A black box is the recorder kept to explain a crash afterwards. Recover the black box, the black box data, read the black box.
It is not black but bright orange, so it can be found in wreckage, and there are two, one for flight data and one for the voices in the cockpit. The other sense is anything whose workings cannot be seen.
1nounblack boxThe recorder kept to explain a crash afterwards.
“Investigators are studying the black box to find out why the plane crashed into the sea.”
black box is a recorder.
In use since about 1945, both for event recorders and for any device whose workings are hidden.
* Since c. 1945 in both main senses (that is, event recorders and objects with unknown innards), which are historically related to each other; for details, see black box § History and flight recorder § Terminology.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Airport & Flying