Australia invented the Black Box voice and instrument recorder

Constructed to survive a crash and document the last moments of a flight, The Black Box voice and instrument recorder's first prototype was produced in 1958.

David Warren joined a team investigating Comet jet airliner crashes at the Aeronautical Research Laboratories in Melbourne in 1953. As a result the devise was conceived to record aircraft speed, altitude, pitch and roll, as well as the flight crew's dialogue for up to four hours on an assortment of stainless steel wire immune to fire damage.

The innovation was capitalised on by a British company and has since been installed in nearly every large aircraft in the world.