The more common name, especially in the military when they
Speaker 1: would become popular a little bit later, was the blue box,
Speaker 1: because the cockpit was essentially a box that you would
Speaker 1: get client you would climb into and get shut up in,
Speaker 1: and at least in the United States, they were frequently
Speaker 1: painted blue. In other nations, they would be painted different colors.
Speaker 1: Like I said, the instruments inside the cockpit actually would
Speaker 1: give information to the pilot, while the Blue Box would
Speaker 1: never actually get off the ground. It is firmly earthbound.
Speaker 1: The altimeter inside the Blue Box couldn't inform the pilot
Speaker 1: of how high they were going via the simulation, so
Speaker 1: you could also get readouts for things like horizontal speed,
Speaker 1: vertical speed you're heading, and all that kind of stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: while the Blue Box couldn't crash, thus it was, you know,
Speaker 1: safer than a real aircraft would be, so you could
Speaker 1: put pilots through it without worrying about them encountering rough
Speaker 1: air or bad weather and getting out of their depth
Speaker 1: and tragedy following. The blue Box itself was not entirely safe.
Speaker 1: One unfortunate feature of the Blue Box. It's hard to
Speaker 1: say that over and over super fast anyway. One unfortunate
Speaker 1: feature of it was that in order to be able
Speaker 1: to see these instruments that are meant to be your
Speaker 1: guide when you're flying, Eddie decided to have everything painted
Speaker 1: with radium. So radium it's luminescent, it glows in the dark,
Speaker 1: but it's also radioactive and being exposed to radium for
Speaker 1: prolonged periods could lead to a higher risk of bad
Speaker 1: health outcomes over time, So it is entirely possible that
Speaker 1: early trainees encountered serious health issues later on in their
Speaker 1: lives in part due to the training simulator. It gets
Speaker 1: really tricky to draw firm consequences like you can typically
Speaker 1: talk in terms of chance like probabilities, but it's very
Speaker 1: difficult to say deffinitatively X number of people develop say cancer,
Speaker 1: as a result of training in these simulators, but that
Speaker 1: was a risk and we didn't know about it at
Speaker 1: the time. The link trainer also had a station for
Speaker 1: a human instructor, so they would not be in the simulator.
Speaker 1: They would actually be sitting outside at a desk like
Speaker 1: thing that would have a map, a radio so that
Speaker 1: they could talk to the person who is inside the simulator,
Speaker 1: and they would have their own set of instrument readouts
Speaker 1: so they could actually see the same readouts that the
Speaker 1: pilot would see, so the instructor could give instructions to
Speaker 1: the pilot and then monitor the instruments to see if
Speaker 1: the pilot was performing the maneuvers properly. In order to
Speaker 1: fulfill the instructions, they were given. The pilot in turn
Speaker 1: learned to fly by instruments alone while remaining safe on
Speaker 1: the ground, so even if they did totally with it,
Speaker 1: they would not come careening toward the ground and crash.
Speaker 1: Link opened up a flying school and used a simulator,
Speaker 1: which was called the Pilot Maker, to train students. But
Speaker 1: the timing for this was more than a little bit
Speaker 1: unfortunate because remember this was nineteen twenty nine when he
Speaker 1: built the first prototype. Well, nineteen twenty nine also marked
Speaker 1: the beginning of the Great Depression, an enormously damaging economic recession,
Speaker 1: not even recession, I mean it was a depression. And
Speaker 1: Link was able to produce some of his simulators for
Speaker 1: amusement parks where they were used for entertainment purposes, but
Speaker 1: it was hard to get students because a lot of
Speaker 1: people just couldn't afford the classes. So things were looking
Speaker 1: a little grim, but they would change due to a
Speaker 1: scandal and a string of tragedies. I'll explain more when
Speaker 1: we come back from this break. Before the break, I
Speaker 1: mentioned that a scandal and some tragedies would end up
Speaker 1: changing things for Edwin Link and bring his simulators into demand.
Speaker 1: And the scandal was all about mail delivery in the
Speaker 1: United States, as in sending mail or post if you
Speaker 1: prefer letters, packages, that kind of stuff. Several companies that
Speaker 1: would later become big commercial passenger airlines really got their
Speaker 1: start by hauling mail between cities airmail right and this
Speaker 1: was after the Post Office itself had operated its own
Speaker 1: airmail service, a service that was plagued in the early
Speaker 1: days by accidents that led to the tragic loss of life.
Speaker 1: More than a dozen pilots in the early years died
Speaker 1: as a result of crashes, and eventually the Post Office
Speaker 1: was given permission, this would be in the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: to contract with private airlines to carry US mail. It
Speaker 1: got really complicated. It was a process that these private
Speaker 1: companies would enter into. They would bid against each other.
