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...June 1 Air France wreck in Brazil inspired the largest marine search for a black box in aviation history (which so far has turned up nothing), and now another sea crash has experts scanning the Indian Ocean for the flight recorders to the Yemenia Airbus A310 jet that went down near the Comoros Islands in the early morning hours of June 30. (See pictures of the latest clues in the Flight 447 crash...
...people onboard - because there wasn't any useful information preserved in the crash. Over the next few years, he developed a prototype for a flight-memory recorder that would track basic information like altitude and direction. Encased in asbestos and metal, the data and sound recorder was nicknamed the "black box," after the general term for a seemingly magical gadget that no one knows how to work...
Airlines were using black boxes by the end of the the 1950s, but the instruments didn't become a mandatory feature until 1960, when the Federal Aviation Administration required all commercial planes to carry them. Initial versions contained literal tape recorders and were about the size and shape of a basketball. After a number of black boxes were destroyed in crashes (the tapes melted in fire), they were moved in 1965 from their original position in the landing wells to the rear of the plane - the area most likely to survive an impact. That same year, they were also required...
These days, airplanes actually have two black boxes, the voice recorder and the flight data recorder. They can withstand temperatures up to 2,000°F and impact forces up to 100 Gs. (A G is equal to the force of the earth's gravity.) They track pilots' conversations, engine noises, air-traffic-control commands, fuel levels, landing-gear extension and retraction and dozens of other clicks and pops that might offer insights about a plane's final moments. The boxes are made out of quarter-inch-thick panels of stainless steel. And in case you're wondering, an entire...
Since the 1960s, black boxes have recorded some astonishing things. In a 1990 incident, a pilot was sucked halfway out of a broken windshield on a British Airways flight; a flight attendant held on to his legs as the co-pilot landed the plane (the pilot survived). In 1994, an Aeroflot pilot allowed his 12-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son to play with the plane's controls during a Moscow-to-Hong Kong flight. "Can I turn [the wheel]?" the black box recorded the boy saying. "Turn it." The pilot replied. "Watch the ground as you turn...