Good morning all, well I think I know the answer to #1 but that's it so far.

Annette

Hi Nancy. You may be lucky with all of your snow. We are having a scant amount so far this winter which won't help our Great Lakes levels at all. They are very close to an all-time record low and many of the shorelines are looking quite odd, exposing lake bottom that we have never seen.

Trivia-wise, I know the answer to number 1, and it ain't black.

I don't know exactly where the name came from, but in electronics circles, a black box is a sort of humorous name for a device that performs a function without revealing the inside workings.

1932 seems too early to me, so I'll flip a coin between 1945 and 1953 and go with 1953.

Which country? I dunno. Maybe Canada or the U.S.?

TM

This is one of those things that I am sure I know, butthen when I need to come up with details...well...maybe I don't know quite as much as I think.

I think I know #1 and agree that is sure isn't black. I could make a rhyme-oh, no I can't! ;)

I have a thought for #2 that it has to do with secrets.

#3 I am with TM that 1932 seems to early, but I am going to go with 1945 (fits with #2 for me).

#4 is fuzzy bear a clue?

Cynthia

Ahh you all have your thinking caps on today!! TM and Cyn, you are both batting 500, but on different teams!! lol. Fuzzy refers to #2, as it has several origins. Any are acceptable, but I wonder how many we can find??!! Fuzzy bear is not a clue, btw, but all will be revealed is!! Thin Man, think rain!!

Nancy.

Would #2 have to do with radios?

Very cold, Cyn! TM's thinking was very close.

Nancy.

I figured electronics could be radios. Oh well.

Rain? Was that for #4?

Why yes, rain is for #4, man!

Nancy/

Mmmmmmmm, could #4 be "Down Under"?

Hmmmm, rain ...
England?

TM

Annette - it is a warm rain!! TM is out in the cold!!

Nancy.

hmm..okay, lets go with
1. orange
2. I was thinking something to do with spying during the war, but guess that is wrong
3. I'll stick with 1945
4. Australia, man :)

1. orange
2. ?????
3. guessing 1953
4. Australia

Annette

1. Me too - orange
2. My first answer is the best I have.
3. Leaning more toward 1945.
4. Still stuck on this one. Rain? Seattle isn't a country, is it? Not seeing the connection between rain and Australia that Cynthia and Annette are seeing.

TM

Annette - 3 out of 4 ain't bad!! I'll just wait to see if TM chimes back in....

Nancy.

Well, two out of four ain't so good. :( Oh well.

The only reason I said Australia, TM, was because Nancy added 'man' and that sounds Aussie to me. If it were England, I would have expected 'chap' and Jamaica would be 'mon'

Cynthia

The movie Rain Man twigged it for me, until then I didn't have a clue.

Annette

This is another one of my long answers, but I just find this sooo interesting - sorry if I bored you guys!! On a different note, one of the episodes I watched tonight was the crash of the USAF 737 that was carrying your then Industry Minister into Dubrovnik at the end of the war there - fascinating that the military were required to carry neither a Cockpit Voice Recorder nor a Flight Data Recorder!!

1. Well yes, not black at all. In fact, an early proto-type was called the Red Egg that was, err, egg-shaped and red. It was developed by a Dr. David Warren of the Defence Science and Technology Organisation's Aeronautical Research Laboratories in Melbourne, Australia. They now are coated with heat-resistant bright orange paint for high visibility in wreckage.

2. The origin of the term "Black Box" is uncertain. In science and engineering, a black box is a device, system or object which can be viewed solely in terms of its input, output and transfer characteristics without any knowledge of its internal workings, that is, its implementation is "opaque" (black). Almost anything might be referred to as a black box: a transistor, an algorithm, or the human mind. Another explanation comes from the early film-based design of flight data recorders, which required the inside of the recorder to be perfectly dark to prevent light leaks from corrupting the record, as in a photographer's darkroom. Another explanation of the "black box" name came from a meeting about Warren's "Red Egg", when afterwards a journalist told Dr. Warren, "This is a wonderful black box."
An alternative origin of the word is from World War II RAF terminology. During the period 1940-1945 new electronic innovations, such as Oboe, GEE and H2S (???), were added to aircraft (specifically bombers) on a regular basis. The prototypes were roughly covered in hand-made metal boxes, painted black to prevent reflections. After a time any piece of "new" electronics was referred to as the "box-of-tricks" or the "black-box". The expression made its way into post-war civil aviation and, ultimately, general usage. Cyn, I had no idea anyone would suss this: The unit itself was based on an EMI Minifon wire recorder (originally a 1950s espionage gadget from the west-German manufacterer Protona Monske) fitted into a perspex box firmly screwed together. Lol.

3. B. The modern term "black box" seems to have entered the English language around 1945. The process of network synthesis from the transfer functions of black boxes can be traced to Wilhelm Cauer who published his ideas in their most developed form in 1941. Although Cauer did not himself use the term, others who followed him certainly did describe the method as black-box analysis.

