Introduction

 crashes in 1953 and 1954. By that time I was working in the Defence Department's Aeronautical Research Laboratories (ARL) specialising in fuels, and as Australia was one of the countries planning to acquire Comets my task was to look into the possibility of a fuel tank explosion being the cause of the disasters. As there were no surviving witnesses, passengers or crew, to tell what had happened, the accidents were a major obstacle to the future development of commercial jet travel.

While I knew a bit about fuels, I knew very little about aircraft structures, crew operating procedures and the like. But as I sat through those long committee sessions I found myself thinking about something I had seen recently at Australia's first post-war Trade Fair, a Miniphon Portable Wire Recorder from Germany. It was the world's first miniaturised voice-recorder, and I began to imagine a businessman on his way to London using the recorder to dictate a letter for his secretary to type when he arrived. And then the penny dropped, the realisation that not only would the device record the businessman's words, but also the sound of anything else that happened on board, be it the demands of a hijacker, or an explosion. While the investigators might have found it difficult to trace the cause of a crash, I thought there was a good chance that the flight crew might have known, and it might well be revealed in their conversations in trying to deal with the emergency.

So I interrupted the committee's discussions and said: "Hey, what about something like this", and told them of my idea. The Chairman replied: "That's a good suggestion Dave, but now's not the time to bring it up. We are here to discuss what did happen, not what you wish had happened".

So initially, your idea was greeted with little interest from the aviation and scientific community. Why were you so convinced of the need for it when others were not?

Well. I continued to talk about it and most of the younger scientists at the ARL thought it was a good idea and urged me to do something about it.

However, the older men took a more cautious view, their attitude being that if it was any good it would have been done already, and by an American, not an Australian. In 1954 I outlined my ideas in a report entitled "A Device for Assisting Investigation into Aircraft Accidents", which was circulated widely to aviation authorities and the aircraft industry. There was still little interest. But I kept at it because the idea of a voice recorder in an aircraft cockpit seemed so simple that I couldn't understand why it wasn't taken up, and that's the force that kept driving me.

Why do you think there was that disinterest, given that we are talking about something that was destined to play a huge role in international aviation safety in the future?

I think the reason for the lack of interest in Australia was because we had not experienced a major aircraft accident for many years and, in fact, were regarded as having the best aviation safety record in the world at that time. The general feeling seemed to be "we don't have accidents any more".

About this time I decided that maybe a "show and tell" approach would be more effective than simply a "tell" approach, and obviously a demonstration unit was needed. So, in 1958, with the help of some colleagues, I set out to design the prototype of what we called a "Flight Memory Unit". But because I worked in a government institution and couldn't spend any time or money on something that wasn't an officially approved project, I had to work at home where I refined and perfected the design. After successfully testing it in the air, we formally requested that the various aviation authorities officially assess it, but the response was discouraging and the Australian Aeronautical Research Council recommended that no action be taken.

Can you describe the breakthrough moment in 1958 when you explained your idea to Sir Robert Hardingham? What was the immediate outcome of this meeting?

I was working at my desk one day when my Chief Superintendent, in company with another man, walked up and said "Dave, I would like you to meet a friend of mine from England, tell him about your recorder idea". I didn't know it at the time but Air Vice-Marshall Sir Robert Hardingham was Secretary of the UK Air Registration Board. I described the workings of the flight recorder and he was instantly enthusiastic. He turned to my boss and said "I say old chap, that's a damn good idea, we'd better get this young lad on the next courier flight to London". I thought he was mad. Then my boss turned to me and said "Well come on, don't just stand there Dave, go and get your passport ready." I thought he was mad too!

But I went to London on a courier bomber and the response to the demonstrations in the UK was very encouraging. The BBC featured the recorder

 on television and radio, UK manufacturers offered developmental support and the British civil aviation authority began to move to make flight recorders mandatory on all British civil aircraft.

Modern flight recorders are able to store a wealth of information. Looking back, can you remember your first prototype model? The prototype measured about 18 x 8 x 6cm and was designed and built using steel wire as the recording medium. It was fully automatic for fit-and-forget operation with a "memory" mechanism that could store four hours of pilot voice and instrument readings at the rate of eight per second up to the moment of an accident, but would automatically erase older records for the wire to be re-used. It is now on display in the Science Museum in Melbourne.

Can you briefly describe the significant events in the development history of the black box and your involvement from the first prototype through to commercial release?

