Virtual Reality

(proposed design by Bruce Greig)

Binghamton? Virtual Reality? Yes! Not just Binghamton but 183-185 Water St., the site of the Parking Ramp by Boscov’s, is where the building blocks of VIRTUAL REALITY were developed:

1. The Bundy Manufacturing Co. (1893-1906) stood at 183-185 Water St., and became the International Time Recording Co (1906-7) and eventually IBM, which, of course, manufactured some of the first computers.
2. The Automatic Musical Co. (1907-14) took over the site to manufacture player pianos, which were robotic innovations.
3. Ed Link, famously, was sitting on the organ bellows at his father’s Link Piano Co. (1914-1933) and got the idea for the Link Flight Simulators (1929, patented 1931) and started Link Aviation and Flying School in that location (1929-34). The Link “blue box” trained WWII pilots.
4. After the devastating floods in 1935 and ’36 the building was not useable and in the late 60’s the Parking Ramp was built in two sections. The American Dance Asylum celebrated the architecture with several performances of the Parking Ramp Dance, which pioneered multi media, video feedback, and dance performances (1978, 1980, 1981, 1984).
COMPUTERS + ROBOTICS + SIMULATION + VIDEO FEEDBACK = VIRTUAL REALITY!!