科技酷品

A Brief History of Black Boxes

黑匣子簡(jiǎn)史

You never see them but they're with you every time you fly. They record where you're going, how fast you're traveling, and whether everything on your airplane is functioning normally. Their ability to withstand almost any disaster makes them seem like something out of a comic book. Known as the mysterious 'black box', these flight data recorders are not actually black, but orange - and when a plane falls from the sky, they're sometimes the only thing that can help authorities discover exactly what happened and why.

雖然你和它們未曾謀面,但是你每次乘飛機(jī)時(shí)總與之同行。它們記錄你去何方,飛行速度是多少,以及飛機(jī)上的一切是否正常運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)。它們幾乎能從所有災(zāi)難中幸存下來,像是漫畫書中的東西。這些飛行數(shù)據(jù)記錄設(shè)備就是神秘的“黑匣子”,其實(shí)它們并不是黑色的,而是橙色的。當(dāng)飛機(jī)從空中墜落時(shí),它們是唯一能幫助官方找出發(fā)生了什么事以及事故原因的東西。

The June 1 Air France wreck in Brazil inspired the largest marine search for a black box in aviation history (which so far has turned up nothing), and now another sea crash has experts scanning the Indian Ocean for the flight recorders to the Yemenia Airbus A310 jet that went down near the Comoros islands in the early morning hours of Jun. 30.

6月1日,法國(guó)航空公司一家客機(jī)在巴西附近海域失事,隨后一場(chǎng)航空史上規(guī)模最大的黑匣子海洋搜尋行動(dòng)就此展開,截至目前還一無所獲。6月30日上午早些時(shí)候又發(fā)生了一起客機(jī)墜海事故——也門航空一架空客A310飛機(jī)在科摩羅島海域墜落,專家正在印度洋搜尋這架客機(jī)的黑匣子。

In 1953, Australian scientist David Warren was investigating the crash of a De Havilland Comet in India. Warren couldn't determine the cause of the accident - in which the jet went down six minutes after takeoff, killing all 43 people on board - because there wasn't any useful information preserved in the crash. Over the next year he developed a prototype for a flight memory recorder that would track basic information like altitude and direction. Encased in asbestos and metal, the data and sound recorder was actually called a 'red egg' because of its color and shape. It was later nicknamed the 'black box', after the general term for a seemingly magical gadget that no one knows how to work.

1953年,澳大利亞科學(xué)家大衛(wèi)?沃倫調(diào)查一架在印度墜毀的德哈維蘭彗星型噴氣式飛機(jī)。飛機(jī)起飛僅6分鐘后即墜毀,機(jī)上43人全部遇難,由于飛機(jī)殘骸里沒有保存任何有用信息,沃倫無法確定事故起因。之后的幾年間,他發(fā)明了一個(gè)飛行記憶記錄設(shè)備的原型,能追蹤飛行高度和方向等基本信息。這個(gè)數(shù)據(jù)與聲音的記錄裝置外邊裹著石棉和金屬,鑒于顏色和形狀,它被稱為“紅蛋”。之后人們戲稱之為“黑匣子”,是對(duì)這個(gè)看上去不可思議的新玩意的統(tǒng)稱,因?yàn)闊o人知道其工作原理。

Airlines began using black boxes in the 1950s but the instrument didn't become a mandatory feature until 1960, when all commercial planes were required to carry them by the Federal Aviation Agency. Initial versions contained literal tape recorders and were about the size and shape of a basketball. After a number of black boxes were destroyed in crashes (the tapes melted in the fire), they were moved in 1965 from their original position in the landing wells to the rear of the plane - the area most likely to survive an impact. That same year, they were also required to be painted orange or yellow to aid visibility.

