December 29, 2021 • 12 mins
The history of traffic signals is way more interesting than you might think. Trust us.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is short
stuff about the invention of the traffic light, which I thought,
until very recently I knew where the first one was,
but it turns out that is definitely up for debate
and probably even wrong. Yeah, you know, this was so
chuck full of stuff. I kind of wondered if it
(00:24):
could be a full link thing, but then I decided, no,
let's just chuck this stuff. A bunch of stuff in
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,
(00:46):
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,
(01:08):
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
(01:29):
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,
(01:50):
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
(02:11):
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
(02:33):
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
(02:54):
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.
(03:18):
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
(03:40):
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
(04:01):
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,
(04:25):
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
(04:47):
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,
(05:12):
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
(05:34):
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,
(05:56):
and maybe talk about another other couple of people who
didn't get their due credit fair enough. So, Chuck, there's
(06:21):
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
(06:42):
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,
(07:05):
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
(07:26):
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,
(07:47):
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,
(08:10):
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
(08:32):
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,
(08:54):
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
(09:17):
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
(09:39):
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,
(10:00):
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.
(10:22):
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
(10:44):
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,
(11:08):
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.
(11:28):
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,
(11:53):
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
(12:15):
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
(12:39):
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.
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is short
stuff about the invention of the traffic light, which I thought,
until very recently I knew where the first one was,
but it turns out that is definitely up for debate
and probably even wrong. Yeah, you know, this was so
chuck full of stuff. I kind of wondered if it
(00:24):
could be a full link thing, but then I decided, no,
let's just chuck this stuff. A bunch of stuff in
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,
(00:46):
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,
(01:08):
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
(01:29):
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,
(01:50):
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
(02:11):
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
(02:33):
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
(02:54):
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.
(03:18):
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
(03:40):
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
(04:01):
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,
(04:25):
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
(04:47):
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,
(05:12):
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
(05:34):
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,
(05:56):
and maybe talk about another other couple of people who
didn't get their due credit fair enough. So, Chuck, there's
(06:21):
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
(06:42):
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,
(07:05):
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
(07:26):
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,
(07:47):
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,
(08:10):
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
(08:32):
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,
(08:54):
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
(09:17):
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
(09:39):
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,
(10:00):
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.
(10:22):
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
(10:44):
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,
(11:08):
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.
(11:28):
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,
(11:53):
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
(12:15):
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
(12:39):
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.
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