Link Family papers and business records

Marion Clayton (1907 - 1995) grew up in Ilion, New York, and attended Syracuse University, where she received a B.S. degree in journalism. After graduating she worked for the Utica Observer Dispatch and the Syracuse Journal American before moving to Binghamton, New York, to work as a reporter for the local paper, the Binghamton Press. She often said that she “married her best story” after she was sent to interview the young local inventor, Edwin Link. They were married in 1931.

Once married to Edwin, Marion initially took over the business management of his fledgling enterprises, which included the Link Aeronautical Corporation, Link Aviation Devices, Inc., and the Link Flying School, featuring the Link Trainer. Over the next few years her practical business sense helped to keep things in order and her writing talent helped publicize Edwin's inventions. In 1938 their first child, William Martin was born, followed in 1941 by their second, Edwin Clayton.

Once their children were born, Marion became, for a time, less actively involved in Edwin's professional life. After the sale of Link's company to General Precision Equipment Corp. in 1953, Edwin and Marion pursued their growing interest in underwater exploration and technology. The Links had taken up sailing off the coast of Florida and the Bahamas as a relaxing hobby, but recreation soon became meshed with new projects, inventions and inquiry.

The shift from recreational sailing and scuba diving to serious exploration began with the discovery of an antique ship's gun in the Bahamas. While investigating the possibility that the gun might have come from one of Columbus' ships, the Links began researching where Columbus landed, where he might have sailed in the New World, and what had happened to his ship, the Santa Maria. Using a converted shrimp trawler, Sea Diver, as their base, the Links moved from extensive research on Columbus' travels to exploration for the remains of other historic ships. As they refined their techniques for searching out historic artifacts while disturbing the sites as little as possible, Edwin began to design and redesign equipment, instruments, vessels and diving bells. Their reputation spread, they “traded up” to a larger Sea Diver II and were invited to conduct explorations in other parts of the world, including the Middle East and Jamaica.

The Links' sons, William and Clayton, accompanied them on many of their explorations, and Clayton became a diver and an active participant in his parents' research. In 1973, during a routine scientific dive in a submersible designed by Edwin, the cables of the submersible became entangled in a shipwreck on the sea bottom, and Clayton and a fellow diver, Albert Stover, died before they could be rescued. Marion was on the scene, logging messages to and from the trapped men, maintaining contact to the end. They subsequently established the Link Foundation Stover/Link Scholarship Fund in memory of Clayton and Stover.

Marion's first major research publication, coauthored with Edwin in 1958, was A New Theory on Columbus's Voyage Through the Bahamas, in which the Links used their own exploration to support their theories regarding Columbus' voyages. Marion's more personal account of their travels, Sea Diver, was published in the same year. Her second book, Windows in the Sea, was published by the Smithsonian Institution Press in 1973. It describes the development of the bubble sub Johnson-Sea-Link, which made undersea exploration possible at depths of 3,000 feet. Throughout their explorations, Marion kept extensive diaries and journals which provide insights into the development of their research and form the backbone of From Sea to Sky: A Story of Edwin A. Link, which was written by Susan van Hoek with Marion's help, and published in 1993.

Marion's active interest in education was formally recognized in 1954, when the Governor of New York appointed her as one of the first members of the Harpur College Council (later the Binghamton University Council). She was later made an honorary life member of both the Binghamton University Advisory Council and the Harpur Forum, was awarded the Binghamton University Alumni Association's Distinguished Service Award and, with Edwin, was twice recognized for Distinguished Citizenship by the Harpur Forum Committee of the Binghamton University Foundation. She also served as a Trustee of Syracuse University and was a member of the President's Club of Indian River Community College Foundation in Ft. Pierce, Florida.

She was an active member and enthusiastic supporter of a variety of civic and cultural groups, serving on the Executive Board of the Roberson Museum and Science Center in Binghamton, New York, as a Trustee of the Binghamton Y.W.C.A., and as Chairman of Planned Parenthood of Broome County. She was also a member of the Amaryllis Circle of the Garden Club of Indian River County, the Riomar Bay Yacht Club and The Community Church United Church of Christ in Vero Beach, Florida. She received the History Hunters Award from the Binghamton Chamber of Commerce. Her professional and honorary memberships included the Society of Women Geographers, Theta Sigma Phi, Pi Beta Phi, Phi Kappa Phi, Delta Kappa Gamma International and Zonta International. Marion authored research reports for National Geographic and the Smithsonian Institution and in 1961 was awarded the George Arents Pioneer Medal for excellence in archaeology.