航空公司于20世紀(jì)50年代就開始使用黑匣子,但直至1960年美國(guó)聯(lián)邦航空管理局要求所有商業(yè)飛機(jī)必須安裝黑匣子后,它才成為飛機(jī)上的必備裝置。早期的黑匣子帶有機(jī)械式磁帶錄音機(jī),大小和形狀恰如一個(gè)籃球。黑匣子原本位于飛機(jī)的起落架艙,由于在多次事故中被毀(磁帶在火中熔化),1965年它被移至機(jī)尾,因?yàn)檫@個(gè)位置受的影響最小。從此,為便于識(shí)別,它們的顏色也變成了橙色或黃色。

These days, airplanes actually have two black boxes, the voice recorder and the flight data recorder. They can withstand temperatures up to 2,000 °F and impact forces up to 100 Gs. (A 'G' is equal to the force of the Earth's gravity) They track pilots' conversations, engine noises, Air Traffic Control commands, fuel levels, landing gear extension and retraction, and dozens of other clicks and pops that might offer insights into a plane's final moments. The boxes are made out of quarter-inch thick panels of stainless steel. And in case you're wondering, an entire airplane can't be made out of the same material or it would be too heavy to fly.

如今,飛機(jī)上有兩個(gè)黑匣子——錄音機(jī)和飛行信息記錄儀。它們能承受2000華氏度的高溫和100G的沖擊力(1G為地球引力)。它們能追蹤儲(chǔ)存駕駛員的談話、發(fā)動(dòng)機(jī)的聲音、空中交通控制命令、油量、起落架的收放,以及可以反映飛機(jī)(失事)前最后關(guān)頭的各種雜音。黑匣子由厚度為0.25英寸的不銹鋼板制成。你可能會(huì)感到納悶(為什么不干脆用不銹鋼板來造飛機(jī)),整架飛機(jī)可不是同樣的材料,否則就會(huì)重得無法起飛。

Since the 1960s, black boxes have recorded some astonishing things. In a 1990 incident, a pilot was sucked halfway out of a broken windshield on a British Airways flight; a flight attendant held onto his legs as the co-pilot landed the plane (the pilot survived). In 1994, an Aeroflot pilot allowed his 12-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son to play with the plane's controls during a Moscow-to-Hong Kong flight. 'Can I turn (the wheel)?' the black box recorded the boy saying. 'Turn it.' The pilot replied. 'Watch the ground as you turn. Let's go left.' Moments later, the plane crashed into the Siberian wilderness and all 75 people on board died.

20世紀(jì)60年代以來,黑匣子記錄了一些驚人事情。在1990年的一場(chǎng)事故中,英國(guó)航空公司一名駕駛員半個(gè)人被卡在破裂的擋風(fēng)玻璃之外,一名空乘人員抓住他的腿,副駕駛員將飛機(jī)降落,駕駛員得以幸免于難。1994年,在俄羅斯航空公司一架從莫斯科飛往香港的航班上,駕駛員讓其12歲的女兒和15歲的兒子玩弄飛機(jī)的操控桿?！拔夷芤苿?dòng)(方向盤)嗎?”黑匣子錄下了男孩的話。“移唄,”飛行員說?！耙苿?dòng)時(shí)要看著地面。向左轉(zhuǎn)。”沒過多久,飛機(jī)在西伯利亞荒原墜毀,機(jī)上75人無一幸免于難。

And of course there was the black box of United Flight 93, which recorded 30 minutes of fearful struggle as passengers overpowered their terrorist hijackers and crashed the plane into a Pennsylvania cornfield on the morning of September 11, 2001. United 93's passenger voice recordings were the only tapes ever to be made available to victims' family members.

