David Warren - Inventor of the Black Box Flight Recorder

Behind many great inventions there is a tale of stubborn perseverance, clear foresight, lateral thinking and sometimes sheer coincidence that in the end brings benefit to many people. The story of "Black Box" flight recorder and its Australian inventor, Dr David Warren, is no exception. The "Black Box" is a device that records in-flight conversations and data. The term did not yet exist more than 50 years ago when Dr Warren first conceived the idea of recording the flight crew's conversation on a device that could be protected to increase its chances of surviving the crash.

Now a part of our everyday lexicon, "Black Box" recording technology is also beginning to be applied on a large scale in trains, trucks and automobiles.

Gizmo recently caught up with Dr Warren to learn the story behind the invention first-hand. Now in his early eighties, Dr Warren recalls with great detail the events leading up to his invention and the long, slow road to commercialisation that followed.

Despite having received very little monetary reward for conceiving what is now seen a worldwide necessity for aviation, Dr Warren speaks with satisfaction about his achievement and retains an open-minded approach towards new ideas and technology that we can all learn from.

Dr Warren cites several key inspirations for what was originally known as a "flight-recording device". Firstly, Australia's first major air calamity in 1934 claimed the life of David's father.

Dr Warren, then still at boarding school, had received a crystal set from his father just prior to the disaster that started his interest in amateur radio and electronics.

Almost 20 years later, when the age of commercial jet aircraft was in its infancy, Dr Warren worked in his capacity as a chemist specialising in aircraft fuels at the Aeronautical Research Laboratories where he found himself part of a "think-tank" investigating the possible causes of a recent Comet Jet Aircraft crash and prepare Australian infrastructure for commercial jet aircraft.

New fuels being used in Jets in the early 50's were more likely to become explosive at altitude than conventional aircraft fuels and this was identified as a possible cause of the Comet crash. This was the area of specific investigation for David - then still in his early 20's - but it was at this two-day meeting the he hit upon the idea of a flight recorder.

While listening to the arguments over possible causes of the crash, one of which was the new phenomenon of hijacking, Dr Warren realised that the solution could well be at hand if someone on the plane had been carrying a device similar to the then newly released Protona Minifon portable recorder that had caught his eye at a trade fair. Mention of the device to his superiors fell on deaf ears initially, but with support from colleagues and his own faith in the idea he continued to refine the idea in his own time.

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