Post by Bret Walker on Mar 4, 2005 16:48:39 GMT -5
SO WHY ARE THEY CALLED “BLACK BOXES?” In Friday’s AOA Highlights, we wondered aloud why ”orange-colored” flight data recorders and voice recorders were called “black boxes.” Tony Moore on the International Staff enlightens us with the following: “During my time as a graduate engineering student in the UK, I was told that during WW II British scientists put analog feedback and control circuits inside Black boxes. These circuits (operational amplifiers) did all kinds of magic inside (solving differential equations). So the name of a box with wires going to and from that does a kind of magic, even DFDRs [digital flight data recorders] have the name (from the Brits) “Black Box”. Perhaps there are other versions.” And indeed there are, according to Duke Taylor in Civil Rights, who cites www.wordorigins.org/ as his source.
“Black box is a generic term for a piece of electronic equipment on an aircraft. The term originated in the RAF during World War II. The first black boxes were radar bomb "sights." Later, the term expanded to include various electronic navigational devices. When the flight recorders started being installed on civilian aircraft in 1958, the name was applied to these devices. The original WWII black boxes were literally black boxes and many pieces of avionics equipment still come in black housings, but the term is applied to all of them regardless of color.”<br>
Taylor then proceeds to corroborate Moore’s version as well: “There is another type of black box that also takes its name from these WWII devices. A black box can be a mechanism whose internal workings are not understood, but its function is. If an engineer knows that the device will give output Y if he inputs X but doesn't understand why, then that is a black box. This sense dates from at least 1953 and is from the fact that aircrews did not understand how their black boxes worked (the components and processes were closely guarded military secrets), they just knew they did.”
From FAA AOA Highlights, March 4, 2005
“Black box is a generic term for a piece of electronic equipment on an aircraft. The term originated in the RAF during World War II. The first black boxes were radar bomb "sights." Later, the term expanded to include various electronic navigational devices. When the flight recorders started being installed on civilian aircraft in 1958, the name was applied to these devices. The original WWII black boxes were literally black boxes and many pieces of avionics equipment still come in black housings, but the term is applied to all of them regardless of color.”<br>
Taylor then proceeds to corroborate Moore’s version as well: “There is another type of black box that also takes its name from these WWII devices. A black box can be a mechanism whose internal workings are not understood, but its function is. If an engineer knows that the device will give output Y if he inputs X but doesn't understand why, then that is a black box. This sense dates from at least 1953 and is from the fact that aircrews did not understand how their black boxes worked (the components and processes were closely guarded military secrets), they just knew they did.”
From FAA AOA Highlights, March 4, 2005
