November 20, 2021 • 9 mins
On this day in 1923, prolific inventor and entrepreneur Garrett Morgan received the patent for a traffic light signal of his own design.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that believes there's no time like the present
to learn about the past. I'm Gay Bluesier and in
(00:23):
this episode, we're looking at the work of Garrett Morgan,
the self proclaimed Black Edison who revolutionized the flow of
traffic by adding a pause between stop and go. The
day was November Prolific inventor and entrepreneur Garrett Morgan received
(00:51):
the patent for a traffic light signal of his own design.
Traffic signals had been around in some form since at
least the eight teen sixties, but Morgan's was the first
to feature a middle position between stop and go. According
to the patent, this new caution signal was meant to
give vehicles in the middle of an intersection enough time
(01:15):
to exit before other waiting drivers were given the signal
to proceed, so, in other words, he invented the yellow light.
Garrett Augustus Morgan was born on March fourth, eighteen seventy seven,
in Claysville, Kentucky. He was the seventh of eleven children
born to formerly enslaved parents, Sydney Morgan and Elizabeth Reid.
(01:40):
In his youth, Garrett worked on the family farm with
his siblings and attended a segregated school through the sixth grade.
When he was just fourteen, he moved north to Cincinnati, Ohio,
in search of work. He spent four years there working
as a handyman, and in his free time, he took
lessons from a I Have A tutor to help continue
(02:01):
his education. Four years later, in eighteen nine, Morgan moved
to Cleveland, where he joined the city's booming garment industry.
At the turn of the twentieth century, one in seven
Cleveland residents worked in the garment business. Morgan started out
sweeping floors at a factory, but once he taught himself
(02:23):
how to fix the frequently broken sewing machines, he quickly
climbed the ladder and became the company's only black sewing
machine repair man. It was in this new role that
Morgan made his first invention of Note, a new kind
of belt fastener that made sewing machines more efficient. That innovation,
along with a slew of other mechanical improvements, caught the
(02:46):
attention of other manufacturers in the Cleveland area, putting Morgan
in high demand. In nineteen o seven, he took an
offer from a competitor and began working as that company's machinist.
There he met his future wife, a white seamstress named
Mary Hasseck. The company found out that the two were
(03:07):
dating and gave them a choice break off their relationship
or leave. They chose to leave. Later that year, the
couple got married and opened their own children's clothing store,
with Mary sewing the clothes and Garrett servicing the machines.
This proved to be the first of several businesses that
(03:27):
Morgan would establish, including Morgan's Cut Rate Ladies clothing store,
the Morgans Skirt Factory, and the Morgan Hair Refining Company,
where he sold a new hair straightener that he had invented.
These ventures were so successful that Morgan was able to
keep expanding into different markets. In he jumped into the
(03:49):
newspaper business by co founding and influential African American paper
named The Cleveland Call. Over the years, Morgan became a
wealthy and well spected pillar of his community. He even
became the first black man in Cleveland to own a car.
But driving the streets of an American city was no
(04:10):
picnic in the early nineteen twenties. In those early days
of the automobile, cars had to share the same roads
as pedestrians, bicycles, and horse drawn carriages and wagons. This
chaotic competition for right of way led to the creation
of various traffic signaling devices, most of which weren't effective
(04:31):
enough to consistently prevent accidents. The first electric traffic light
was installed in Cleveland in nineteen fourteen, just a few
miles from Morgan's home. It featured four pairs of red
and green lights, each mounted on a corner post at
a busy intersection. These stop and go indicators were wired
(04:52):
to a manually operated switch inside a control booth. One
advantage to this system was the had made it impossible
to send conflicting signals to drivers. However, it still had
the same fatal flaw as earlier non electric systems. The
signals alternated from stop to go with no pause between them.
(05:16):
This left drivers with no time to react when the
signal changed. As a result, someone may have had the
right of way when they entered an intersection, but if
the signal changed before they had made it through, they
might be hit by a driver who just got the
green light. It was just such an accident that inspired
Garrett Morgan to try his own hand at regulating traffic.