當(dāng)然,美國(guó)聯(lián)合航空93次航班上也有黑匣子,里面記錄了2001年9月11日上午乘客同劫機(jī)的恐怖分子長(zhǎng)達(dá)30分鐘的搏斗,乘客最終將恐怖分子制服,使飛機(jī)在賓夕法尼亞州的玉米地墜毀。該航班上乘客的錄音是罹難者家屬唯一掌握的錄音帶。

Both the Air France and Yemenia Airbus flights crashed into the ocean, which makes their black boxes incredibly hard to recover. The devices are built to withstand depths well over the 15,000 feet in which Air France flight 447's boxes probably now find themselves. The boxes send out a homing signal, activated upon impact, that lasts for 30 days. The time is pretty much up for Air France's beacons, but it's a good bet they'll turn up eventually; of the 20 airplanes that have crashed into water over the past 30 years, only one is known to have lost its black box forever. Even the South African Airlines Boeing 747 that went down between Taiwan and Johannesburg in 1987 had its voice and data recorders recovered from an ocean depth of 14,000 feet. And it only took fourteen months.

法國(guó)航空公司和也門航空公司的班機(jī)都是墜入大海,因此要找回黑匣子極其困難。黑匣子能承受15000多英尺的深度,而法航447次客機(jī)的黑匣子可能已經(jīng)在這個(gè)深度。黑匣子在壓力之下能發(fā)出一種可持續(xù)30天的導(dǎo)航信號(hào)。對(duì)于法航來說,30天的時(shí)間早已過去,但是它們很可能會(huì)最終重見天日;30年來,有20架飛機(jī)墜入水中,據(jù)人們所知,只有一架飛機(jī)永遠(yuǎn)失去了黑匣子。1987年,南非航空一架由臺(tái)灣到約翰內(nèi)斯堡的波音747次客機(jī)的黑匣子在海底14000英尺處找到。那也只花了14個(gè)月的時(shí)間。

《時(shí)代周刊》

The Walkman - 30 years old

Walkman30周歲

Attention, the 160 million or so owners of an Apple iPod MP3 player: take out those white earbuds and listen for a second. Before the iPod became ubiquitous - way, way before - there was the Walkman. The portable cassette players, first introduced 30 years ago, sold a cumulative 200 million units, rocked the recording industry and fundamentally changed how people experienced music. Sound familiar?

注意,1億6千萬左右擁有蘋果iPod MP3播放器的朋友:拔出那些白色的耳塞,聽我說幾句。在iPod風(fēng)靡全球之前——很早很早之前——就有Walkman了。這些便攜式盒帶(磁帶)播放機(jī)于30年前首次問世,總共銷售了2億臺(tái),顛覆了錄音業(yè),徹底改變了人們體驗(yàn)音樂的方式。聽起來耳熟么?

The Walkman wasn't a giant leap forward in engineering: magnetic cassette technology had been around since 1963, when the Netherlands-based electronics firm Philips first created it for use by secretaries and journalists. Sony, who by that point had become experts in bringing well-designed, miniaturized electronics to market (they debuted their first transistor radio in 1955), made a series of moderately successful portable cassette recorders. But the introduction of pre-recorded music tapes in the late 1960s opened a whole new market. People still chose to listen to vinyl records over cassettes at home, but the compact size of tapes made them more conducive to car stereos and mobility than vinyl or 8-tracks. On July 1, 1979, Sony Corp. introduced the Sony Walkman TPS-L2, a 14 ounce, blue-and-silver, portable cassette player with chunky buttons, headphones and a leather case. It even had a second earphone jack so that two people could listen in at once. Masaru Ibuka, Sony's co-founder, traveled often for business and would find himself lugging Sony's bulky TC-D5 cassette recorder around to listen to music. He asked Norio Ohga, then Executive Deputy President, to design a playback-only stereo version, optimized for use with headphones. Ibuka brought the result - a compact, high-quality music player - to Chairman Akio Morita and reportedly said, 'Try this. Don't you think a stereo cassette player that you can listen to while walking around is a good idea?'

