Recording and Storage

The Wright Brothers pioneered the use of a device to record propeller rotations, according to documents provided by L-3 Communications. However, the widespread use of aviation recorders didn't begin until the post-World War II era. Since then, the recording medium of black boxes has evolved in order to record much more information about an aircraft's operation.

Although many of the black boxes in use today use magnetic tape, which was first introduced in the 1960s, airlines are moving to solid-state memory boards, which came along in the 1990s. Magnetic tape works like any tape recorder. The Mylar tape is pulled across an electromagnetic head, which leaves a bit of data on the tape.

Photo courtesy National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) The magnetic tape inside the flight data recorder from EgyptAir Flight 990, which crashed on October 31, 1999

Black-box manufacturers are no longer making magnetic tape recorders as airlines begin a full transition to solid-state technology. Let's take a look at solid-state technology.