Was reading an old manual for a 737-200 and found out the original flight data recorder used a 1/4 inch steel wire that could survive a crash at 3,400 Gs.

I mean, that's a wild amount of force for something from the 60s, and it makes you think about how much the basic idea of 'keep the data safe' hasn't really changed, just the tech, right?

3 comments

3 Comments

paige8702mo ago

Honestly, that number feels like marketing. What crash even hits 3400 Gs? The plane would be powder. They probably tested it by shooting it out of a cannon into a wall. Today's solid state drives survive real world impacts and hold way more data. The old wire was cool, but it's just a tough party trick.

tarab542mo ago

Ever wonder how they actually got that number? I used to think the same thing, total marketing fluff. Then I saw the test footage from back then. They literally put it in a rocket sled, slammed it into a concrete block, and fished the wire memory out of the wreckage to read it. The plane would be dust, but that little coil of wire? Still had the data. That's not a party trick, that's just wild engineering.

faithjones16d ago

Nah I gotta disagree a little. It's not just a party trick when the whole point of that test was to prove the tech could survive stuff that would literally turn a cockpit into scrap. I've read the reports from the Air Force tests in the 60s where they dropped modules from planes and shot them with rifles. The wire memory held up because it's just magnetized pulses on a wire, no moving parts, no chips to crack. Today's SSDs are tough but they still have solder joints and flash cells that can fracture. That old wire core memory is basically indestructible because it's just metal and magnetism. It's not about being better, it's about being built for a completely different kind of hell.