Timeline for Why are FDR's called "black boxes" when they are actually orange?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Nov 5, 2018 at 16:00 | comment | added | Bob Stein | Since the Flight Data Recorder measures aviation inputs and outputs, it could be construed as “black-box testing” the plane itself. So maybe the term originally identified what it does, not what it is. | |
| Mar 26, 2014 at 2:46 | comment | added | keshlam | Also a good point. Tamper resistance is a Good Thing if you want to catch and critique the "oops" moments as well as the outright disasters. | |
| Mar 26, 2014 at 0:00 | comment | added | Ben Voigt | @keshlam: That's a good point, although I would say it's not that pilots don't care, but that the recorder functions best when it is opaque and cannot be manipulated by the crew. | |
| Mar 25, 2014 at 23:57 | comment | added | Ben Voigt | @David: This question asks about terminology, I don't think one needs to know about every model of FDR in use. Do you mean to imply that there aren't variations between FDRs in use in different aircraft, different fleets, different countries? (Of course the pilot conversations, actions, and displayed data are recorded, but these are only the minimum data set) I'm not trying to provide the ultimate authoritative answer here, just provide additional context which I feel believe to be helpful. | |
| Mar 25, 2014 at 23:53 | comment | added | David Richerby | When you say that a black box recorder "presumably" does certain things and that you "doubt" that one would do other things, it suggests rather strongly that you're speculating. It also sounds like you're not quite sure what a black box does. | |
| Mar 25, 2014 at 23:02 | comment | added | keshlam | Actually, I think it's the recorder that is a "black box", rather than the signals being recorded. You don't know how it records the data. You don't normally care how it records the data. In fact you normally don't know or care what data it records. As far as the pilot is concerned, it's just a mysterious piece of avionics which gets tested periodically, gets ignored most of the time, and hopefully will never actually be used. | |
| Mar 25, 2014 at 22:54 | review | First posts | |||
| Mar 25, 2014 at 22:57 | |||||
| Mar 25, 2014 at 22:39 | history | answered | Ben Voigt | CC BY-SA 3.0 |