After Edwin's death, Marion remained in the house they had built in Florida, leading a much less public life, but pursuing her lifelong interests and maintaining contact with her family and friends. In 1993, the family established the Marion Clayton Link Endowment in Creative Writing at Binghamton University to honor her lifelong commitment to writing.

Marion died on March 30, 1995.

Singer-Link was a pioneer company in the field of synthetic flight training. During the company's existence, Link manufactured the following types of training systems: visual display systems; commercial aircraft simulators; military aircraft simulators, including the first jet trainer and the first jet bomber trainer; general aviation simulators; and space mission simulators. Link was sold in 1995 to General Motors' Hughes Electronics Corp., Hughes Training Inc.

Adapted from Susan A. Dorey’s “Link Aviation, A History” from 2010:

In 1929 Edwin Albert Link, Jr. (1904–1981) invented the Link Trainer, a flight simulator that taught pilots how to fly by instruments (as opposed to watching the ground). Shortly thereafter he formed the Link Aeronautical Corporation in Binghamton, New York to market the trainer. In 1934 he demonstrated the value of instrument flying to a group of Army officers, after which the Army Air Corps ordered six of his trainers.

The rapid acceptance of Link Trainers and their continued development, due chiefly to the threat of war in Europe and Asia, made it necessary for Link to reorganize and expand his enterprises. In 1935 Link Aviation Devices, Inc., later renamed Link Aviation, Inc., was established to manufacture trainers and other aviation instruments. Link Aeronautical Corp., situated at the Tri-Cities Airport in Endicott, New York by 1933, maintained the flight school, an airplane repair service, and operated charter flights, but returned to Binghamton in December 1934. Link Manufacturing Company, Ltd. was established in 1937 in Gananoque, Ontario to build trainers for Canadian and UK customers (British contracts required that their trainers be manufactured within the British Commonwealth).

By 1940 trainers had been shipped to over thirty-five countries around the world. In the early 1950s, Link Aviation was buoyed by the acceptance of simulators by commercial airlines and an increase in military expenditures caused by the Korean War. The company continued to develop aviation simulators and trainers, including all of NASA’s manned spaceflight simulators, and came to dominate the military training and simulation industry.

By the mid-1950s Link Aviation was enjoying financial and managerial stability. In 1953, Edwin stepped down as president of the company, and took the less active position of Chairman of the Board. He believed that to ensure the survival of Link Aviation in an increasingly competitive market, the company should merge with a larger, more diverse corporation. In 1954 he and his brother, George Link, sold Link Aviation to General Precision Equipment Corporation (GPE), a large holding company.

Edwin Link was president of Link Aviation until 1953 and board chairman until its merger with the General Precision Corporation in 1954. He was president and a director of General Precision until its merger with the Singer Company in 1968; he retained chairmanship of Link Aviation while Hermann Place retained chairmanship of GPE. Thereafter, he became a consultant to Singer (1968–1972).

In January 1960 Librascope, Kearfott, General Precision Laboratory (GPL), and Link Aviation combined to form a new electronics firm known as General Precision, Inc. to position itself as a prime contractor on systems contracts.

In 1956, Link acquired an interest in Air Trainers Limited, which had been formed in 1946 as successors to J.V.W. Corporation Ltd. Since 1936, the company had been importing and servicing the American-made Link trainers for the RAF. As well as manufacturing the Link trainer under license, the company pioneered the development of DC analog computing techniques for flight simulators, the first of which was delivered to the RAF in 1953. In 1959 the Link interest was transferred to the parent company, General Precision Equipment, and the name of the company changed to General Precision Systems Ltd.

