Invention Geek – Anti-lock Brakes on Airplanes?

Question from Greg:

What aircraft and what year where abs brakes installed onto?

Spending a great deal of time looking into this subject, this is what was found; without a certain answer. Modern anti-lock brakes have undergone numerous amounts of alterations from their original form with many individuals taking credit for each milestone abs brakes have reached.

The root development of anti-lock brakes (abs) or anti-skid brakes, as they are more commonly called on aircraft, dates back to 1929. French aircraft pioneer, Gabriel Voisin, originally designed the anti-lock brakes for airplanes. Although it has been stated that the brakes were first intended for aircraft, additional data to backup this claim is very limited. Whether he tested the invention on one of his own famous biplane designs is questionable. We know that after WWI (1918), Voisin stopped developing planes and went into the automobile industry. According to these dates, that means he would have invented abs brakes after the point in which he switch to car production. Perhaps, the invention was a half-baked idea during his flight days (intended for aircrafts) but did not fully developed till his automotive days, in which his anti-lock brake system was installed on cars.

The first noted US produced plane equipped with an Hydro-Aire Mark I anti-skid system was military aircraft Boeing B-47 bomber in 1947. After WWII, landing speeds increased tremendously because of new jet aircraft. Conventional brakes were not as effective and the anti-skid brakes prevented plane wheels from locking on low traction surfaces.