Black box - Definition and Overview

The term black box has a number of meanings:

• Black box is technical jargon for a device or system or object when it is viewed primarily in terms of its input and output characteristics. Almost anything might occasionally be referred to as a black box, e.g., a transistor, the Internet. Some other common uses are:
  • In electronics, a sealed piece of replaceable equipment—see line-replaceable unit.
  • In computer programming and software engineering, black box testing is used to check that the output of a program is as expected given certain inputs. The term black box is used because the actual program being executed is not examined.
  • A limiting case in mathematical modelling.
  • For applications in philosophy and psychology, see black box theory and behaviorism.

The opposite of this sort of black box has been called white box, glass box, or clear box.

• In aircraft, the flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders, that record aircraft and pilot behavior in order to analyze accidents are called black boxes by the news media; though they are now bright orange in colour, they were black when originally introduced, and the name stuck.
• Black Box is a board and computer game.
• Black Box was a music group popular in the early 1990s
• Black Box Recorder was a music group, popular in the early 2000s.
• In literature, Black Box is a book by Israeli writer Amos Oz.
• In phone phreaking, the black box was a device built by phone phreaks during the 1960s and 1970s to defeat toll charges.
• A black box theater is a simple, somewhat unadorned performance space, usually a large square room with black walls and a flat floor.
• Blackbox is a window manager that works on X Window System platforms.