English subtitles for clip: File:ABC Black Box.ogv
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,536 It has an American unit on show. 2 00:00:02,530 --> 00:00:06,800 It doesn’t mention the country which – this country – which first made it mandatory. 3 00:00:06,800 --> 00:00:13,634 It doesn’t mention, uhm, the country that first flew one in the air, which is this one. 4 00:00:13,630 --> 00:00:20,213 It doesn’t mention the push we had for 14 years to get the Americans even to recognize the value of it. … 5 00:00:20,210 --> 00:00:27,186 Dr. David Warren, lamenting about the failure of Washington Smithsonian Institute to recognize an Australian invention. 6 00:00:27,180 --> 00:00:31,240 And this is it: The world’s first flight recorder, or “Blackbox”, 7 00:00:31,240 --> 00:00:34,760 which he and his friends developed in the 1950s and 60s. 8 00:00:34,760 --> 00:00:37,946 Ironically, it was the failure of another world first, 9 00:00:37,940 --> 00:00:42,320 the first civilian jet called the Comet, that inspired the Warren idea. 10 00:00:42,320 --> 00:00:48,666 Warren wasn’t an electronics specialist, but rather a fuels expert with the Aeronautical Research Laboratories. 11 00:00:48,660 --> 00:00:51,586 He sat on a committee considering the Comet’s problems. 12 00:00:51,580 --> 00:00:53,333 I kept thinking to myself: 13 00:00:53,330 --> 00:00:58,226 “If it were a pilot error, or if it were something which were known to the crew, 14 00:00:58,220 --> 00:01:00,026 they may have said something or done something. 15 00:01:00,020 --> 00:01:02,920 If we only could recapture those last few seconds, 16 00:01:02,920 --> 00:01:05,933 it’d all save this argument and uncertainty, we’d know what it was.” 17 00:01:05,930 --> 00:01:07,560 Somebody may have known. 18 00:01:07,560 --> 00:01:13,700 And I had been, just the week before, to an instrument exhibition and seen this. 19 00:01:13,700 --> 00:01:13,720 Now this is the world’s first pocket recorder if you like: And I had been, just the week before, to an instrument exhibition and seen this. 20 00:01:13,720 --> 00:01:17,666 Now this is the world’s first pocket recorder if you like: 21 00:01:17,660 --> 00:01:18,330 The Minifon. 22 00:01:18,330 --> 00:01:18,364 A German unit, which records on about two or three miles of very fine wire as thick as your hair… The Minifon. 23 00:01:18,364 --> 00:01:25,586 A German unit, which records on about two or three miles of very fine wire as thick as your hair… 24 00:01:25,580 --> 00:01:29,160 Inspiration is one thing, but selling an idea is quite another. 25 00:01:29,160 --> 00:01:32,386 At first, if it was to try and get the Australian authorities on your side, 26 00:01:32,380 --> 00:01:33,893 and so you write them a letter. 27 00:01:33,890 --> 00:01:37,186 And their reply was, uh, to go and send us: 28 00:01:37,180 --> 00:01:42,213 3 pages what was required, then, in aircraft – as if we weren’t quite sure – 29 00:01:42,210 --> 00:01:43,693 and then the statement: 30 00:01:43,690 --> 00:01:49,573 And, say, you see, Dr. Warren’s invention has “no immediate significance” in civil aviation. … 31 00:01:49,570 --> 00:01:53,133 Eventually, it was the British and Americans who manufactured and refined 32 00:01:53,130 --> 00:01:56,240 what is now standard equipment on all commercial aircraft. 33 00:01:56,240 --> 00:01:59,426 The flight recorder experience was incredible enough. 34 00:01:59,420 --> 00:02:04,266 But it wasn’t the only one of Dr. Warren’s ideas to be met with bureaucratic indifference. 35 00:02:04,260 --> 00:02:11,946 This prototype of a crash beacon recorder has done little more than gather dust since its invention in 1960. 36 00:02:11,940 --> 00:02:15,960 The beacon, or “Plastic mushroom”, was a joint Australian-Canadian development, 37 00:02:15,960 --> 00:02:22,080 which aimed to reduce the likelihood of destruction of the flight recorder and lead to its instant retrieval. 38 00:02:22,080 --> 00:02:26,493 Rather than have your crash recorder buried at the bottom, 39 00:02:26,490 --> 00:02:29,026 we said there’s an another alternative. 40 00:02:29,020 --> 00:02:31,866 We can always have a crash recorder inside the plane 41 00:02:31,860 --> 00:02:34,706 where we can get at it easily to see what’s happened in the last flight, 42 00:02:34,700 --> 00:02:38,480 or we can put it in the tail where it’s most likely to survive in an impact. 43 00:02:38,480 --> 00:02:43,480 Or we could build it onto the back in one of these, so that when it flips off, 44 00:02:43,480 --> 00:02:46,960 even if the plane is lost and even every survivor is lost, 45 00:02:46,960 --> 00:02:48,946 the radio says: “Come and get me immediately.” 46 00:02:48,940 --> 00:02:50,253 And when you do get there, 47 00:02:50,250 --> 00:02:53,880 the little spools, which have all the information we need, 48 00:02:53,880 --> 00:02:57,800 are actually housed in this beacon. 49 00:02:57,800 --> 00:02:59,786 We couldn’t carry the whole recorder, it’s too heavy, 50 00:02:59,780 --> 00:03:02,040 but by making the spools detachable… 51 00:03:02,040 --> 00:03:05,200 We worked with the Canadians and we were able to make this combination 52 00:03:05,200 --> 00:03:08,453 which can be retrieved and say “you got the data even if you haven’t got the aircraft.” 53 00:03:08,450 --> 00:03:13,400 How can this sort of thing help in modern day air crashes, for instance the Air India tragedy? 54 00:03:13,400 --> 00:03:17,000 Had there been one on the Air India plane, 55 00:03:17,000 --> 00:03:21,000 search aircraft could’ve been there within, say, half an hour, 56 00:03:21,000 --> 00:03:26,320 because the mayday signal, the distress signal, is monitored all the time in various parts of the world. 57 00:03:26,320 --> 00:03:29,600 And as soon as captured you could set out as quick as you can start your motors. 58 00:03:29,600 --> 00:03:36,640 Had there’d been survivors, had their pilot been in the vicinity and still floating, we might have rescued him. 59 00:03:36,640 --> 00:03:42,906 If, the ex… the popular theory seems to be that the Jumbo Jet, the Air India Jumbo jet exploded, 60 00:03:42,900 --> 00:03:48,346 because there was a bomb on board, now if that happens, what’s to say that something like this mushroom wouldn’t go up with it? 61 00:03:48,340 --> 00:03:51,026 Uh, it could have been, if the bomb had been underneath, 62 00:03:51,020 --> 00:03:54,000 it might have destroyed the mushroom on the outside. 63 00:03:54,000 --> 00:03:59,853 I think, more likely, it would have blown it with a… the support of the structure underneath, 64 00:03:59,850 --> 00:04:02,520 blown it clear, it it still would’ve landed in the water. 65 00:04:02,520 --> 00:04:12,520 It may have been destroyed, but that’s a fairly remote chance compared with something locked in the aircraft over 2,000 feet of water. 66 00:04:12,520 --> 00:04:16,920 So, some 30 years on, it’s no consolation to David Warren to know 67 00:04:16,920 --> 00:04:21,706 that bureaucratic stonewalling caused all his hard work to be lost to Australia.