The Link Piano and Organ Company was an American manufacturer of

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

orchestrion Orchestrion is a generic name for a machine that plays music and is designed to sound like an orchestra or band. Orchestrions may be operated by means of a large pinned cylinder or by a music roll and less commonly book music. The sound is us ...

s, fotoplayers, and theatre pipe organs. During the early 1900s, George T. Link was managing a small firm named ''Shaft Brothers Piano Company'', which manufactured and sold pianos to the ''Automatic Musical Company'' of

Binghamton, New York Binghamton () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, and serves as the county seat of Broome County. Surrounded by rolling hills, it lies in the state's Southern Tier region near the Pennsylvania border, in a bowl-shaped valley at the conflue ...

. When the Automatic Musical Company went bankrupt about a decade later, George's son, Edwin A. Link, Sr., became employed by the creditors to go to Binghamton and operate the company. The Links, with their two sons, George and Edwin Jr., moved from

Huntington, Indiana Huntington, known as the "Lime City", is the largest city in and the county seat of Huntington County, Indiana, Huntington County, Indiana, United States. It is in Huntington Township, Huntington County, Indiana, Huntington and Union Township, Hun ...

to Binghamton that same year. Edwin Sr. was successful at turning the company around, and later purchased the company from the creditors, then changing the name to the Link Piano Company. For a period of time, the business primarily focused on making

player piano A player piano (also known as a pianola) is a self-playing piano containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism, that operates the piano action via programmed music recorded on perforated paper or metallic rolls, with more modern i ...

s and

s. The Star Theater, which was the oldest movie house in Binghamton, was the first to use the Link automatic piano to provide music for its silent films. As larger and more elaborate movie theatres were built, and more versatile organs were demanded, the company began manufacturing theatre pipe organs. At this time, the company's name was expanded to the ''Link Piano and Organ Company''. The company produced about 130 theatre organs, before going out of business around 1932.

Ed Link Edwin Albert Link (July 26, 1904 – September 7, 1981) was an American inventor, entrepreneur and pioneer in aviation, underwater archaeology, and submersibles. He invented the flight simulator, which was called the "Blue Box" or "Link Train ...

, Jr used the bellows technology from the automatic piano in his

Link Trainer The term Link Trainer, also known as the "Blue box" and "Pilot Trainer" is commonly used to refer to a series of flight simulators produced between the early 1930s and early 1950s by Link Aviation Devices, founded and headed by Ed Link Edwin ...

flight simulators.

References

External links

* History of the Link company
Mechanicalmusicpress.com
* Additional info

{{Theatre Organs Pipe organ building companies Defunct manufacturing companies based in New York (state) Companies based in Binghamton, New York Musical instrument manufacturing companies of the United States