Death of Flight Recorder Pioneer
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Death of Flight Recorder Pioneer
David Warren, has died at the age of 85.
Dr Warren was working as a scientist at Melbourne’s Aeronautical Research Laboratory, helping to investigate the 1953 mystery crash of a Comet jetliner, when he came up with the idea of recording pilots’ voices and instrument readings to help solve accidents.
His idea sparked little interest in Australia, but Dr Warren worked with colleagues to produce the ARL Flight Memory Unit, a prototype black box that recorded the pilot’s voice and instrument readings for four hours on steel wire, in 1956.
What happened next would become an often cited example of stunted vision. The machine was tested successfully, but Australia’s Department of Civil Aviation, the pilots and the RAAF all turned it down. The RAAF went as far as to note that “such a device is not required … the recorder would yield more expletives than explanations”.
It was not until a British aviation official saw it in 1958 that Dr Warren was given the resources to develop it in the UK.
Dr Warren and a team of scientists developed new models, housed them in crash-proof and fire-proof boxes and sold them around the world. The black box is now fitted to thousands of commercial passenger planes and is responsible for saving countless lives.
Ironically, Australia in 1960 would become the first country in the world to rule that all airliners should carry a flight recorder, after the crash of Fokker Friendship in Queensland.
Flight recorders have always been brightly painted to make them easier to spot in aircraft wreckage and the term ‘black box’ is believed to have been originally applied in a UK meeting to convey the sense of a magical invention or gadget. Airliners globally are now required to carry both cockpit and flight-data recorders and information collected from the devices has been essential to determining the cause of many crashes.
Dr Warren and his team received the Lawrence Hargraves Award for their work in 2001. His services to aviation resulted in his being made an Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia in 2002.
A Qantas A380 aircraft was also named after him in 2008.
The scientist was born on Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory in 1925 and attended school in Sydney and Launceston. He graduated from Sydney University with a science honours degree and was a chemistry teacher and lecturer before heading to Woomera in 1950 to work on rocket fuels, and then to Melbourne and the ARL. He served as the chairman of the Australasian section of the Combustion Institute for 25 years and was the scientific adviser to the Victorian parliament in the early 1980s.
Dr Warren is survived by his wife, Ruth, four children and seven grandchildren.
Dr Warren was working as a scientist at Melbourne’s Aeronautical Research Laboratory, helping to investigate the 1953 mystery crash of a Comet jetliner, when he came up with the idea of recording pilots’ voices and instrument readings to help solve accidents.
His idea sparked little interest in Australia, but Dr Warren worked with colleagues to produce the ARL Flight Memory Unit, a prototype black box that recorded the pilot’s voice and instrument readings for four hours on steel wire, in 1956.
What happened next would become an often cited example of stunted vision. The machine was tested successfully, but Australia’s Department of Civil Aviation, the pilots and the RAAF all turned it down. The RAAF went as far as to note that “such a device is not required … the recorder would yield more expletives than explanations”.
It was not until a British aviation official saw it in 1958 that Dr Warren was given the resources to develop it in the UK.
Dr Warren and a team of scientists developed new models, housed them in crash-proof and fire-proof boxes and sold them around the world. The black box is now fitted to thousands of commercial passenger planes and is responsible for saving countless lives.
Ironically, Australia in 1960 would become the first country in the world to rule that all airliners should carry a flight recorder, after the crash of Fokker Friendship in Queensland.
Flight recorders have always been brightly painted to make them easier to spot in aircraft wreckage and the term ‘black box’ is believed to have been originally applied in a UK meeting to convey the sense of a magical invention or gadget. Airliners globally are now required to carry both cockpit and flight-data recorders and information collected from the devices has been essential to determining the cause of many crashes.
Dr Warren and his team received the Lawrence Hargraves Award for their work in 2001. His services to aviation resulted in his being made an Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia in 2002.
A Qantas A380 aircraft was also named after him in 2008.
The scientist was born on Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory in 1925 and attended school in Sydney and Launceston. He graduated from Sydney University with a science honours degree and was a chemistry teacher and lecturer before heading to Woomera in 1950 to work on rocket fuels, and then to Melbourne and the ARL. He served as the chairman of the Australasian section of the Combustion Institute for 25 years and was the scientific adviser to the Victorian parliament in the early 1980s.
Dr Warren is survived by his wife, Ruth, four children and seven grandchildren.
