ABSTRACT
The modern flight simulator of today has origins that extend back over 70 years, to the development of Edwin Link's trainer of 1929. Link's trainer had a basic set of instruments, no visual display and a primitive motion platform. The trainer had difficulty finding a market as aviation was in its infancy and the trainer's design was centered on instrument flight training at a time when instrument flight was, at best, a limited and very risky activity. Link's trainer and others of its kind did not see great use until the years immediately preceding the Second World War. In these years, the need for rapidly training very large numbers of pilots became a necessity. Increasingly, ground-based training was sought as a means of supplementing aircraft training in military training programs.