After I came back from the U.K., because of all of the interest they showed over there, the Aeronautical Research Laboratories in Melbourne gave me a team of four technicians to update the prototype to a more efficient pre-production standard. We improved it in a number of ways, including a method of recording instrument readings with greater accuracy and at an increased rate of 24 readings per second. The recording mechanism was housed in a separate crash-and-fire-proof container mounted in the tail of the aircraft. While we were working on this, a British company, S. Davall & Son, had acquired the production rights from the ARL and developed a crash recorder for the British and overseas markets.

What are your feelings today as you reflect on your invention and the contribution it has made to aviation safety? What makes you most proud?

Well, obviously I'm very proud and pleased that one of the many ideas that I was paid to have over the years was worth the time and effort that went into it, and has paid off in terms of the research and development involved. While it's impossible to predict how many aircraft and lives have been saved, it certainly has been accepted universally as being a major contributor to the enhancement of air safety. And I'm also very happy that Australia has at last got the recognition that the idea was developed in this country and that Australia was, in fact, the first country to make cockpit voice recording mandatory.

(Footnote: While the UK and other countries had earlier adopted the practice of recording flight instrument data, progress in Australia had to wait until the unexplained crash of a Fokker Friendship at Mackay, Queensland, in 1960. The judge inquiring into the crash, when told of the existence of Dr. Warren's flight recorder, ordered that all Australian registered airliners should carry recorders for pilot speech as from January 1963. Although Dr. Warren's machine was offered as an immediately available system, the authorities commissioned an American company, United Data Control (UDC) to develop a cockpit recorder to meet the Australian requirement, reasoning that the local industry lacked the expertise. However, UDC chose to use magnetic tape rather than wire as the recording medium and developmental problems arose resulting in delays, so that when Australia's next major air accident occurred at Winton, Queensland, in 1966, recorders had still not been fitted. Questions were asked at the Winton inquiry about the failure to comply with the 1960 judicial requirement. Finally, in 1967, Australia became the first country to make both flight data and cockpit voice recording mandatory.

Today, voice-plus-data recording is now mandatory for all major civil aircraft throughout the world and has proved to be of inestimable value in finding the causes of a many aircraft accidents, just as Dr. Warren had predicted. However, he gained no financial advantage from his invention).

By MILT KRUGMAN Bucks County Courier Times   Upper Southampton's Ralph Tinari Sr. was credited with building the first prototype of the aircraft "black box." The indestructible box located in the cockpit is the voice recorder that records the final moments of an in-flight accident. Many times it provides the only explanation of the crash. He worked at the former Johnsville Naval Air Development Center, formerly called Brewster Aircraft, on Street Road in Warminster for 35 years, retiring at 76. He was a model maker, building prototype equipment for numerous military projects. He also spent many years at RCA in Moorestown, working on military satellites. Mr. Tinari died on Jan. 16 at home. He was 90. Born in Girardville, Pa., he lived in Upper Southampton since 1959. Before that he was a resident of Huntingdon Valley. As a young man, Mr. Tinari worked with his father on the stonework at the Bryn Athyn Cathedral. During World War II he was active in civil defense and built Corsair airplanes for the war effort, working for Brewster. "My father had a great love of aircraft," said Ronald Tinari of Buckingham. "He also worked on airplanes that were used for photographic surveillance from high altitudes. My dad worked on many top-secret projects while working at Johnsville. Since he was not allowed to talk about them, we may never know what they were or how important those projects are to all of us." As a young man living in Huntingdon Valley, he had his first flight at the Pitcairn Airfield, which was right over the hill from where he lived. "He would go up there and hang out at the field with all of the pilots, and one of Pitcairn's test pilots, Jim Ray, gave him his first flight." Ray was the pilot who landed the autogyro on the lawn of the White House on April 22, 1931. "The autogyro was a half-helicopter, half-airplane that [Harold] Pitcairn was promoting as a mail carrier," he said. "Dad was an original charter member and exclusive treasurer of the Warrington Flying Club, the world's longest running private pilots flying club," his son said. "He was the only treasurer for almost all of the existence of the club." Tinari said his father was a quiet man who loved what he did and was proud that he met the astronauts training at Johnsville in the centrifuge. He is survived by his wife of 68 years, Jean; three sons; a daughter; three brothers, one of whom owns Tinari Contractors Inc., in Northampton; a sister; eight grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. Milt Krugman can be reached at 215-322-9702 or mkrugman@phillyBurbs.com. January 22, 2005 8:01 AM from this link