News
Architecture Media
Provides the best coverage is Australian architecture, professional issues, culture, practice and events.
Accredited Designer
Are you serious about your professional status?
News
A lasting legacy.
If you've ever flown in an aeroplane and lived to tell the tale, it is probably due in no small part to the information stored, retrieved and subsequently acted upon from the 'black box' flight recorders in aircraft that unfortunately didn't make it back.
An Australian, Dr David Warren, who has just died aged sixty-five, can take the credit for designing a piece of equipment that has undoubtedly saved many many thousands of lives all over the world — but he did it in the face of disinterest and ridicule.
These days it is compulsory for every aircraft to have a flight data recorder on board, but when Dr Warren released his prototype recorder in 1957 to try and determine the reasons for a series of unexplained jet aircraft crashes in the UK, he and his device were rejected by Australian governments and aviation authorities alike.
'Little immediate direct use in civil aircraft' was one of the politest rejections Warren received for his device from one Australian authority.
According to the bright sparks in the RAAF at the time: '... such a device is not required ... the recorder would yield more expletives than explanations'; and the then Federation of Air Pilots obviously considered pilots much more important than passengers when it declared that fitting a flight recorder would be like 'a spy flying alongside ... no plane would take off in Australia with Big Brother listening.'
Rejected by Australian authorities, Warren showed his invention to the British, who instantly recognised its value and proceeded to start manufacturing a UK-produced version.
It wasn't until a Fokker Friendship crashed in Queensland in 1960 that attitudes suddenly changed in Australia, thanks to a judicial ruling that made Australia the first country in the world to make it compulsory for all aircraft to fit a flight recorder.
Given that all flight recorders are coloured fluorescent orange to aid in identification and recovery, the name 'black box' is somewhat incongruous, but may be a derivation of the 'black magic' attributed to obscure scientific instruments by uneducated members of the public, in a time when science was still in its infancy.
Warren's original recorder used a thin steel wire to store four hours of pilot voice and instrument readings at the rate of eight per second up to the moment of any accident, and would automatically erase older recordings at the start of each flight to enable the wire to be re-used.
As technology advanced, the steel wire was progressively replaced by magnetic tape, and nowadays, solid state computer chips.
Flight data recorders are usually located in the tail section of aircraft to help maximise the chances of recovery after a crash and minimise the impact, with current regulations stipulating that they must be able to withstand impact forces of 3400g, plus additional requirements for penetration resistance, static crush, high and low temperature fires, deep sea pressure, sea water immersion and fluid immersion.
Impressive, albeit not indestructible — but if Dr Warren and his invention could survive the collective ignorance of so-called experts and governments of the day, then crash-testing was probably a relative doddle.
Dr Warren received the Order of Australia in 2002.
(Images courtesy of www.dsto.defence.gov.au)
Return to the news list
An Australian, Dr David Warren, who has just died aged sixty-five, can take the credit for designing a piece of equipment that has undoubtedly saved many many thousands of lives all over the world — but he did it in the face of disinterest and ridicule.
These days it is compulsory for every aircraft to have a flight data recorder on board, but when Dr Warren released his prototype recorder in 1957 to try and determine the reasons for a series of unexplained jet aircraft crashes in the UK, he and his device were rejected by Australian governments and aviation authorities alike.
'Little immediate direct use in civil aircraft' was one of the politest rejections Warren received for his device from one Australian authority.
According to the bright sparks in the RAAF at the time: '... such a device is not required ... the recorder would yield more expletives than explanations'; and the then Federation of Air Pilots obviously considered pilots much more important than passengers when it declared that fitting a flight recorder would be like 'a spy flying alongside ... no plane would take off in Australia with Big Brother listening.'
Rejected by Australian authorities, Warren showed his invention to the British, who instantly recognised its value and proceeded to start manufacturing a UK-produced version.
It wasn't until a Fokker Friendship crashed in Queensland in 1960 that attitudes suddenly changed in Australia, thanks to a judicial ruling that made Australia the first country in the world to make it compulsory for all aircraft to fit a flight recorder.
Given that all flight recorders are coloured fluorescent orange to aid in identification and recovery, the name 'black box' is somewhat incongruous, but may be a derivation of the 'black magic' attributed to obscure scientific instruments by uneducated members of the public, in a time when science was still in its infancy.
Warren's original recorder used a thin steel wire to store four hours of pilot voice and instrument readings at the rate of eight per second up to the moment of any accident, and would automatically erase older recordings at the start of each flight to enable the wire to be re-used.
As technology advanced, the steel wire was progressively replaced by magnetic tape, and nowadays, solid state computer chips.
Flight data recorders are usually located in the tail section of aircraft to help maximise the chances of recovery after a crash and minimise the impact, with current regulations stipulating that they must be able to withstand impact forces of 3400g, plus additional requirements for penetration resistance, static crush, high and low temperature fires, deep sea pressure, sea water immersion and fluid immersion.
Impressive, albeit not indestructible — but if Dr Warren and his invention could survive the collective ignorance of so-called experts and governments of the day, then crash-testing was probably a relative doddle.
Dr Warren received the Order of Australia in 2002.
(Images courtesy of www.dsto.defence.gov.au)
Return to the news list
