In 1934, when he was nine years old, David Warren's father died in an air crash in his native Australia. In 1953 when a de Havilland Comet crashed he conceived the idea of a cockpit voice recorder to help accident investigators understand what contributed to the disaster, and three years later he had built a prototype. But it took many more crashes before the authorities recognised how important flight recorders could be and required that they be installed in commercial airliners.
From 1952 to 1983 Warren was the principal research scientist at the Australian Defence Science and Technology Organisation Aeronautical Research Laboratories in Melbourne, and in 2002 he was awarded the Order of Australia. He died yesterday aged 85.
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Source: Flight Daily News
