Fed: Black Box inventor given top aviatian award

AAP General News (Australia)
02-13-2001
Fed: Black Box inventor given top aviatian award

By Ben Packham

MELBOURNE, Feb 13 AAP - The man who invented the Black Box flight recorder today received
Australia's highest aerospace award, nearly 50 years after the life-saving device was
first developed.

The Lawrence Hargrave Award, established in 1999 by the Australian Division of the
Royal Aeronautical Society, was presented to Melbourne scientist Dr David Warren, who
led the Australian team that developed the Black Box in the early 1950s.

The award was presented by Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson at the Australian International
Airshow, at Avalon, west of Melbourne.

Mr Anderson, who is also Federal Transport Minister, said he believed Dr Warren and
his team had not received the recognition they deserved for the invention until today,
and he believed the Royal Aeronautical Society had made an "inspired choice".

"The simple fact is that the Black Box recorder has saved countless lives - we'll never
know how many," he said.

"I did genuinely feel, having read the history of it when I became the minister, that
greater recognition was indeed due to this team."

Mr Anderson noted that Australian authorities at the time were not interested in Dr
Warren's prototype, as had been the case with other Australian inventions over the years.

"It is a bit of a pattern in Australia. Our basic research, our innovators are very
clever. Sometimes the next step is too slow to happen," he said.

Dr Warren, whose father was killed in one of Australia's first passenger air crashes
in 1934, was working at Melbourne's Aeronautical Research Laboratory when he first had
the idea for the black box.

The year was 1953 and the world's first jet airliner, The Comet, had just crashed.

There were no survivors, no witnesses and no indication as to the likely cause of the disaster.

Together with fellow scientists Kenneth Fraser, Lane Sear and Walter Boswell, Dr Warren
set about designing the Black Box to record flight conversations and instrument readings.

Today, the device is mandatory in aircraft, and has been used to determine the causes
of air disasters around the world, and to prevent future tragedies.

Dr Warren said he was immensely proud of the invention, and the fact that it had been
so important in helping to make air travel safer.

"It does give us a great feeling of satisfaction," he said.

"Particularly as it is now accepted as an Australian idea, and encourages our government
and our industry now to give more scope to people's new ideas and to back them when the
ideas do come out."

AAP bp/jlw/mjm e

KEYWORD: BLACKBOX

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