Walkman在工程技術(shù)上并非是巨大的跨越:磁帶技術(shù)早在1963年左右就已經(jīng)出現(xiàn),當(dāng)時(shí)荷蘭的電子公司飛利浦首先發(fā)明了磁帶,供秘書和記者使用。索尼當(dāng)時(shí)已經(jīng)很擅長(zhǎng)將設(shè)計(jì)精湛而小巧的電子產(chǎn)品推向市場(chǎng)(它們于1955年展出了其首臺(tái)晶體管收音機(jī)),生產(chǎn)了一系列相當(dāng)成功的便攜式盒帶錄音機(jī)。但60年代末期預(yù)先錄制的音樂帶打開了一個(gè)全新的市場(chǎng)。與盒帶相比,人們?cè)诩依锶愿嗖A黑膠唱片,但袖珍的盒帶比黑膠唱片或8音軌磁帶更適合汽車音響,攜帶也更加方便。1979年7月1日,索尼集團(tuán)推出了索尼Walkman TPS-L2,這是一款便攜式盒帶播放機(jī),重14盎司,外部為藍(lán)色與銀色,按鍵碩大,還配有耳機(jī)和皮套。它竟有兩個(gè)耳機(jī)插口,因此可以兩個(gè)人同時(shí)聽。索尼創(chuàng)辦人之一井深大經(jīng)常出差,為了聽音樂,不得不帶著笨重的索尼TC-D5盒帶錄音機(jī)。他要求時(shí)任索尼執(zhí)行副總裁大賀典雄設(shè)計(jì)一款立體聲單放機(jī),而且用耳機(jī)聽時(shí)效果最好。井深大將結(jié)果——一個(gè)小巧而高品質(zhì)的音樂播放機(jī)——帶給董事長(zhǎng)盛田昭夫,據(jù)稱他說:“試試這個(gè)。你不覺得發(fā)明一臺(tái)可以邊走邊聽的立體聲盒帶播放機(jī)是個(gè)好點(diǎn)子么?”

All the device needed now was a name. Originally the Walkman was introduced in the U.S. as the 'Sound-About' and in the UK as the 'Stowaway', but coming up with new, uncopyrighted names in every country it was marketed in proved costly; Sony eventually decided on 'Walkman' as a play on the Sony Pressman, a mono cassette recorder the first Walkman prototype was based on. First released in Japan, it was a massive hit: while Sony predicted it would only sell about 5,000 units a month, the Walkman sold upwards of 50,000 in the first two months. Sony wasn't the first company to introduce portable audio: the first-ever portable transistor radio, the index card-sized Regency TR-1, debuted in 1954. But the Walkman's unprecedented combination of portability (it ran on two AA batteries) and privacy (it featured a headphone jack but no external speaker) made it the ideal product for thousands of consumers looking for a compact portable stereo that they could take with them anywhere. The TPS-L2 was introduced in the U.S. in June 1980.

這臺(tái)設(shè)備現(xiàn)在唯一缺少的就是一個(gè)名字了。Walkman起初在美國(guó)被稱為“Sound-About”,在英國(guó)被成為“Stowaway”,但在它銷售的每個(gè)國(guó)家都取一個(gè)沒有版權(quán)的新名字,花費(fèi)太大;索尼最終決定取名為“Walkman”,是對(duì)索尼單聲道磁帶錄音機(jī)Pressman的變更,后者即是Walkman的原型。Walkman在日本一問世就大受歡迎:雖然索尼公司預(yù)計(jì)一個(gè)月只會(huì)售出約5000臺(tái),但前兩個(gè)月就銷售了5萬臺(tái)。索尼并非第一個(gè)推出便攜式音頻設(shè)備的公司:世界上第一臺(tái)便攜式晶體管收音機(jī)Regency TR-1早在1954年就已經(jīng)問世,大小只相當(dāng)于一張索引卡。但Walkman史無前例地將便攜性(它使用兩節(jié)AA電池)和私密性(它有兩個(gè)耳機(jī)插口,但沒有揚(yáng)聲器)結(jié)合起來,對(duì)于成千上萬希望有一款可隨處攜帶的袖珍立體聲播放機(jī)的消費(fèi)者來說,它就是理想的產(chǎn)品。TPS-L2于1980年6月進(jìn)入美國(guó)市場(chǎng)。

