I was reading another thread on here just now about strobe lights on Airbus aircraft and how the DC-10 entered service in the early 1970's with the wingtip strobes. Which leads to my question: when were strobe lights (notably the wingtip strobes) first used on aircraft?
I know DC-10's both have wingtip & anti-collision strobe lights, was this the first aircraft to regularly use this now-common form of lighting? I guess I could include the L-1011 in that aircraft as it too had strobes, but only on the wings up until the L-1011-500 (the anti-collision lights were rotating beacons). I've seen 747 classics both with & without strobe lights, with the -100's & earlier -200's having rotating beacons as anti-collision lights.
Also I can recall many 727's (at least some earlier models) & DC-9's (maybe early 731's/732's as well) that had sort of a premature version of wingtip strobe lights - they had lights on the wingtips that oscillated back & forth similar to the anti-collision beacons.
I do know that by the early-mid 1980's (I believe 1985, to be specific), strobe lights were required on all new commercial aircraft.