Link, as Link Group of General Precision Systems (GPS), had a facility in the defense and aerospace industry of Sunnyvale, California from as early as 1967, if not before. Link Ordnance Division, General Precision, Inc. of Sunnyvale was cited by NASA as a major subcontractor of Boeing, which played a major role in the development and production of the Saturn V launch vehicle; Link worked on the propellant dispersion systems.

In April 1968 Singer Corporation acquired GPE. Singer originally dropped the Link name, but after three years restored it as Singer-Link, or the Link Flight Simulation Division.

ACF’s Electronics Division in Silver Spring, Maryland, bought by GPE in 1965, was renamed Simulation Products Division in 1968. It was renamed Link Division in 1976.

In September 1969 Link bought Miles Electronics Limited and renamed it Link-Miles. Miles Electronics was a subsidiary of F. G. Miles Limited founded in 1948 by Frederick George Miles to produce aircraft. Miles Electronics was involved in the manufacture of flight simulators.

In February 1988, Singer was acquired by Paul Bilzerian; he sold Link Aviation to the Canadian firm CAE industries in August 1988. CAE-Link was sold to Hughes Electronics Corporation in 1995, and then to L-3 Communications in 2000, when it was renamed L-3 Link Simulation and Training.

Edwin Albert Link, Jr., the youngest son of Katherine (Martin) and Edwin A. Link, Sr., was born on July 26, 1904, in Huntington, Indiana, where his father was connected with the Shaff Brothers Piano Company of Chicago. In 1910, Edwin Link, Sr. bought the bankrupt Binghamton Automatic Music Corporation and moved the family to Binghamton, New York. Link, Sr. renamed his new enterprise the Link Piano and Organ Company, and enjoyed a reputation as a manufacturer of reasonably priced player pianos, nickelodeons, and theater organs.

After 1918, when his parents separated, Link's education was characterized by short stays in several different schools: Rockford (Illinois) Training High School; Los Angeles Polytechnic High School; Bellefonte Academy in Pennsylvania; and the Lindsley Institute in West Virginia. In 1922 Edwin Link moved back to Binghamton and started working for his father at the piano company. His developing skill in organ rebuilding and repair laid the basis for Link's eventual work with the flight trainer.

Ed Link's interest in flying was stimulated by news accounts of World War I. His first flight took place in Los Angeles in 1920. Although theoretically he was being taught to fly, Link was never allowed to touch the controls, and could only watch as the pilot put the airplane through a series of complicated maneuvers. Neither this experience, which was the accepted method of teaching, nor the high cost of flying could dampen Edwin's enthusiasm. His parents did their best to dissuade him, but Edwin continued to take lessons and practice in friends' airplanes. In 1926 he took his first solo flight, and by 1928 was able to convince his mother to help him buy an airplane - the first Cessna Model AA. He had already received a limited rating as a pilot from the Department of Commerce and was ready to leave his job at the piano company to take on the responsibility of being a fulltime pilot.

In 1924 he filed his first patent, for an invention which picked lint off player piano rolls. The basement of the shop afforded him the space he needed to work on another invention: a machine that would make it easier to learn to fly. Link's first aviation trainer was made from parts of an organ and used compressed air to provide the motion of an airplane in flight. Edwin believed that learning to fly would be less traumatic and considerably less expensive if beginning students started in a trainer while they were still on the ground. On April 14, 1929, he filed for a patent, and shortly thereafter formed the Link Aeronautical Corp. in Binghamton to market the trainer.

Link worked constantly, promoting the use of the trainer as an educational tool while continuing to improve it with additional instrumentation. The trainer found early acceptance in amusement parks as a coin-operated ride, but few people saw its potential for teaching flying. To this end, Ed Link organized the Link Flying School in 1930, featuring the Link Trainer as the core of the curriculum. He was so confident of its capabilities that the school offered its students a guaranteed learn-to-fly offer for $85. At first this unusual offer generated interest in the school, but as the Depression deepened, flying became a luxury few could afford.

Searching for alternatives to teaching, Link spent the early 1930s working at several small airports in towns near Binghamton. His work typically included acting as general manager of the airport, servicing airplanes, and doing any flying that might bring in extra money. In 1931 he married Marion Clayton, a reporter for a Binghamton newspaper, and she quickly took over many of the business aspects of Link's enterprises.