The 1980s could well have been the Walkman decade. The popularity of Sony's device - and those by brands like Aiwa, Panasonic and Toshiba who followed in Sony's lead - helped the cassette tape outsell vinyl records for the first time in 1983. By 1986 the word 'Walkman' had entered the Oxford English Dictionary. Its launch coincided with the birth of the aerobics craze, and millions used the Walkman to make their workouts more entertaining. Between 1987 and 1997 - the height of the Walkman's popularity - the number of people who said they walked for exercise increased by 30%.

20世紀(jì)80年代可謂是Walkman的年代。由于索尼這款產(chǎn)品的成功,愛華、松下和東芝紛紛效仿,1983年盒式錄音帶的銷量首次超過黑膠唱片。1986年,“Walkman”一詞被牛津英語(yǔ)詞典收錄。Walkman的發(fā)布剛好與有氧運(yùn)動(dòng)熱的興起同步,數(shù)百萬人使用Walkman,以增加鍛煉身體的樂趣。在Walkman最流行的1987-1997年,走路鍛煉身體的人增加了30%。

Sony continued to roll out variations on its theme, adding such innovations as AM/FM receivers, bass boost and auto-reverse on later models. Sony even made a solar-powered Walkman, water-resistant Sport Walkmans and even devices with two cassette drives. But cassettes, like any technology, weren't going to last forever. With the introduction of compact discs in 1982 the format began to go the way of the 8-track itself.

索尼繼續(xù)推出Walkman的“衍生品”,在以后的版本上增加了AM/FM收音機(jī)、低音增強(qiáng)和自動(dòng)翻帶等創(chuàng)新功能。索尼甚至還生產(chǎn)了一款太陽(yáng)能供電的Walkman、運(yùn)動(dòng)型防水Walkman,還有帶兩個(gè)卡帶驅(qū)動(dòng)器的播放機(jī)。然而跟其他任何一種技術(shù)一樣,盒式錄音帶不會(huì)長(zhǎng)久。1982年激光唱片問世之后,盒式錄音帶就開始走8音軌磁帶的老路。

Sony, however, was fairly quick to jump to new formats: it introduced the D-50 portable CD player a year after the first compact discs were sold, and later rolled out MiniDisc and MP3 players under the Walkman brand. (Its insistence for several years on sticking to a proprietary digital music format, ATRAC, left it far behind Apple's iPod in terms of market share.) Since its launch, Sony has released more than 300 different models across all formats; it currently makes Walkman-branded MP3 players, phones and even portable DVD players. Its newest device, the Walkman NWZ-X1000, features a 3-inch OLED screen, 32 gigabytes of memory and WiFi connectivity. But the company still makes play-only cassette Walkmen, too - its latest model released in the U.S. was the WM-FX290 in 2002.

然而,索尼很快轉(zhuǎn)向新的音樂格式:它在第一張激光唱片賣出一年后就推出了D-50便攜式激光唱片機(jī),之后又推出了MD和MP3播放機(jī),名字依然是Walkman。它數(shù)年間堅(jiān)持使用其專有的ATRAC數(shù)字音樂格式,致使市場(chǎng)份額遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)落在了蘋果iPod之后。索尼推出了300多種不同的產(chǎn)品,覆蓋所有的音樂格式;它現(xiàn)在生產(chǎn)Walkman品牌的MP3播放器、耳機(jī),甚至便攜式DVD播放器。它最新的產(chǎn)品是Walkman NWZ-X1000,有著3英寸的OLED顯示屏、32G內(nèi)存,還可以無線上網(wǎng)。但該公司同時(shí)仍在生產(chǎn)Walkman盒帶單放機(jī),在美國(guó)推出的最新版本是2002年的WM-FX290。

《時(shí)代周刊》