Speaker 1: So they're competing against each other for the right to
Speaker 1: carry mail along certain routes because that was like a
Speaker 1: guaranteed revenue source. They were also attempting to turn into
Speaker 1: passenger airlines at the same time, and it was really complicated.
Speaker 1: The US government had an interest in supporting this burgeoning institution,
Speaker 1: this new type of industry, so there was this desire
Speaker 1: to make certain that you know, the government wasn't going
Speaker 1: to do something that was going to slow down the
Speaker 1: adoption of flight, but the process was so closed off
Speaker 1: and had some contradictions or at least perceived contradictions in it,
Speaker 1: that a scandal developed, and it involved contract pricing, the
Speaker 1: bidding situation, and it implied that the US government was
Speaker 1: giving favorable treatment to some companies at the expense of others,
Speaker 1: even in cases where one company would offer a more
Speaker 1: competitive bid to carry the mail along a certain route,
Speaker 1: but the route would instead be awarded to a totally
Speaker 1: different company, meaning that the government was going to have
Speaker 1: to pay more to this other company, and that money
Speaker 1: is all taxpayer money. So that's why there was this
Speaker 1: big scandal. The newspapers report, Hey, your taxes are going
Speaker 1: to fund airmail, which is fine, except the government is
Speaker 1: being wasteful because instead of awarding contracts to the most
Speaker 1: competitive companies, they're going with these other ones, and it
Speaker 1: looks really buddy buddy and corrupt. So this ultimately kind
Speaker 1: of forced the government's hand, and in early nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: the US would shift airmail duties from the private commercial
Speaker 1: sector to the military. Specifically, the Army Air Corps would
Speaker 1: take over air mail delivery in the United States. But
Speaker 1: there was a huge problem. The Air Corps did not
Speaker 1: have an excess of fully trained pilots with a lot
Speaker 1: of flight experience. In fact, their most highly trained pilots
Speaker 1: were busy training the next generation of pilots. They were
Speaker 1: all tied up in pilot schools. More than half of
Speaker 1: the pilots that were tapped for airmail service had less
Speaker 1: than two years of flying experience to their names. Most
Speaker 1: of them had never flown in bad weather, most of
Speaker 1: them had never flown at night, and literally only a
Speaker 1: couple of them had completed a significant time of flying
Speaker 1: just by instruments. So you've got this job of delivering
Speaker 1: a whole lot of mail, so the demand is there.
Speaker 1: You're relying on inexperienced pilots, and primarily the Air Corps
Speaker 1: was planning on doing night runs, so the mail was
Speaker 1: going to be delivered at night. Again, most of the
Speaker 1: pilots had never even flown at night. Now, as you
Speaker 1: might imagine, this inevitably led to tragic consequences. There were
Speaker 1: numerous crashes and fatalities. Unusually severe weather in the early
Speaker 1: winter months of nineteen thirty four contributed to the problem significantly,
Speaker 1: and you had around a dozen deaths in a couple
Speaker 1: of months, and it was bad enough for the government
Speaker 1: to quickly pass the Airmail Act of nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: which would return airmail duties to the commercial industry, not
Speaker 1: the military anymore. However, it also included more rules that
Speaker 1: would allow for better transparency with regard to the bidding
Speaker 1: process in order to avoid the appearance of favoritism. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the Army Air Corps secured the purchase of half a
Speaker 1: dozen link trainer simulators because they then recognized that they
Speaker 1: were really putting pilots in danger. There were people who
Speaker 1: were calling the approach the Air Corps was using a
Speaker 1: death sentence for pilots. So this would allow pilots to
Speaker 1: get more experience and familiarity with flying by instruments without
Speaker 1: having to dedicate aircraft that could otherwise be put into
Speaker 1: other service. So it saved the aircraft for official military use,
Speaker 1: and it gave pilots more time to learn these systems
Speaker 1: so that they could operate the aircraft more effectively and safely.
Speaker 1: The value of the simulators was realized right away, and
Speaker 1: Eddie would see his invention go into serious demand in
Speaker 1: the following years because a little thing called World War
Speaker 1: Two happened, and pretty much every nation in the Allied
Speaker 1: Forces would end up purchasing simulators from Edwin Link in
Speaker 1: order to train new pilots. He supposedly ended up making
Speaker 1: ten thousand of these things throughout World War two, he
Speaker 1: and his company, And it wasn't just him by himself,
Speaker 1: that would have been insane, but yeah, his company produced
Speaker 1: ten thousand simulators for Allied forces to train pilots throughout
Speaker 1: World War Two. Now by this point Link had really
Speaker 1: refined his invention. He introduced more instruments to provide students
Speaker 1: the tools they needed to handle their aircraft more precisely.
