In This Episode: When you really look into something that’s “obvious” and “common sense,” sometimes you’ll find that …the “experts” are wrong! This is the story of a man who was pretty sure the industry experts were wrong about something, and boy did it take him a lot of effort to turn that industry around. But he did, because his Uncommon Sense beat their common sense.

069: A Link to the Future
Tweet
Jump to Transcript
How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes
Show Notes

* Help support Uncommon Sense at Ko-Fi: kofiwidget2.init('Support TRUE on Ko-fi', '#29abe0', 'L4L31K3PE');kofiwidget2.draw(); — yes, $5 helps!
* Another tidbit: he accomplished all of this even though he apparently dropped out of high school in his junior year. Multiple universities gave him honorary doctorates, though!
* The photos mentioned are in the transcript. Click any of them to see larger.
* Link opened a second factory in Gananoque, Ont., Canada, during the war, since Britain required equipment be purchased from somewhere in its empire.

Transcript
Welcome to Uncommon Sense, I’m Randy Cassingham.
Edwin Link was born in 1904, and shortly afterward his father, Edwin Link Sr., bought out an automatic piano company in Binghamton, New York. (Most now call those player pianos). When larger theaters playing silent movies needed something with more sound to provide musical accompaniment to the films, he added player organs, too, and the quite successful business became known as the Link Piano and Organ Company.
That gave his young son exposure to mechanical things that performed some pretty complex tasks, thanks to his father letting young Edwin tinker with things in the shop. One thing he made was a sign that was mounted under the wing of an airplane that used perforated rolls — like his father’s player pianos used — to turn lights on and off to spell out advertising messages. He even connected a few organ pipes to make noise to attract the attention of people on the ground to see the message, also controlled by the perforated paper rolls.
When he was 12, the junior Link drew himself in an underwater vehicle, what today we’d call a submersible.
When he turned 16 in 1920, like a lot of young men at the time, Link wanted to become a pilot: not as idle entertainment, but it seemed to him like a good way to make money. He took a flying lesson, which cost him $50 (equivalent to about $650 today), but he was extremely frustrated that the instructor, Sydney Chaplin, the half-brother of movie star Charlie Chaplin, didn’t even let him touch the controls: he didn’t learn much. But he persisted, learned to fly, and by 1927 he was able to buy his first airplane. It turned out to be the manufacturer’s first airplane, too — the first one off their assembly line. That little company was called Cessna.
To help pay costs, Link would take just about any job he could find that would let him fly: he’d accept chart...