4. In 1953 and 1954, a series of fatal incidents involving the de Havilland Comet, the world's first passenger jet, prompted the grounding of the entire fleet pending an investigation. Dr. Warren, a chemist specializing in aircraft fuels, was involved in a professional committee discussing the possible causes. Since there had been neither witnesses nor survivors, Dr. Warren conceived of a crash-survivable method to record the flight crew's conversation (and other pre-crash data), reasoning they would greatly assist in determining a cause and enabling the prevention of future, avoidable accidents of the same type. Warren published a 1954 report entitled "A Device for Assisting Investigation into Aircraft Accidents" and built a 1957 prototype FDR called "The ARL Flight Memory Unit". However, aviation authorities from around the world were largely uninterested. In 1960, after the crash of an aircraft at Mackay (Queensland), the inquiry judge strongly recommended that flight recorders be installed in all airliners. Australia then became the first country in the world to make cockpit-voice recording compulsory. Man alluded to Rain Man, the movie and Dustin Hoffman's character noting that QANTAS had never had a plane crash - bonus points, QANTAS is an acronym for what??

I could not find any dates for implementation in the US or Canada, but in the US it came about after the mid-air crash of a United Airlines Douglas DC-7 and a TWA Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation over the Grand Canyon, in 1956. Everyone perished, one-hundred and twenty-eight passengers and crew - the worst accident to that time in American history.

In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires that commercial airlines record a minimum of 11 to 29 parameters, depending on the size of the aircraft. Magnetic-tape recorders have the potential to record up to 100 parameters. Solid-state FDRs can record more than 700 parameters. On July 17, 1997, the FAA issued a Code of Federal Regulations that requires the recording of at least 88 parameters on aircraft manufactured after August 19, 2002.
Here are a few of the parameters recorded by most FDRs:
*Time
*Pressure altitude
*Airspeed
*Vertical acceleration
*Magnetic heading
*Control-column position
*Rudder-pedal position
*Control-wheel position
*Horizontal stabilizer
*Fuel flow
Black boxes are usually sold directly to and installed by the airplane manufacturers. the cost is about $8,000.00. Both black boxes are installed in the tail of the plane -- putting them in the back of the aircraft increases their chances of survival. The precise location of the recorders depends on the individual plane. Sometimes they are located in the ceiling of the galley, in the aft cargo hold or in the tail cone that covers the rear of the aircraft.
Typically, the tail of the aircraft is the last portion of the aircraft to impact. The whole front portion of the airplane provides a crush zone, which assists in the deceleration of tail components, including the recorders, and enhances the likelihood that the crash-protected memory of the recorder will survive. I'm sure that makes you all feel better! In addition to the paint and reflective tape, black boxes are equipped with an underwater locator beacon (ULB). If you look at a picture of a black box, you will almost always see a small, cylindrical object attached to one end of the device. While it doubles as a handle for carrying the black box, this cylinder is actually a beacon. Currently, black boxes aren't just taking flight -- they're being used on the ground as well. Several automobile manufacturers are utilizing black box technology in their automobiles and a few have been doing so for quite some time. According to an article titled "Black boxes in GM cars increasingly help police after accidents" General Motors has been using black box technology for over a decade. The manufacturer has been installing a Sensing and Diagnostic Module (SDM) on thousands of its cars, including the Corvette. Furthermore, this article reports that "industry insiders say as many as a dozen other manufacturers install similar technology under different labels."

they have to be able to withstand the following:
Impact tolerance 3400Gs / 6.5 ms
Fire resistance 1100 degC / 30 min

Of the 9/11 planes, the only cockpit voice recorder supposedly recovered and successfully read was that of Flight 93. The recorders on the other three jets were deemed unrecovered or too damaged to read. The FBI refused to release an audio record or transcript of Flight 93's voice recorder with the excuse: "we do not believe that the horror captured on the cockpit voice recording will console them in any way." Then, in April of 2006, a transcript of Flight 93's CVR was published in conjunction with the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui.

The future most likely is the QAR. A quick access recorder (QAR) is an airborne flight data recorder designed to provide quick and easy access to raw flight data, through means such as USB or cellular network connections and/or the use of standard flash memory cards. QARs are typically used by airlines to improve flight safety and operational efficiency, usually in the scope of an their flight operational quality assurance plans.

Like the aircraft's flight data recorder (FDR), a QAR receives its inputs from the Flight Data Acquisition Unit
but is currently located at the front of the plane.

I think you all did well!! So:
for everyone!!

Thanks for playing - see you next weekend.

Nancy.

Thanks for the stars! I am so excited! The spy thing was a pure off-the-wall guess that went with the date I had picked. Woohoo.

I know I have heard what the acronym Qantas stands for, but that tidbit is buried way back in some dusty old corner of my brain.

Very interesting, Nancy. You kept us guessing!

Cynthia