BIG ideas thrive in New York’s small towns

Corning’s research mantra – if you can’t make it, you can’t sell it – has propelled it’s success in glass for Edison’s light bulbs, flexible glass for fiber optics, Gorilla glass for smart phone covers, and durable Valor glass for high speed manufacture of medical vials and tubing. The two basic components of flight – Aircraft and Pilots who can fly - are well rooted in Central New York State technology.

Propellers for the B-17 Flying Fortress World War II bombers were designed and built in Johnson City, NY, on the site where after the war General Electric Aerospace group pioneered inertial navigation with gyroscopes for Vietnam War fighter planes and fly by wire systems for commercial aircraft. Engineers at IBM Owego, now Lockheed Martin Systems, built and programmed computers for NASA, esp. the Space Shuttle. In the 2st century. Owego continues to advance radar, communication devices, and helicopter avionics

The first American Pilot Makers – pioneered in Binghamton by Link Aviation Devices – were classrooms for more than 500,000 World War II pilots - key to victory over Hitler. Twenty five years later, GP-Link’s Apollo Mission Simulator directed the survival strategy for the Apollo 13 astronauts. In 2009, the two highly trained pilots who executed a landing on the Hudson River without engines demonstrated the value of in-depth flight training.