Short Stuff: Traffic Signals

this stuff. There you go, stuff it up, stuffer. So did you think the first one was in Cleveland in August of nineteen fourteen? Correct? Right, And that still gets credit as such even though there are other traffic lights, And as we'll see with a lot of this stuff we talked about, there are a lot of like little improvements, whether they're automated, where they lit up and stuff like that.

So I think that's why there's a lot of competing claims. Yeah, and it was one of those things where just a lot of people contributed to what we know and love as traffic lights today. I shouldn't say love what we know and loathe in some cases as traffic lights today, because I'm sure I said as much in the Roundabouts episode. There's maybe nothing worse than sitting at a traffic light.

A red light when there is nobody coming from either other direction is one of the worst things that can happen to you that doesn't involve physical pain or grief. That is true. Uh. We want to shout out History dot Com, Rachel Ross from Life Science, and Larry Clark, not the filmmaker, but Larry Clark who wrote something for Washington State Magazine. Uh. And the book Highways to Heaven colin the Auto Biography of America. And in that book there's yeah a t o. There's a few other first

listed in that book which are kind of interesting. Um, left hand driving became the standard in nineteen o eight in America. That center dividing lines first started getting painted in nineteen eleven in Michigan, and then the first no left turn sign in nineteen sixteen in Buffalo, New York. Yeah, and shout out to Christopher Finch, the author of that book. That's right. But what about Britain They had an idea about this long before nineteen Yeah, This to me is like, okay, well,

there we go. We have the first traffic signal in existence, and it happened to be in London, in Westminster, UM and it was based on a already um used design that people used for for railroads to say hey you can pass or no, don't pass. It was pretty much what you were trying to get across. And a guy who worked on the railroad, John peak Night, said, you know what, we've got a lot of congestion with buggies and carriages and maniacs and um all sorts of people

just running around. We need some sort of traffic signal for roads now too. Let's adapt that railroad thing into a traffic light. And he did. And again the first traffic light was in London and I believe eighteen sixty eight, that's right. And it was a sim of war system, which meant it had little arms that raise up and down,

which is kind of fun. It was actually a mechanical and use gas lamps to light up the sign at night and there would be a cop there or whatever you bobby UM station next to it to operate the signal. And this was in December of eighteen sixty eight and it was actually working well, and they thought this is gonna be a huge success. And then about a month later, the one of those gas lights exploded in one of those bobby's faces and they said, we're not going to

do this. And it was about forty years until things started happening again as far as traffic lights go. That must have been a really bad explosion on that poor bobby because for for for forty years, like the English were like, no, you don't want to get near a traffic thing. Don't forget. That was a terrible idea. Now I can't tell you how many people were run down or how many um buggies got hit by cars in the introim, but that's how bad that explosion was that

they abandoned it entirely. And it wasn't even the Brits that picked it up again. It was the Americans who said, we need something here, let's try let's pick up where the Brits left off. And it's here that most people say that the first traffic signal was invented, even though again it was first invented in London, but the Americans tend to get the credit for it. But even among Americans, it's it's spread out over a ton of different inventors. Yeah.

And you know the thing about that British one, it wasn't even a traffic light problem. It was a gas lamp problem exactly. They blamed the messenger brother. Um. All right, well we'll do a little bit more before we go

into a break. Yes, in America, there were a lot of people filing patents, like tons of patents being flung around in the early nineteen hundreds about this, you know, sort of very simple idea of a traffic light, uh one of them, And this I think doesn't qualify because technically it's not a light, it is just a sign. In nineteen ten, Earnest Serene or Serene UH introduced the automatic traffic signal in Chicago and it had again no lights, which is why I don't call it a traffic light.

But it had the arms arranging across, rotating on an axis like a weather van. Yeah. I would say stop and proceed and it would just kind of turn on its axis and face the right way, ideally to get people where they needed to go. Yeah. I think there was probably a cop, not a bobby, a cop below operating it. So you had basically a traffic cop who had to be stationed there working it. But it was

like kind of like the groundwork for the whole thing. Right, The idea that you were telling one intersection or one um direction to not move while you're telling another opposite direction to move. That's the basis of a traffic signal. I agree, And maybe we should take a break, okay, and maybe talk about another other couple of people who

didn't get their due credit fair enough. So, Chuck, there's a guy named Lester Wire who, like you were saying, doesn't really give his due credit outside of um, the Mormon held areas of Utah. Yeah, I guess you could say that. This is a nineteen twelve in Salt Lake City and he made something that kind of look like a birdhouse. It was a wooden box had this actually had red and green lights on a pole and it was attached to the trolley wires overhead to give it power.