Another important person in Edwin's career was Charles S. (Casey) Jones, a well-known aviator who maintained many connections with the military. In 1932, Jones' company, the J.V.W. Corp., became the exclusive sales representative for the Link Trainer. Despite these changes and the increasing sophistication of the trainer, the Depression continued to hamper Link's businesses, and he was forced to find new ways of selling aviation. The most successful of these was a changeable lighted sign which Link hung below his plane to advertise for local merchants. Promoting the “electric sky sign” meant extensive night flying and trips in bad weather, and so Ed became skilled at flying on instruments. His new ability was reflected in his constant tinkering with the trainer, and new models with advanced instrumentation were introduced.

In 1934, the U.S. Army Air Corps, placed an order for six fully-instrumented trainers. In 1935, Japan bought ten Link Trainers; four were sold to the Soviet Union, and orders were placed by many European nations. A new “C Series” Instrument Flying Trainer was introduced in 1936, and the “D Series,” which was sold mainly to European air forces, was developed in 1937. By 1940 trainers had been shipped to over thirty-five countries around the world.

The rapid acceptance of Link Trainers and their continued development, due chiefly to the threat of war in Europe and Asia, made it necessary for Link to reorganize and expand his enterprises. In 1935 Link Aviation Devices, Inc., was established to manufacture trainers and other aviation instruments. Link Aeronautical Corp., situated at the Tri-Cities Airport in Endicott, New York, maintained the flight school, an airplane repair service, and operated charter flights. A Canadian plant was established in 1937 in Gananoque, Ontario, since British contracts specified that their trainers must be manufactured within the British Commonwealth.

In addition to the rapidly expanding series of trainers produced by Link Aviation, Link also oversaw the development of specialized trainers and aviation instruments. Special-use trainers included the “Aquatrainer, ” a prototype which simulated a sea plane, but which was never developed; gunnery, radar, and automatic pilot trainers; and the Celestial Navigation Trainer (CNT) which was commissioned by Great Britain in 1939. The CNT, a bomber crew trainer, was designed with help from P.V.H. Weems, a noted authority on celestial navigation. Link Aviation also produced a bubble sextant, an octant, and other navigation aids.

At the end of World War II, Link was faced with cancellations of orders, complicated by a glut of surplus trainers on the market. His concern that this would occur was evident by 1942 when he attempted to prepare for it by developing new projects to diversify the company. Link tried to tap the enthusiasm of school children for aviation by developing a low-cost, general purpose trainer to be used by the School Link program. He also established a marine division to build boats and a portable, sectional canoe, called the Linkanoe.

After the war, one of Link Aviation's major competitors, Curtiss-Wright, developed an electronic, stationary trainer which relied on instruments to indicate movement. Link Aviation hurried to improve on this development since the electronic system showed major advantages over trainers using air pressure. The idea that trainers, or simulators, as they began to be called, should remain stationary was adhered to for a while, but eventually Link Aviation returned to the production of trainers which actually moved when instruments indicated movement. In the early 1950s, Link Aviation was buoyed by the acceptance of simulators by commercial airlines and an increase in military expenditures caused by the Korean War.

By the mid-1950s Link Aviation was experiencing new financial and managerial stability. With the introduction of computers and electronic-based simulators, Link found that his creative work had become routine, while the business aspects were increasingly complicated. His interests began to follow other paths, and he spent more time away from Binghamton. In 1953, he stepped down as president of the company, and took the less active position of Chairman of the Board. Although Link still maintained an active interest in some aspects of aviation, particularly air safety, he had become involved in an entirely new activity: sailing and underwater exploration.

Ed Link's new career in underwater archaeology and engineering developed from his interests in sailing and skin diving. What began as informally organized expeditions to seek underwater treasure ultimately resulted in systematic archaeological procedures, discoveries of historic value, and the invention of complex machinery to aid divers.

With the end of the hectic war years at Link Aviation, the Links turned to sailing in the Bahamas and Florida for relaxation. Once they were introduced to underwater exploration, their forty-three foot yawl, the Blue Heron, proved to be poorly designed and inadequately equipped for the rigors of underwater searching. In May 1952, the Links bought a converted shrimp trawler which they named Sea Diver. Using their new boat as a base, they spent many months in the early 1950s exploring southern waters. Their two sons, William, born in 1938, and Edwin Clayton, born in 1941, joined them whenever possible.

