Inventing the black box

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)

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