What is a Black Box? How was the Black Box Invented?
On October 19, 1934, a plane crashed between the island of Tasmania and the Australian mainland. Although the wreckage of this plane and why it crashed were never found, the son of the priest who died in the crash would later find the black box that would help solve many plane crashes in the years to come.
The Russian psychologist "Lev Semonovich Vygotsky", who theorized through his studies, argued that culture and society play an important role in the cognitive development of children. According to Vygotsky's view, the source of cognitive development is the interaction between people and cultures before personal psychological phenomena. According to this assumption, children construct their knowledge through activities in which they are involved.
Vygotsky's theory is a sociocultural cognitive theory that emphasizes how culture and social developments shape cognitive development. Cognitive development is learning to use the inventions of society, such as language, math, systems and memory strategies. Therefore, a child may learn to count with the help of a computer in one culture and with beads in another. A child's cognitive development cannot be separated from his/her socio-interaction with more skilled peers and adults. In this interaction, children learn to use the tools that will enable them to adapt to and succeed in their own culture, of which they are a part.
When I read the theory, I first thought of children's rooms filled with piles of rainbow-colored toys. How is it possible for children who get lost in the colorful toys crammed into giant plastic boxes and baskets to focus on the future that awaits them, to really learn? In Turkish society, where there is no need to even know what a child's interests are, how many children have the opportunity to shape their future in line with their innate talents in the hands of special educators who follow them closely? How many children around us have such a chance? Continuing with these questions, I would like to tell you about David Warren, the inventor of the black box.
On October 19, 1934, a Friday, a plane crashed between the island of Tasmania and the Australian mainland. The three women, eight men and a baby on board were believed to have been swallowed by the waters of the Bass Strait between Tasmania and Australia. The wreckage of this plane has never been found. Also on board was Anglican missionary Reverend Hubert Warren. The priest's last gift to his son David, who was only eight years old at the time of the crash, was a radio, the most important thing the boy had ever treasured.
The priest's son, David Waren, who was studying at a boarding school in Tasmania, used to tinker with the radio, a gift from his father, in his spare time. One day he figured out how this radio worked. He didn't stop there, he built an exact replica of this radio and started to earn his pocket money by selling it to his friends. When he was in his twenties, he graduated from the University of Sydney with a bachelor's degree in science. He then went on to graduate from the University of Melbourne and finally from Imperial College in London with a PhD in Chemistry. In reality, his specialty was rocket science. So he began his working life at the Aeronautical Research Laboratory of the Australian defense ministry, focusing on aircraft construction.
In 1953, he joined a group of experts to investigate why Havilland Comets, the first turbine-powered commercial aircraft, kept crashing. Having lost his father in a plane crash, Dr. David Warren continued to serve on such committees investigating plane crashes for more than 50 years.
One day he approached his boss with the idea that if the last conversations and engine sounds of crashes that had no cause had been recorded, the cause of the crashes would have been much easier to uncover, but he received no positive response. He did not listen to his boss, who argued that there was no possibility of any recording device surviving the pile of debris that would catch fire and become incandescent.
He continued his research and experiments tirelessly. As a matter of fact, during these studies in the garage of his house, he managed to record sound on steel wire by assembling 20-year-old old radio parts. The first black box flight recorder was thus invented. Although his boss still didn't want to hear anything about it and threatened to fire him if he brought up the subject again, with the encouragement of his close friends at work, one day he told the inspector who came to inspect his workplace that he had developed a device that recorded sound in flight. What Warren was talking about was a world first. This "voice recorder device" was capable of recording pilot conversations in the cabin of an airplane and the sounds of the aircraft engines for four hours without interruption. Moreover, after the four-hour period was over, the device would switch back to the beginning and continue to record new sounds over the previous recording. Thus, it would always be possible to access the last four hours of sound recordings. The demonstration to the inspector worked, but when commercial pilots in Australia claimed that they did not want 'a spy' in the cockpit, the device became almost impossible to use in Australia. Shortly afterwards, in 1958, he received an invitation from the British Royal Aeronautical Society to visit the UK to demonstrate the recorder. Here was the chance he had been waiting for for his device.
Warren was welcomed with interest in England. The device was examined. It was promoted on TV and radio programs. The British civil aviation authority started to work on making the device, which made a lot of noise, compulsory in commercial airplanes used by civil airlines for passenger and cargo transportation. Initially, the voice recorder was known simply as the 'black box'. It is still known by this name. However, even though the device is called a black box, it is not black. It was a bright orange or even yellow colored box. Because the recorder boxes painted in this color were much easier to find at the accident scene.
In 1960, after a plane crash in Australia that killed 29 people, cockpit voice recorders were made compulsory by a court order for the first time in history. Of course, like many groundbreaking inventions, the acceptance of the 'black box' and its integration into airplanes could not be realized immediately. It took three years for the court's decision to become law.
Today, black boxes are made of a special alloy that is resistant to fire, ocean pressure and waterproof. In later years, a flight data recorder was added to the requirement to have a cockpit voice recorder in airplanes. Today, all commercial airplanes, no matter where in the world they fly, must fly with these two recorders. One records the pilots' conversations, the other records all the systems running on board.
David Warren worked on the black box for almost 50 years and succeeded, although initially it was never recognized. He retired in 1983. In 1999 he was awarded the Order of Australia for his invaluable service to the aviation industry. In 2008, Qantas Airlines named one of the Airbus A380 aircraft in its fleet after Dr. David Warren. Despite these awards and honors, he passed away on July 19, 2019 at the age of 85, without ever having the opportunity to benefit from the copyright of the black box device he invented. He was buried in a black coffin with the inscription "Inventor of the black box: do not open".
References
'Lifelong Development, Developmental Psychology - p25- John W. Santrock, (13th Edition) Nobel Publishing House
Rebecca Seales, "David Warren, the unknown inventor who made your air travel safer", BBC News World