Speaker 1: It could even simulate a plane going into an engine stall,
Speaker 1: because that was something that could happen. You have the
Speaker 1: plane climb too high and the engine's not getting enough
Speaker 1: air for internal combustion to continue. It stalls out and
Speaker 1: it goes into a fall. It could even send the
Speaker 1: simulator into a spin, which would give pilots a safe
Speaker 1: space to learn how to handle these emergencies because they
Speaker 1: could happen while you're operating these aircraft in a war theater.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was clearly a needed asset and giving
Speaker 1: people the chance to learn these ways of how to
Speaker 1: handle aircraft in extremestions without actually putting them in danger
Speaker 1: meant that you were really improving their effectiveness once they
Speaker 1: were out there actually serving. The most common version of
Speaker 1: the simulator at this time was known as the Army
Speaker 1: Navy Trainer Model eighteen aka the ANT eighteen for short.
Speaker 1: There are actually a few of these old link trainers
Speaker 1: that survived to this present day in various museums and stuff.
Speaker 1: In fact, there are some that apparently at least let
Speaker 1: people sit in the trainer and feel what it's like
Speaker 1: to fly a simulation. I've seen YouTube videos of people
Speaker 1: being able to do it. There was one museum where
Speaker 1: they were talking about letting kids come in and experience
Speaker 1: what it was. Although they frequently have limited control of
Speaker 1: the simulator. They have restricted the full movement of the simulator,
Speaker 1: so it can't do the full pitch and yaw and
Speaker 1: roll it could have done in the old days, but
Speaker 1: you get a little a little taste of what it's like. Oh. Also,
Speaker 1: they've removed all the radium instruments, which is probably I
Speaker 1: mean it is for the best. So you might find
Speaker 1: one where all the instrument panels are made up of stickers,
Speaker 1: which arguably are less less useful when you're learning how
Speaker 1: to fly a plane. If the indicator never changes because
Speaker 1: it's just a sticker on the dashboard, that's a problem.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that was the first or what most people
Speaker 1: acknowledge as the first flight simulator. Really incredible that it
Speaker 1: could be done with air bellows and Pulley systems, you know,
Speaker 1: just mechanical components to give this ability for pilots to
Speaker 1: learn how to operate an aircraft under suboptimal conditions. It's
Speaker 1: phenomenal to me that Edwin Link figured out a way
Speaker 1: of doing that as early as nineteen twenty nine. Obviously,
Speaker 1: in the years after World War Two we would get
Speaker 1: much more sophisticated flight simulators, including computerized ones. They would
Speaker 1: enter into both the military and the commercial sector, and
Speaker 1: then as well to the consumer sector where we could
Speaker 1: get a game that gamifies flight simulators to some degree,
Speaker 1: some of which were obviously limited in their sophistication, where yes,
Speaker 1: you could fly this flight simulator, but it wasn't maybe
Speaker 1: the most realistic simulation all the way up to the
Speaker 1: more recent ones, where from what I understand it is
Speaker 1: almost precisely what you would encounter if you were going
Speaker 1: to a commercial grade flight simulator. Obviously, with the exception
Speaker 1: of most people don't have all the controls that are
Speaker 1: modeled precisely after the ones that you would find an aircraft,
Speaker 1: nor does the average person have a chair that will,
Speaker 1: you know, pitch and roll the way the aircraft will go.
Speaker 1: But still really cool and honestly, when I tell these stories,
Speaker 1: when I look back at these sort of things and
Speaker 1: I learn more about how this was achieved, it really
Speaker 1: stresses to me how phenomenal human beings are, how inventive
Speaker 1: and innovative they are, and how they can put problems
Speaker 1: solving two tasks where perhaps a year earlier, you would
Speaker 1: just think, well, that's just impossible. There's no way to
Speaker 1: learn how to fly by instruments unless you go up
Speaker 1: into the air yourself, and yet someone figures out a
Speaker 1: way to do it. To me, that's just amazing. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's because of my own limited imagination, creativity and invention
Speaker 1: that I'm so flabbergasted by it, but it really, to
Speaker 1: me is just inspiring to think, Wow, humans are really
Speaker 1: creative people who come up with incredible solutions. They can
Speaker 1: also come up with incredible pains in the butt. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna sugarcoat everything, but I do find it
Speaker 1: inspiring that we're cabable of tackling a difficult challenge and
Speaker 1: figuring out an interesting way to get past that challenge.
Speaker 1: So I try and think about that whenever I'm feeling
Speaker 1: a little overwhelmed. That No, sometimes it just takes a
Speaker 1: little thinking outside of the blue box to get things going.
Speaker 1: Hope you enjoyed this Tech Stuff Tidbits episode. I welcome
Speaker 1: you to write in and let me know what topics
Speaker 1: you would like me to cover in future episodes. You
Speaker 1: can do so on Twitter. The handle for the show
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