Gradually their searches became more organized and concerned with historic detail. Instead of dynamiting wrecks to see what objects would be exposed, the searchers learned that the position of the wreck and its contents could be vital keys in determining its identity. Much of the emphasis on historic search methods resulted from the influence of Mendel Peterson, Naval Curator of the Smithsonian Institution. Link's interest in mechanical devices led to his use of sophisticated navigation instruments and the design of other equipment to aid his explorations. Among his innovations were a shallow draft search boat named Reef Diver, an airlift which made it possible to move bottom sand carefully, and a magnetometer which, when towed behind the boat, indicated the presence of metal on the ocean bottom.

When Link Aviation, Inc. was sold to General Precision Equipment Corp. in 1954, Ed was free to undertake more extensive archaeological expeditions. The first of these was organized for the summer of 1955 and consisted of three parts: searching for the wreck of Columbus' Santa Maria off Haiti; exploring the Atlantic Ocean's Silver Shoals for the remains of the Spanish treasure ship, Nuestra Señora de la Concepcion; and establishing the route that Columbus might have taken on reaching the New World.

Link's interest in Columbus was sparked by his discovery in 1953 of a sixteenth-century lombard cannon from Burrows Cay in the Bahamas. While trying to establish the provenance of the ancient gun, the Links did extensive research on Christopher Columbus, hoping that the gun might have come from one of his ships. Although the lombard was discovered too far north to be connected with Columbus, the Links had become preoccupied with trying to verify the original landing place of Columbus and finding the lost Santa Maria. They spent the month of April 1955 in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, looking for the wreck of the Santa Maria. The Links did discover a Columbian period anchor, but there was no way to establish conclusively that it came from the Santa Maria. No traces of the wreck itself were found. The second half of the Links' Columbus expedition occurred later that summer in the Bahamas when they attempted to establish the place where Columbus first landed in the New World. Ed Link's research, “A New Theory on Columbus's Voyage Through the Bahamas,” was published in 1958 by the Smithsonian Institution.

May 1955 was spent in the Silver Shoals, a forty-mile area of coral reefs in the open ocean between Hispaniola and the Bahamas. The Links and their crew were searching for the remains of the Concepcion, a fabled treasure ship that had already been extensively salvaged by Sir William Phipps in 1687. They could find no trace of the Concepcion and Link concluded that Phipps had probably salvaged most of the Spanish treasure. The ship was rediscovered in 1978 by Burt Webber.

In 1956, the Links planned two expeditions. In May and June, Sea Diver made a preliminary expedition to Port Royal, Jamaica, in conjunction with the Institute of Jamaica. During this expedition some of the major landmarks of the old city were uncovered, allowing Link to begin conducting an accurate survey of the ruined section of Port Royal.

The Links were also invited by the American-Israel Society to explore some of the ports in Israel to determine if interesting underwater archaeological sites existed there. In the early fall they viewed sites at Caesarea, Acre, and the Sea of Galilee. Caesarea, one of the major ports of the eastern Mediterranean during the early Roman Empire, was deemed especially interesting since it was not a natural harbor.

Several important changes occurred in 1957 which delayed the Israel expedition, but became the foundation for Link's future work in ocean engineering. Foremost among these were the design and construction of a new, larger boat, Sea Diver II, made especially for underwater research and archaeology which he equipped with the most advanced instruments available. He also ended his retirement and went back to work as President of General Precision Equipment Corp., a position he held until May 1959.

Among the projects that Link worked on while land-bound was the development of a combination diving-bell and decompression chamber which would allow divers to work on wrecks in deeper waters than was currently possible. This device, called a submersible decompression chamber (SDC), became the focal point of Link's Man-in-Sea project.

