Black Box isn’t really black

We all are familiar with the term ‘Black Box’, its normally associated with aviation accidents. When a plane crashes, the first thing the investigators look into is its black box. Why do they look for it? What’s in a black box? Is a black box really black? Where is it placed?

Video Credits: Vox

Black box is a recording device which records data which could help air-crash investigators to solve their case. But how? A black box which is officially known as flight recorder consists of... two equipment which help it do its job.

• Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) which records cockpit’s chats (sounds) for the last 2 hours before crash and 
• Flight Data Recorder (FDR) – This records at least 88 types of flight’s on-board data such as velocity, altitude etc, for the last 25 hours before flight crash. 

Wait how does a Black Box know the flight is going to crash?

Actually it doesn’t. Black Box records recent data by flushing the past data .i.e. as new data flows in old data gets deleted. A black box is never painted black because it would be difficult to find if an accident occurs. Usually a black box is painted in bright colours such as orange etc. A black box is normally positioned in a location that is the least probable to be damaged during a crash. Additionally it is kept in a strong case to minimise damage to the chip and also has a beacon that could help find it.

Video Credits: Science Channel

Why does people call it a black box when it's orange?

It is indeed a very good question. The term "black box" is not actually used within the aviation industry. There are couple of different theories.

1. One, that the term black box is often used in engineering for a device where you have a lot of inputs. It may go back to the early days of the recorder, where they used light-sensitive paper to record traces from the stylus. And that equipment was housed in a light-protected black box.
2. There's also the idea that, as a result of the accident, once they've been expose to heat and fire, that they turn black or a dark brown.

Nobody really knows where the term came from. But as I say, they're more appropriately called flight recorders or onboard recording devices and they're always painted a very bright orange.