Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1998 01:30:15 -0400
From: Max Alaniz <malaniz@enter.net>

Thanos et al.,

I don't have a well-prepared piece of Link History to submit at this time, but I do have a few tidbits of Link history to offer for fun reading. Some of the statements below may involve some conjecture on my part, so if I've got the wrong idea, please correct me! -Max Alaniz

In the 1960s, the General Precision Group of Singer-Link began working with NASA to develop simulators for the Gemini program (See "Computers in Spaceflight: The NASA Experience" http://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/computers/Ch9-2.html

In the early 1970s, Singer-Link started making power plant simulators of all types for countries all over the world. And Singer-Link continued this work through the early 90s. (see "Simulators of the World at http://www.albany.net/~dmills/stable.txt)

In the mid-1970's, Singer-Link began working with NASA to develop the Space Shuttle Mission Simulator (and later continued to support the space program throughout the 80's).

In 1978, the Singer-Link DIG or "Digital Image Generator" went into service. This device is considered to be one of the world's first-generation Computer-Generated-Image (CGI) systems (see http://www.windtunnels.arc.nasa.gov/Document_Archive/brochure/oldimagesys.html).

In 1982, Singer-Link employee Mary Ferris served a piece of her "Good Luck" Mission Cake to the astronauts of the STS-4 crew: Commander Tom Mattingly and Pilot Henry Hartsfield, Jr. (see
http://images.jsc.nasa.gov/images/pao/STS4/10060788.jpg)

In the 1980s, during the height of the Cold War, Singer-Link fielded simulators for numerous military systems including the B52-G, AH-64 Apache, B-1B, F-16C, P3-C Orion, and S3-B Viking aircraft. Singer-Link
also fielded a number of ship and submarine trainers for ASW (Anti-Submarine Warfare), Mine Warfare, and Sonar System Training.

In the 1990s, Singer developed commercial flight simulators such as the MD88.

Singer-Link simulators and the DIG Digital Image Generator were featured in an episode of the television show Nova called "Why planes crash". (a dubious honor?)

There are some beautiful pictures of a Singer-Link "television model board" and references to the Singer-Link MkV visual system on the web page at http://www.nlr.nl/public/facilities/f115-01/index.html.

Singer-Link is mentioned in the March '98 issue of ACM Interactions, in an article titled "A Brief History of Human Computer Interaction Technology". The article states, "the military-industrial flight simulation work of the 60's - 70's led the way to making 3-D real-time with commercial systems from ...Singer/Link (funded by NASA, Navy, etc.)". (see http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~amulet/papers/uihistory.tr.html)

In 19??, Singer-Link primed the Seahawk Helicopter Flight Simulator program.

In addition to being used in the power and military industries, Singer-Link simulators are also used for research in a number of universities. For example, the Aviation Research Laboratory Facility at the Institute of Aviation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign uses Singer-Link GAT2 and T-40 simulators for flight training and flight performance research. Also, the Dept. of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute uses a Singer-Link GAT1-B aircraft simulator in its Human Factors Engineering
Center Vehicle Analysis and Simulation Laboratory. (Hmm, I think these universities could learn something from the military about the judicious use of acronyms...)

Finally, Ed Link and his Blue Box are mentioned in the film that runs continuously in the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. I saw it earlier this summer.

I think that Link history should say SOMETHING about how the development of the Harris Realtime SuperMiniComputers (800, 1000 and 1200-series) for the P3-C and S3-B ASW simulators improved the state-of-the-art in realtime computing...

Also, I think something should be said about how Ada, C and C++ have crept into simulation, replacing Fortran and Assembly!

I think something should be said about the trend where workstations (and yes, perhaps even PCs!) may one day replace SuperMiniComputers in many serious simulation applications! My GUARDFIST II project may go down in history as one of the first successful PC-based simulation and training systems with Ada software.

Finally, I think something should be said about how the traditional "hardware-heavy, software-light" nature of simulators seems to be turning around...

If you have any interesting Link-History-type-things to say on these subjects, please write.

Thanks,
Max Alaniz malaniz@enter.net