Sea Diver II was launched in April 1959, and her first expedition took place that summer at Port Royal, Jamaica. Link was aided by a team of Navy divers, and the expedition was sponsored jointly by the Smithsonian Institution and the National Geographic Society. Before any diving occurred, Link and Capt. P.V.W. Weems (USN, Ret.) prepared a map of the submerged portion of the city. Using a strong airlift to remove accumulations of silt and mud, the crew of Sea Diver found hundreds of artifacts. The contents of a seventeenth-century kitchen, a ship chandler's shop, a fifteenth-century swivel gun, and a watch made in Holland in 1686 were among the valuable artifacts recovered by the expedition.

Sea Diver arrived in Israel in April 1960. The expedition schedule called for diving at Caesarea during the summer months. Unfortunately, bad weather plagued the Links, and after repeated trips to the shelter of the harbor at Haifa, they shifted the expedition to the Sea of Galilee. There the divers discovered the remains of a cargo of unused cooking pots approximately two thousand years old. They also located a large section of flat stone pavement which provided evidence that the Sea of Galilee has a higher shoreline now than it did in the past.

Link took the crew back to Caesarea in September for a final attempt on the site before he and his wife returned to New York for the winter. The weather cooperated, and they were able to view the great stones which were part of the breakwater that surrounded the artificial port. Other Roman artifacts which were excavated included Bronze coins, carved ivory, Roman glass, and a complete second century Roman amphora buried beneath a huge beam. One of the most important finds was a small commemorative medal, struck in the first or second century CE, which portrayed the harbor, thus substantiating many of the writings of Roman historians about Caesarea.

For their next summer of underwater exploration, Edwin anticipated cruising through the Aegean Sea to Greece, and diving at likely sites near the Aegean islands and along the coast of Greece. The Links, in cooperation with the Greek Department of Antiquities, oversaw preliminary dives near Athens and at Voulia which resulted in the recovery of many amphorae, and at Navarino Bay, the location of a sea battle between the Turks and the combined British, French, and Russian fleets. Eventually, trouble with Greek officials persuaded Link to change his plans and continue on to Italy that fall. A stop at Siracusa, Sicily, resulted in an agreement to dive with the Marchese Piero Gargallo, the honorary superintendent of antiquities for southeastern Sicily.

Ed's submersible decompression chamber (SDC), which had been started several years earlier, finally arrived in Monte Carlo in the spring of 1962. The SDC became the cornerstone of Link's Man-in-Sea program to allow divers to live and work in the ocean at depths of up to one thousand feet.

During the winter of 1961-1962, Link began laying the groundwork for Man-in-Sea. He received a grant from the National Geographic Society to help establish the project. When Link arrived in Monaco in March 1962, the planning was interrupted by a voyage to Sicily to dive with Marchese Gargallo. Marchese had selected two wrecks which looked promising, one at Marzamemi, and the other at Ognina. The Marzamemi wreck was laden with marble, later identified as an altar and other sections of a Byzantine church dating from around 600 CE. On days when it was too rough to dive, Link experimented with the SDC, which had been placed in a cradle on the deck of Sea Diver. Link was able to descend in the decompression chamber and to begin coordinating a routine for its actual operation.

Link and Sea Diver left Monaco for Villefranche-sur-Mer, headquarters of the U.S. Navy's Sixth Fleet. The Navy agreed to provide a doctor trained as a life-support specialist who would monitor the atmosphere in the SDC, a supply of helium, and the assistance of a Navy submarine rescue ship if necessary. The major preliminary dive occurred on August 28, 1962, when Edwin remained in the SDC at a depth of sixty feet for eight hours. This was the first time that anyone had ever been completely saturated with the heliox mixture, and it paved the way for the important two-hundred-foot dive that took place in September. During this dive, Robert Stenuit spent twenty-six hours in the SDC at two hundred feet, and was prepared to stay longer, but the helium supply was suddenly reduced, and safety precautions indicated that Stenuit should begin decompression immediately. This dive was judged to be extremely successful: it proved that man could breathe heliox for a sustained period of time without any problems other than an inability to speak in a normal voice (helium causes the voice to become high and squeaky); and that man could live comfortably with the pressure found at the depth of two hundred feet. Link and his backup scientists immediately began planning the next dive for a depth of four hundred feet.

