Inventing the black box

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 1 November 2023

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

On 23 March 1962, a prototype of the first cockpit flight recorder, the black box, was tested in Australia. In the early 1950s, fuel scientist David Warren, who worked in the Australian government’s aeronautical research laboratories, attended a talk about the reasons for a recent plane crash. David thought that if only he could speak to a survivor, he’d have a much better idea of what caused the crash and could prevent future ones. This led him to develop a recorder that would collect vital information of the last few hours before a plane goes down. Today the modern equivalent of the black box is compulsory equipment on passenger planes all over the world. In 2015, David’s children, Jenny and Peter Warren, and a former colleague, Bill Schofield, spoke with Catherine Davis about how his idea changed air travel forever. (Photo: The flight data recorder known as a black box used in aircraft. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, welcome to the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service.
0:09.2	We are taking you back to March 23rd 1962, a milestone in aviation safety, when a prototype
0:17.0	of the cockpit flight recorder, the black box, was tested in Australia.
0:22.0	Scientists David Warren invented it.
0:24.4	In 2015, Cuffin Davis spoke to David Warren's children, Jenny Ampita Warren, and former colleague,
0:31.4	Belle Skullfield.
0:32.4	They only got one recording from their prototype device, and that was it, but it showed all instrument,
0:38.4	readings and voice projection over the top, and although it possibly sounds simple in today's electronics,
0:45.4	that was an incredibly, incredibly complex scientific method of separating voice from background noise.
0:52.4	Today, the modern equivalent of the black box is compulsory equipment in passenger airlines around the world.
0:59.4	In a world where aircraft travel is increasing very rapidly, I think is doubling every 10 years or something like that,
1:07.4	and the number of people who die in aircraft crashes in absolute numbers is going down.
1:13.4	All you can say is that it's safe tens of thousands of lives over these years.
1:19.4	This film is concerned with the causes of fatal accidents in the field of general aviation.
1:25.4	There are two primary factors involved, the man and the machine.
1:30.4	The story of the black box began in the early 1950s with David Warren, a chemist,
1:36.4	who worked at the Australian government's aeronautical research laboratories.
1:41.4	Dad was a fuel scientist expert and was asked to attend a conference or a discussion
1:49.4	of why the comet aeroplane would have crashed in 1953.
1:54.4	Jenny Warren is David Warren's daughter.
1:57.4	She remembers her father as a man always brimming with ideas, an instinctive lateral thinker,
2:03.4	and she says it was while he was at this conference about comet airlines that he found his mind wandering.
	...

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