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The inventor of the black box was told to drop the idea

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: The inventor of the black box was told to drop the idea

#21

Post by accountLost »

kwdc wrote: post #6

Wow. History hasn't been kind. As is often the case around limited-mindset thinking. From TFA: "civil authorities said that “Dr Warren’s instrument has little immediate direct use in civil aircraft.” The Royal Australian Air Force likewise decided that “such a device is not required—the recorder would yield more expletives than explanations.” Well. No. Multiple air crashes across the world relied on recordings as a k…

First They Ignore You, Then They Laugh at You, Then They Attack You, Then You Win.

"The statement evolved from a large family of sayings that originated in the nineteenth century. In 1918 a closely similar remark emerged in a speech by Nicholas Klein, a union representative. Gandhi discussed stages that a movement passes through in a collection of writings he published in 1921, but his words did not really match the target expression."

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/08/13/stages/

Re: The inventor of the black box was told to drop the idea

#22

Post by [deleted] »

robertlagrant wrote: post #12
kwdc wrote: post #6

Wow. History hasn't been kind. As is often the case around limited-mindset thinking. From TFA: "civil authorities said that “Dr Warren’s instrument has little immediate direct use in civil aircraft.” The Royal Australian Air Force likewise decided that “such a device is not required—the recorder would yield more expletives than explanations.” Well. No. Multiple air crashes across the world relied on recordings as a k…

Fourth: in retrospect, it is seen as obvious :)

[deleted]

Re: The inventor of the black box was told to drop the idea

#23

Post by belter »

kwdc wrote: post #6

Wow. History hasn't been kind. As is often the case around limited-mindset thinking. From TFA: "civil authorities said that “Dr Warren’s instrument has little immediate direct use in civil aircraft.” The Royal Australian Air Force likewise decided that “such a device is not required—the recorder would yield more expletives than explanations.” Well. No. Multiple air crashes across the world relied on recordings as a k…

"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."

Howard Aiken

Re: The inventor of the black box was told to drop the idea

#24

Post by redis_mlc »

fighterpilot wrote: post #9
kken wrote: post #5

This inventor is probably joined by many others before him that had the same idea, were shrugged off and did not have the tenacity to follow up despite that. Another example for what is common wisdom: Execution is everything. The myth of the inventor-founder is something from the industrual age. Interesting how it still persists.

Why is it a myth? Whenever I read about the founding of a big name company there's very often a significant innovation that it's initially premised on. Disney - animated feature length film with sound, dogged vision of founder Post / Kelloggs - invention of breakfast cereal, invented by founder (Kellogg's invention stolen by Post) Carnegie steel - bridge prototype, highly risky and innovative endeavor Ford - division…

More recent examples are:

- Robinson Helicopters, the largest mfg. in the world by unit count

- Dean Kamen, several medical devices plus the Segway

- an endless number of Internet companies.

Note that the Google founders couldn't write their own production-level software, so hired a python contractor.

Also for those that aware, Tesla's patents were used to start Westinghouse.

Re: The inventor of the black box was told to drop the idea

#25

Post by [deleted] »

redis_mlc wrote: post #3

The black box has worked well for all in Common Law countries. In countries with French-style law, that might be different for pilots. (Essentially you're guilty until proven innocent, and they hire a retired judge with nothing better to do except to drag out the hearings (and fees) until they die.) However the scale has tipped recently in the US with a central pilot records database being created recently. So at eve…

[deleted]

Re: The inventor of the black box was told to drop the idea

#26

Post by nine_k »

dukoid wrote: post #17

Now that the technology is so inexpensive, we need to have them in cars!

Get a dashcam.

I wonder how soon a car would be able to publish its metrics, like speed, motor rpm, data from ABS and brakes, etc via a protected Bluetooth channel, so that a dashcam or a phone could keep recording it, like the black box.

Re: The inventor of the black box was told to drop the idea

#27

Post by nine_k »

mongol wrote: post #18

The last sentences about uploading data to the cloud had not struck me before. It is such an obvious development, if not to replace so to complement. But perhaps there are challenges around it that are not obvious?

A plane more often has access to an atmospheric cloud than to a computing cloud, especially when flying over an ocean. Maybe Starlink could offer reasonable connectivity, even if intermittent.

Re: The inventor of the black box was told to drop the idea

#28

Post by nine_k »

username90 wrote: post #16
fighterpilot wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it a myth? Whenever I read about the founding of a big name company there's very often a significant innovation that it's initially premised on. Disney - animated feature length film with sound, dogged vision of founder Post / Kelloggs - invention of breakfast cereal, invented by founder (Kellogg's invention stolen by Post) Carnegie steel - bridge prototype, highly risky and innovative endeavor Ford - division…

Mass production and factories had already been a thing for almost a century when Ford started his factories. It is like saying that the new innovation "computers" was behind Facebooks success.

No, the Ford's innovation is division of labor while producing a complex thing, a car. Instead of a team working on various operations, Ford's system introduced workers who each did a very simple operation, without having to change or readjust. The need for coordination between workers was largely removed, replaced by the conveyor, seriously improving production speed.

Re: The inventor of the black box was told to drop the idea

#30

Post by p_l »

redis_mlc wrote: post #3

The black box has worked well for all in Common Law countries. In countries with French-style law, that might be different for pilots. (Essentially you're guilty until proven innocent, and they hire a retired judge with nothing better to do except to drag out the hearings (and fees) until they die.) However the scale has tipped recently in the US with a central pilot records database being created recently. So at eve…

In Roman law you're also innocent until proven guilty - and the unwritten law in most countries is that prosecution doesn't get to access accident investigation materials and has to order their own experts every time.
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