What is the origin of the term "Black Box" in aviation.?

i've been taught more or less the same thing Techwing cites.

that a >black box< was a generic engineering term for an essentially electronic device with input and output whose function can be swept under the rug with "pure magic" on it. joking.

the box function is not necessary to explain down to a every single transistor /circuit bug and it's enough to say that inputs of gyrovertical and pitotstatic system sensors fed into the blackbox create autopilot commands at the output.

in my opinion,

"black box" used for fdr/cvr is about as amateur layman term as witnesses ALWAYS stating that the aircraft did some strange maneuvers and ROLLS prior the crash.

you simply don't assume that the pilot has been doing low level aerobatics based on that.

The only people who use the term black box when referring to the CVR or DFDR are not aviation professionals.

I can only guess that this practice of calling the items removed at a crash site "black boxes", is from a time in the past, when very expensive gyro boxes were removed from aircraft to prevent their theft.

John S Aircraft Mechanic

Black box can be all kinds of stuff in any scientific field.

In aviation, it is probably called like that because one of the first (photographic, latent-image) recorders were sealed in a light-proof (read: black) boxes, in order to preserve the data. Such recorders were used not only in aviation but also ground traffic.

Black box is a generic term for anything that provides documented output and accepts documented input but the internal functioning of which is undocumented or unknown. It is also used at times to designate a device the internal functioning of which is simply unimportant or unnecessary to understand. It's not strictly an aviation term.

The term has been borrowed to refer to flight data recorders of various types, even though these devices are typically actually painted a bright orange or other highly visible color in order to make them easier to spot in wreckage.

Don't know why this resurrected after two years but the real answer is the name came about when virtually all com/nav components were in black boxes. initially you mounted them in the frame, lock wired the wing nuts then attached your cannon plugs. Later there were integral connections in the mounts.

why wud black people want to be known as that??? i find quite disrespectful. we're de same as everyone, wiv jus different colour skin. there shudn't be a separate name for us, black people.