The Invention of Black Box

DAVID WARREN, a PhD in chemistry, worked at an aeronautical research laboratory in Melbourne, Australia. One day in 1953, when aviation experts in the office were discussing the recent crash of a De Havilland Comet, the world's first commercial jetliner, he overheard say that the plane may have been hijacked. That set David Warren thinking.....

A few days earlier, he had seen a demonstration of the working of a tape recorder, at trade fare. It was being marketed as an aid for businessmen who travelled a lot. A businessman could dictate letters into the machine while travelling, and when he got to his office, his secretary could play back the recording and type out the contents.

It occurred to David Warren that if a businessman had been travelling on the ill fated plane and if he had been using the voice recording device just prior to the crash, the machine would've recorded all the voices around him, including announcements by the pilot and the threats of the hijackers if the plane was being hijacked.

David Warren thought it would be a good idea if a tape recorder could be installed in the cockpit of every aircraft so that if it crashed, the pilot's last words or announcements could give a clue as to why or how the disaster occurred.

When he told his boss about his idea, the man laughed at him and told him to stick to fuels and oils, as his subject was chemistry and not aircraft security .Others too dismissed the idea as nonsensical. But David was not the sort to give up easily. He made a demonstration model of the device he had in mind, and wrote out a report and sent to aviation experts around the world. All he got in reply was ridicule and criticism, Pilots unions, for example, thought it would be used to spy on them.

Finally in 1958, a British dignitary visiting Australia saw merit in the idea and arranged to send David to London where he could demonstrate his device to the bigwigs of the Royal Air Force and the aviation industry. And there at last, some people showed some enthusiasm for his idea.

However, the first country to make the black box, as it came to be called, compulsory in commercial aircraft was the inventor's home country, Australia. This rule came in the wake of a disastrous air crash in 1960.

Aeroplanes today carry two black boxes, a flight data recorder which stores information about such things as flight control and engine performance, and a cockpit voice recorder.

And though the media refers to them as black boxes, they are enclosed in a corrosion resistant stainless steel or titanium shell which is painted a bright orange (International orange) on the outside for easy viability in plane crash debris, if it comes to that.

As black boxes contain information that can reveal why a plane may have crashed, data from black boxes have helped aircraft manufacturers and aviation professionals improve safety standards. If today, air travel has become safer than travel by road or rail, it is in large part due to an invention by a chemist who shouldn't have been meddling in air travel safety at all.

David Warren passed away in 2010, largely unknown and unsung. The only compensation he got for his pains was the free air trip from Australia to England in 1958