το μαύρο κουτί που είναι πορτοκαλί

[nickel]

Μια και είναι μέρος της τραγικής επικαιρότητας των τελευταίων εβδομάδων, βάζω την αρχή για να ξεμπερδέψουμε αυτά τα πράγματα.

Το αποκαλούμενο μαύρο κουτί (black box) είναι πορτοκαλί. Η γενική επίσημη ονομασία είναι Flight Recorder, αλλά στην πραγματικότητα είναι δύο μηχανήματα: Flight Data Recorder (FDR), που είναι ο Καταγραφέας Δεδομένων Πτήσης, και Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR), που είναι ο Καταγραφέας Συνομιλιών Πιλοτηρίου. Να υποθέσω ότι, όταν ένα κουτί λέει απλώς Flight Recorder, τότε πρόκειται για FDR;

Δεν έχουν λύσει το μυστήριο για την ακριβή προέλευση του όρου black box. Η Wikipedia φιλοξενεί δύο εκδοχές και διάφορες παραλλαγές τους βρήκα σε γκουγκλοβιβλία. Περιμένω περισσότερες πληροφορίες από εσάς.

Red Egg
The black box term originated when after a meeting about the first commercial flight recorder named the "Red Egg" for its color and shape, someone commented: "This is a wonderful black box". Black box is a more humorous than accurate term and is almost never used within the flight safety industry or aviation.[citation needed] The recorders are generally not black in color, but usually bright orange (as pictured) as they are intended to be spotted and recovered after incidents, nor (contrary to an alternative usage of the term 'black box') are their operations unknown.

Box-of-tricks
An alternative origin of the word is from World War II RAF terminology. During the period 1940-1945 new electronic innovations, such as Oboe, GEE and H2S, were added to aircraft (specifically bombers) on a regular basis. The prototypes were roughly covered in hand-made metal boxes, painted black to prevent reflections. After a time any piece of "new" electronics was referred to as the "box-of-tricks" or the "black-box". The expression made its way into post-war civil aviation and, ultimately, general usage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_box_(transportation)#Origin

 

[SBE]

Στα δικά μου χωράφια της ηλεκτρολογίας, black box λέγεται (χιουμοριστικά) οτιδήποτε δεν ξέρουμε ή δεν μας ενδιαφέρει τι έχει μέσα, μας ενδιαφέρει μόνο η λειτουργία του στο κύκλωμα.

 

[nickel]

Ωραία. Να και (από το OED) οι άλλες παρόμοιες χρήσεις που προηγήθηκαν και που φαίνεται να οδήγησαν στο παράδοξο αυτό: ένα εμφανέστατα πορτοκαλί κουτί να μην μπορεί να χάσει την παραπλανητική ονομασία του.

• 1945 Partridge Dict. R.A.F. Slang 16 *Black box or gen box, instrument that enables bomb-aimer to see through clouds or in the dark.
• 1947 Jrnl. R. Aeronaut. Soc. LI. 432/1 These British night fighters were crammed with ‘black boxes’ all of which had to be operated by the pilot or his navigator.
• 1948 A. P. Rowe One Story of Radar i. 6 For many years the ‘death ray’ had been a hardy annual among optimistic inventors. The usual claim was that by means of a ray emanating from a secret device (known to us in the Air Ministry as a Black Box) the inventor had killed rabbits at short distances.
• 1953 Jrnl. Brit. Interplan. Soc. XII. 223 As far as the layman is concerned, a phantastron is a ‘black box’ which will divide the frequency of its output pulses by any integral number between 2 and 20.
• 1956 W. R. Ashby Introd. Cybernetics vi. 86 Black Box theory is […] even wider in application than these professional studies. Ibid., In our daily lives we are confronted at every turn with systems whose internal mechanisms are not fully open to inspection, and which must be treated by the methods appropriate to the Black Box.
• 1962 Daily Tel. 14 Nov. 1/3 Russia advocated the use of unmanned seismic detection stations, known as ‘black boxes’ to Western scientists, as a means of avoiding inspection.
• 1964 Ibid. 3 July 25/5 The flight recorder is an indestructible ‘black box’ which automatically records the key functions in the aircraft. […] The ‘black box’ can tell what went wrong in a crash.
• 1964 Economist 25 July 356/1 Silent ‘black boxes’—electronic computers which measure the varying demand for power of the Savannah.

 

[drsiebenmal]

Black box (Wikipedia):

In science and engineering, a black box is a device, system or object which can be viewed in terms of its input, output and transfer characteristics without any knowledge of its internal workings. Its implementation is "opaque" (black). Almost anything might be referred to as a black box: a transistor, an algorithm, or the human brain.

The opposite of a black box is a system where the inner components or logic are available for inspection, which is sometimes known as a clear box, a glass box, or a white box. [...]

Other uses of the term

In aviation, a "black box" (they are actually bright orange, to facilitate their being found after a crash) is an audio or data recording device in an airplane or helicopter. The cockpit voice recorder records the conversation of the pilots and the flight data recorder logs information about controls and sensors, so that in the event of an accident investigators can use the recordings to assist in the investigation. The two aviation recorders currently combined in a single assembly referred to by the media as a "black box" are the Flight Data Recorder and a Cockpit Sound Recorder also identified as a Cockpit Voice Recorder.

 

[SBE]

Η ερμηνεία είναι απλή: το μαύρο κουτί είναι τοποθετημένο σε πορτοκαλί θήκη, για να είναι ορατό.