Black Box (transportation)

The term Black Box is used casually, often by journalists, to refer to a collection of several different devices used in transportation. The flight data recorder or cockpit voice recorder in aircraft, the event recorder in railway diesel locomotives, and other recording devices in various vehicles may be included. There is little similarity between these units and they are designed and installed on the basis of different regulatory requirements. In industry the more specific terms are used. In aviation these devices are known as flight recorders and in automobiles they are known as Event Data Recorders.

These devices are, contrary to their popular name, most often painted a bright blaze orange to aid recovery crews in locating them quickly after an incident. The "black box" term originated when after a meeting about the first commercial FDR, named the "Red Egg" for its colour and shape, someone commented that, "This is a wonderful black box." Black box is more a humorous cadigan than an accurate term, and almost never used within the flight safety industry.

Black box (systems) has long been part of professional jargon for a mechanism in which the input and expected outputs are well understood but the internal operations are deliberately and completely unknown, but has no special connection with recording devices.