(05:39):
One day, Morgan witnessed a terrible accident between a car
and a horse drawn carriage. The violent scene, in which
a little girl was thrown from the carriage, prompted Morgan
to devise a safer system. The design he came up
with was a cross shaped pole that featured three hand
cranked light up command ends, stop, go, and an unlabeled
(06:03):
warning light. This unique third signal served as an all
directional stoplight. It halted traffic in all directions, giving cars
enough time to exit the intersection and pedestrians enough time
to safely cross the street. Morgan applied for a patent
on February twenty seventh, nineteen twenty two, and received it
(06:25):
nine months later on November twenty The timeline gets a
little muddy after that, but it's believed that the inventors
soon sold the rights to the General Electric Corporation for
forty thousand dollars. From there, GE began installing three light
signals in cities across the country, presumably saving countless lives
(06:47):
in the process. Versions of these manually operated traffic signals
remained in use throughout North America until they were finally
replaced by the automatic signals were familiar with today. Morgan's
traffic light debuted at the peak of his career, but
it was just one of many innovations he developed in
(07:07):
his lifetime. Another of his notable inventions was a precursor
to the modern gas mask, a life saving safetyhood that
allowed the wearer to breathe fresh air through a tube.
Morgan continued to find outlets for his creativity and love
of problem solving all the way up to his death
in nineteen sixty three at the age of eighty six.
(07:31):
If you'd like to see some of Morgan's handiwork for yourself,
you can find the original wooden prototype of his traffic
signal at Smithsonian's American History Museum, as well as a
metal production model at Cleveland's Western Reserve Historical Society. And
if you're interested in hearing more about the development of
traffic signals in the inventors behind the various models, I
(07:55):
recommend a twenty nineteen episode of our sister podcast If
you missed in history class, it's called The Rise of
the Traffic Light, and Holly and Tracy do a great
job charting the twists and turns in the invention's history.
That's it for today's show. I'm Gabe Lousier and hopefully
(08:15):
you now know a little more about history today than
you did yesterday. If you have a second and you're
into this kind of thing, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at t d i HC Show. Also, I'm
taking a poll on how people interpret a yellow traffic
light doesn't mean caution, prepare to stop or hurry up?
(08:38):
Here comes red. You can send your answers to this
day at I heart media dot com. Thanks to Chandler
May's for producing the show, and thank you for listening.
I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day
in History class. For more podcasts from I Heeart Radio,
(09:01):
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that believes there's no time like the present
to learn about the past. I'm Gay Bluesier and in
(00:23):
this episode, we're looking at the work of Garrett Morgan,
the self proclaimed Black Edison who revolutionized the flow of
traffic by adding a pause between stop and go. The
day was November Prolific inventor and entrepreneur Garrett Morgan received
(00:51):
the patent for a traffic light signal of his own design.
Traffic signals had been around in some form since at
least the eight teen sixties, but Morgan's was the first
to feature a middle position between stop and go. According
to the patent, this new caution signal was meant to
give vehicles in the middle of an intersection enough time
(01:15):
to exit before other waiting drivers were given the signal
to proceed, so, in other words, he invented the yellow light.
Garrett Augustus Morgan was born on March fourth, eighteen seventy seven,
in Claysville, Kentucky. He was the seventh of eleven children
born to formerly enslaved parents, Sydney Morgan and Elizabeth Reid.
(01:40):
In his youth, Garrett worked on the family farm with
his siblings and attended a segregated school through the sixth grade.
When he was just fourteen, he moved north to Cincinnati, Ohio,
in search of work. He spent four years there working
as a handyman, and in his free time, he took
lessons from a I Have A tutor to help continue
(02:01):
his education. Four years later, in eighteen nine, Morgan moved
to Cleveland, where he joined the city's booming garment industry.
At the turn of the twentieth century, one in seven
Cleveland residents worked in the garment business. Morgan started out
sweeping floors at a factory, but once he taught himself
(02:23):
how to fix the frequently broken sewing machines, he quickly
climbed the ladder and became the company's only black sewing
machine repair man. It was in this new role that
Morgan made his first invention of Note, a new kind
of belt fastener that made sewing machines more efficient. That innovation,
along with a slew of other mechanical improvements, caught the
(02:46):
attention of other manufacturers in the Cleveland area, putting Morgan
in high demand. In nineteen o seven, he took an
offer from a competitor and began working as that company's machinist.