Before the dive could take place, however, more experimentation concerning its possible effects was necessary, and modifications and advances in the SDC and other equipment would have to be made. Using several batches of mice, and later a goat in the SDC, Link studied the response of the animals to extreme pressure and their subsequent decompression. He also began designing new underwater living quarters, to provide better protection from the cold. The SDC would be used as an elevator between the underwater house and a new, more spacious deck decompression chamber (DDC) where the divers would decompress. These were the component parts of Link's Man-in-Sea project, as he described it to the National Geographic Society research committee.

In 1963, the sinking of the Thresher, a large U.S. nuclear-powered submarine, led the Navy to form the Deep Submergence Systems Review Group (DSSRG) to study the accident. Link was asked to head the industrial and civilian specialists of the group. This stay in Washington gave Link the opportunity to conduct further pressure research with mice, watch Navy operations in the dry-pressure chambers at the Experimental Diving Unit, and consult with leaders in the field at the DSSRG meetings. By the time Link finished his work for the DSSRG in January 1964, he had subjected the mice to a simulated depth of three thousand feet, and seen men live in the pressure found at the four-hundred-foot level without any problems.

The new system included a special underwater dwelling that was submersible, portable, and inflatable (SPID). This was joined by a similar transportable work area cover known as IGLOO. Link's plans called for the SPID to be anchored on the ocean floor, thus providing a warm, safe environment for the divers who would remain on the bottom until their work was completed. The SDC functioned as an elevator, bringing the divers to the site, providing additional supplies when needed, and eventually taking the divers to the DDC for an extended decompression period when they finished the dive. The Man-in-Sea group prepared for the dive during the spring of 1964 at Key West along with the chosen divers, Robert Stenuit and Jon Lindbergh, son of Charles Lindbergh. That spring a dive location was found off Great Stirrup Cay in the Bahamas at 432 feet. With help from the Navy submarine tender Nahant, the longest, deepest dive ever attempted began on June 30, 1964. The divers spent forty-nine hours on the bottom, and ninety-two hours decompressing.

For Link, the success of the four-hundred-foot dive also pointed out some of the problems inherent with the system, including the lack of suitable hoisting mechanisms, and the need for a more efficient means of handling the number of hoses and cables connecting the SDC and SPID to the mother ship for air exchange, electricity, and communication. Link began working on a hydraulic hoist to solve the first problem, and gradually his thinking veered toward a fully independent SDC, or submersible, to conquer the second.

In the spring of 1965 the organization of a new company was announced: Ocean Systems, Inc., composed of Union Carbide Corp., General Precision, Inc., and Edwin Link. Many of the people who helped coordinate the four-hundred-foot dive took positions with the new company. Link preferred to become a consultant to Ocean Systems, which left him the freedom to continue living on Sea Diver and designing new equipment. As chief ocean engineering adviser, Link supervised many modifications of the SPID-SDC system.

During the summer of 1965, Link helped coordinate the operation of two innovative submersibles: Alvin, owned by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute; and a small Cubmarine leased to Ocean Systems, Inc. This experience confirmed his ideas concerning the utility of the vehicles, and helped him to formulate plans for the submersible he decided to design. Link's proposals were based on his earlier work with the SDC which allowed divers to leave the chamber to perform whatever work was necessary.

This concept was incorporated into the Perry-Link #4 (PL#4) which was built by Perry Submarine Company in Florida. PL#4 was launched in January 1966 and, although it looked like many other submersibles, it was the first pressurized diver lockout small submersible built. The little sub was named Deep Diver and ownership was changed to Ocean Systems, Inc. During the four years that Deep Diver was commissioned, she was used for contract work by Ocean Systems, Inc., and scientific work with Sea Diver. Deep Diver continued to make dives until 1970, when a report from the Bureau of Ships indicated that her use would have to be severely restricted due to structural problems with the hull. The submersible was decommissioned, but Link had already begun the design work on a new submersible.

In 1969, Ed Link moved Sea Diver II to a deserted mining channel between Vero Beach and Fort Pierce, Florida. He purchased the land, which he named Link Port, to provide a permanent base of operations for Sea Diver, and intended to develop a research facility for marine science and ocean engineering. The following year, Link invited Harbor Branch Foundation, established by fellow diving enthusiast J. Seward Johnson, to join him at Link Port. Permanent docking facilities were established, and long-term scientific and engineering projects were initiated by Link and Harbor Branch.

