By Utibe Inyang
In 1953, David Warren of Aeronautical Research Laboratories and his team invented the first ‘Black Box’ flight recorder. The demonstration model of this device was produced in 1957. Warren believed the device would be popular and help solve the mysteries behind aviation crashes, but it was initially rejected by the Australian aviation community for privacy issues. Eventually, Britain accepted the idea of Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and worked with Warren for further development. Following the unexplained crash of a Fokker Friendship plane in Mackay in 1960, the judge at the court of inquiry ordered that recorders be fitted to all future Australian aircraft.
Thus, Australia became the first country in the world to make cockpit voice-recording mandatory.
