Black Boxes

Why do the media insist on calling flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders “black boxes”? They’re not black. They’re orange.

They’re all pink on the inside.

The “black box” tag comes from the world of techno-geeks where any device that does a myriad of wondrous deeds with no visible sign of the technology involved is a “black box.” The recorders provide the vast majority of the arcane data that is translated into “This plane crashed because the widget did not interface correctly with the whatchamacallit at the point where the co-pilot opened his in-flight beer-nuts.” With the level of information retrieved (inferred, deduced, reconstructed, etc.) from mere “recorders” they are, legitimately, “black boxes.”

Obligatory nod to Unca Cece:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_001.html


Tom~

Everyone knows what FDRs and CVRs do since they’ve been around so long. It seems to me that “black box” would be an anachronistic term by now.

Besides, the media keep saying “Cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder – ‘black boxes’, which record cocpit conversations and flight data.” Save the pause and the extra two words, in my opinion.

Now I’m wondering where the “Irangate” and “Contragate” hotels are. I can find the Watergate, but…

It’s just a term.

“Black light” isn’t black.

“Spanish moss” is neither Spanish, nor moss.

The “English horn” is neither English, nor a horn.

And so it goes.

Just terms.

Thank you for not wondering why they don’t make the airplane out of the same material as the black box.

I fully expected the OP to be exactly that and was prepared to flame you. I apologize.


“Cliiiiiiffffff!!!”

And now for some ancient history. The name “black box” for a magic thingie you don’t understand came from early electrical and electronic hobbyists. Some made their “bread board” hookup by buying the wires and some resistors capacitors and such and then putting it all together. After a few years, manufacturers would assemble the most up to date improvements in already assembled components, and sold them to hobbyists, and other companies as a unit. These components came from manufacturers in small boxes with screws to mount input and output wires, and power connections, and for mounting. The plastic used to make them (bakelite) was black.

The slang, among engineers, and enthusiasts was a mild reproof to the non-purist who used a black box, instead of wiring his own system up from the original components. That didn’t stop them from doing it, mind you, but it was fun to sneer. After a while the military, always a big buyer in the field of electronics, got into the habit of designating certain components as “black boxes” in order to avoid discussing their function. By the time the big increase in consumer electronics had happened, there were a whole lot of black boxes, most of them no longer black.
<P ALIGN=“CENTER”>Tris</P>

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. That is the difference between dog and man.
–** Mark Twain **

Well that because everyone knows the freeway are not wide enough. :smiley:

“If we would have new knowledge,
we must get a world of new questions”