In this stimulating environment, Link completed the preliminary plans for the new submersible that would replace Deep Diver. The basic layout of the new submersible, named Johnson-Sea-Link, remained unchanged, with two separate compartments so that lockout dives could be performed. To make Johnson-Sea-Link lighter, an aluminum alloy and acrylic were used instead of steel. Component parts were designed to be easily removed and replaced so that trouble in one section would not force a great delay in diving operations. A huge, transparent acrylic sphere served as the pilot/observer's compartment. A tubular aluminum frame held the diver's compartment, battery pods and other component parts. She was launched in January 1971 and commissioned to the Smithsonian Institution. In 1975, a slightly larger model, Johnson-Sea-Link II, was launched, to be owned and operated by Harbor Branch.

With the establishment of Harbor Branch as a major oceanographic and engineering research facility, Link remained busy providing innovative ideas for the many projects Harbor Branch Foundation sponsored. Unfortunately, one of the most important projects developed by Harbor Branch, CORD (Cabled Observation and Rescue Device), was the result of a personal tragedy which occurred in June 1973. His younger son, Edwin Clayton Link, was killed during a routine dive in Johnson-Sea-Link, when it became ensnared in the wreckage of an old destroyer off the coast of Florida. Clayton and another diver, Albert Stover, died before the submersible could be rescued. Link spent the next two years helping Harbor Branch develop rescue equipment. The unmanned CORD is equipped with television cameras, lights, and hydraulic-powered claws and cutters to enable it to free any trapped submersible.

At the SUNY-Binghamton Commencement Exercises in the spring of 1981, Edwin Albert Link was presented with the honorary degree, Doctor of Science, honoris causa. Though he had been so honored in the past by several other institutions of higher learning, this was a special occasion, for it marked the first time that the State University of New York conferred honorary degrees.

Edwin Link died on September 7, 1981.

Marilyn Calmes Link (1924 - 2018), sister of Edwin A. Link Jr., was born in Glendale, California. She attended Syracuse University and graduated from the aviation and flight-training program at Stephens College. She earned her bachelor’s degree in education from New York University and her master’s degree from the University of Illinois.

Marilyn Link recieved her commercial pilot's license in 1946, but at the time no women were employed flying for commercial airlines, so she spent her early career in aviation education. She assisted in the education division of her brother’s Link Aviation Inc., then taught at the University of Nebraska and the University of Illinois.

In 1953, Edwin Link founded the Link Foundation to fund aviation, oceanography, and energy research. Marilyn became Executive Secretary that year and served in various roles at the Foundation for the rest of her life (executive secretary, secretary-treasurer, consultant, trustee, and director).

In addition to her work at the Link Foundation, Marilyn held several other aviation-related positions in the 1950s-1960s. From 1957 to 1961, she was an administrative assistant at General Precision Equipment Corp. In 1962, she became Special Assistant of Public Relations at Mohawk Airlines, and later worked for Hughes Airwest. She served as a member of the Women’s Advisory Committee for the Federal Aviation Administration and also consulted at the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution. She was a contributing editor at Flying magazine.

In the early 1970s, Marilyn Link left New York for Florida at the request of her brother, Edwin Link, to serve as the first manager of the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute (HBOI). Edwin had helped Seward Johnson Sr. develop the Institute. Marilyn went on to serve as a member of the HBOI Board of Trustees and was serving as director emerita on the board of the HBOI Foundation at the time of her death.

In 1984, Marilyn joined Florida Tech’s Board of Trustees, where she served for nearly 35 years.

Her awards include the University Aviation Association Award, the Frank G. Brewer Trophy, the Lady Hay Drummond Trophy, Binghamton University Distinguished Service Award, the Florida Atlantic University President's Distinguished Service Medallion, a Doctor of Humane Letters honorary degree by the State University of New York awarded at Binghamton University in 2013 and Doctor of Humane Letters honorary degree at Florida Institute of Technology in 2017. She also received several honorary awards from professional organizations for her volunteer work.

Marilyn Link died in March 2018.