Who invented the lack box for use in airplanes?
When a number of the world’s first jetpowered airliners, the famous De Havilland DH-106 Comet, began inexplicably falling out of the sky in 1953, it looked like the age of commercial jet travel would stall before it even took off. Engineers and scientists pondered on what lay behind the crashes, but there were few clues and no witnesses or survivors. In Australia, Dr David Warren, a chemist focusing on aircraft fuel, was asked to look into the mystery. Based at the Aeronautical Research Laboratories in Melbourne, Warren’s role was to consider whether fuel explosion could be responsible. However, his interest in plane crashes extended beyond chemistry, for he had lost his father in an unexplained plane crash when he was only nine. During discussions, it became clear to Warren that they needed more evidence. He wondered if the flight crew could have known what was wrong, and whether it could have been revealed in their conversations prior to the crash. If their voices could have been rec