Very smart. I don't know why Lester Wire doesn't get the credit. Then that was full two years before Cleveland. Yeah, he um and it it. It's basically a birdhouse. It didn't even look a bit like it. It's a bird house. But um, I don't know why he doesn't get credit. Either, but he doesn't um. A couple of years after that, that's where the Cleveland one came in. That everybody says

that's the first traffic signal. I still don't understand why it was considered the first traffic signal if lesser Wire

already had his Insalt Lake City two years four. But James Hogue is the one who gets the credit for that, that one that was installed in nineteen fourteen at the corner of Euclid and I think East A hundred and fifth in Cleveland, and James Hoge went whole Hogue um by having four traffic signals that thank you, that faced every direction of traffic so that you could, um, you could coordinate them, and I think it was was set up so that it was impossible to give conflicting signals,

so that you couldn't tell two opposite directions to go at the same time. Like it just couldn't happen. That's right. Uh, we should shout out William Giglieri of San Francisco, But because I think the distinction here was that his light was the first automatic light, that's a big one that used red and green lights, and this was a nineteen seventeen, I think, and I'm trying to go chronologically here. In nineteen twenty, William Pott's a cop in Detroit, not a bobby.

He developed some automatic traffic light systems, and I think this was the first one to use the caution light use all three colors. That was a huge innovation because up to that point it was as red or green. So you had people going, going, going, going, and then other people stopping and then it still maybe going and you could have an accident. Adding like that little caution light, that's a that was a lifesaver, literally a big deal. And we have to shout out in Garrett Morrigan, quite

the inventor. Garrett was the actual first African American to own a car at all in Cleveland. Like I said, quite the inventor. Quite the inventor invented the gas mask as well. Incidentally, and Arett invented it was a T shaped pole with it did have three positions on it had stop and go, but this one was the first one, I believe, to have everyone stop for a moment of time at least so it would give other people a chance to get out of the intersection, which was a

really big safety feature. Yeah, and UM Garrett Morgan is is very often credited as the father of the traffic signal because he sold his patent to GE for forty grand, which is about six dred and something thousand today. UM and GE mass produced these things. It was like really cheap and easy to produce, and so they started popping up everywhere, which is I think why he he often gets the credit, even though his came almost ten years after that Cleveland one. UM. But it's tough if you

look at the patent designs, it's tough to understand. You really have to like sit and think about it. But there were it was like a cross UM and it said stop on one side and go on the other, but it would fold up so that it said stop everywhere no matter what direction you were in like you were saying, so there was a moment in between each

change where all all four directions were stopping. Yeah, and we still have that overlap today on I feel like I sometimes see lights in rural areas where they don't have that overlap, or maybe they've all been changed over. But I do remember a time that where they where they didn't have that overlap. Yeah, I remember that too. It wasn't even that long ago, no, huh. It was kind of like just a free for all basically just go as fast, like as soon as the other one

turned round. The other one was green. So it's funny that Garrett Morgan thought of this in the nineteen twenties and it went away for a while. I guess we also have to shout out John Allen, who I was not only an inventor, but a bit of an entrepreneur

if you ask me. Yes. So, this was the first street level pedestrian traffic signal, right right, And I think they had them before that in the nineteen thirties, but they were integrated into the traffic light themselves, right yeah, And um, they right off the bat basically came up with the walker don't walk signal as we understand it today, like that that up right palm that you're saying stop with that was like the first one and it's still in use. So that's a rare example of somebody figuring

out the best design initially, you know. Yeah, that's right. But John Allen his is kind of funny. He had the words stop and go, but he pretty smart. I mean, it didn't catch on, thankfully, but he got on this advertising thing really early and thought, hey, why don't we do this, Why don't we have signals that are sponsored and it could say like go to you know, quickie marked, basically if they want to pay the money for that Quickie mark I do. Could you imagine if that's what

it had turned into. I can, and I'm actually surprised that it's not that way now. But yeah, it would have been cute to look at now in retrospect. But I'm I'm with you. I'm glad it didn't catch on. Oh boy, that reminds me of one of my most hated things is the advent of the gas pump advertisements. Oh and they're so loud too. I can't turn those off quick enough. No, I'm with you, they're pretty bad.

Chuck agreed to the worst. Well, since we both think that gas pump advertisements are as bad as it gets, that means, of course that short stuff is apt. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.