I recently heard of another search for the black box flight-data recorders from a missing aircraft. Why is this data not streamed periodically to a satellite or ground station so in the event of the unexplained loss of an aircraft, it would be available? (Continued)
鈥� I think an earlier correspondent is mistaken in supposing that the term 鈥渂lack box鈥� was invented in connection with aviation. My recollection is that it was coined by Norbert Wiener, the cybernetics pioneer. He used it to describe a unit that appears on a system flow chart and performs some specified function. It has certain inputs and certain outputs but the internal workings are not specified. It may be a piece of hardware or a piece of software.
For instance, one might have a black box that performs a coordinate conversion, or another mathematical operation. Or it might have physical inputs and outputs: one can imagine a black box with sunlight and carbon dioxide as inputs and oxygen and diamonds as outputs.
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John Ponsonby, Wilmslow, Cheshire, UK