There he met his future wife, a white seamstress named
Mary Hasseck. The company found out that the two were
(03:07):
dating and gave them a choice break off their relationship
or leave. They chose to leave. Later that year, the
couple got married and opened their own children's clothing store,
with Mary sewing the clothes and Garrett servicing the machines.
This proved to be the first of several businesses that
(03:27):
Morgan would establish, including Morgan's Cut Rate Ladies clothing store,
the Morgans Skirt Factory, and the Morgan Hair Refining Company,
where he sold a new hair straightener that he had invented.
These ventures were so successful that Morgan was able to
keep expanding into different markets. In he jumped into the
(03:49):
newspaper business by co founding and influential African American paper
named The Cleveland Call. Over the years, Morgan became a
wealthy and well spected pillar of his community. He even
became the first black man in Cleveland to own a car.
But driving the streets of an American city was no
(04:10):
picnic in the early nineteen twenties. In those early days
of the automobile, cars had to share the same roads
as pedestrians, bicycles, and horse drawn carriages and wagons. This
chaotic competition for right of way led to the creation
of various traffic signaling devices, most of which weren't effective
(04:31):
enough to consistently prevent accidents. The first electric traffic light
was installed in Cleveland in nineteen fourteen, just a few
miles from Morgan's home. It featured four pairs of red
and green lights, each mounted on a corner post at
a busy intersection. These stop and go indicators were wired
(04:52):
to a manually operated switch inside a control booth. One
advantage to this system was the had made it impossible
to send conflicting signals to drivers. However, it still had
the same fatal flaw as earlier non electric systems. The
signals alternated from stop to go with no pause between them.
(05:16):
This left drivers with no time to react when the
signal changed. As a result, someone may have had the
right of way when they entered an intersection, but if
the signal changed before they had made it through, they
might be hit by a driver who just got the
green light. It was just such an accident that inspired
Garrett Morgan to try his own hand at regulating traffic.
(05:39):
One day, Morgan witnessed a terrible accident between a car
and a horse drawn carriage. The violent scene, in which
a little girl was thrown from the carriage, prompted Morgan
to devise a safer system. The design he came up
with was a cross shaped pole that featured three hand
cranked light up command ends, stop, go, and an unlabeled
(06:03):
warning light. This unique third signal served as an all
directional stoplight. It halted traffic in all directions, giving cars
enough time to exit the intersection and pedestrians enough time
to safely cross the street. Morgan applied for a patent
on February twenty seventh, nineteen twenty two, and received it
(06:25):
nine months later on November twenty The timeline gets a
little muddy after that, but it's believed that the inventors
soon sold the rights to the General Electric Corporation for
forty thousand dollars. From there, GE began installing three light
signals in cities across the country, presumably saving countless lives
(06:47):
in the process. Versions of these manually operated traffic signals
remained in use throughout North America until they were finally
replaced by the automatic signals were familiar with today. Morgan's
traffic light debuted at the peak of his career, but
it was just one of many innovations he developed in
(07:07):
his lifetime. Another of his notable inventions was a precursor
to the modern gas mask, a life saving safetyhood that
allowed the wearer to breathe fresh air through a tube.
Morgan continued to find outlets for his creativity and love
of problem solving all the way up to his death
in nineteen sixty three at the age of eighty six.
(07:31):
If you'd like to see some of Morgan's handiwork for yourself,
you can find the original wooden prototype of his traffic
signal at Smithsonian's American History Museum, as well as a
metal production model at Cleveland's Western Reserve Historical Society. And
if you're interested in hearing more about the development of
traffic signals in the inventors behind the various models, I
(07:55):
recommend a twenty nineteen episode of our sister podcast If
you missed in history class, it's called The Rise of
the Traffic Light, and Holly and Tracy do a great
job charting the twists and turns in the invention's history.
That's it for today's show. I'm Gabe Lousier and hopefully
(08:15):
you now know a little more about history today than
you did yesterday. If you have a second and you're
into this kind of thing, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at t d i HC Show. Also, I'm
taking a poll on how people interpret a yellow traffic
light doesn't mean caution, prepare to stop or hurry up?
(08:38):
Here comes red. You can send your answers to this
day at I heart media dot com. Thanks to Chandler
May's for producing the show, and thank you for listening.
I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day
in History class. For more podcasts from I Heeart Radio,
(09:01):
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
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