Traffic Lights: A History

most of us interact with traffic lights every day in American Car Centric cities they're just unavoidable kids are often taught how they work before they even go to school red means stop and green means go and while we tend to associate traffic lights with cars it might surprise you to find out that the first traffic lights predated the first cars by many decades and that the colors that we take for granted are pretty much the same almost whole world round how we came to the conventions for the traffic lights we use today the colors that we use where they're located how they're timed is a matter of modernization and Regulation and history that deserves to be remembered traffic is not entirely a modern problem long before there were cars there were streets crowded with pedestrians carts and wagons traffic control was largely unnecessary and traffic toally figured itself out although some systems like which side of the road people use seem to have developed earlier than that as early as 1669 the London Council of alderman posted a man on London Bridge to required that all carts going to keep on one side and all carts coming to keep on the other side how well the rule was followed was another matter in 1722 three police officers were ordered to do that job becoming possibly the earliest example of traffic police in cities like London then among the largest in Europe traffic was reaching a level where congestion was a serious problem especially at narrow points like on the bridge for several centuries afterward traffic was left uncontrolled except where traffic police might manage particularly Troublesome areas leaving pedestrians horses and carriages to work out their own method of traversing the city at c a study by parliament in 1831 determined that colored lights red and green on ships could be used as navigation side lights on vessels indicating port and starboard that choice later influenced the colors chosen in Railway signals and later traffic light in 1866 an article in good words magazine by Dr Andrew Winter complains that the streets of the city have been encroached upon until they are no longer able to carry the human tide that is daing being forced through them he specifically mentions traffic coming into the city across Westminster Bridge which crosses the temps to the house of parliament none of the roads into the city were sufficient to deliver its load of vehicular and pedestrian traffic certainly is no exaggeration to say that many times far sheep could leap from Carriage to Carriage for the whole length of the Street Winter quotes a surveyor whose opinion was that 3/4 of a million people traveled to the center of London and 19,000 carriages crossed London Bridge in a given day perhaps more importantly the crush of London traffic had a very real human cost a report from Parliament recorded that in the 14 months between January 1st 1865 and March 1st 1866 180 persons were killed and 2,175 maimed and injured injured by the crush of humanity and that winter suris only represented a fraction of the unreported deaths and injuries this he argued has more than a little to do with carts which Gallop around corners totally regardless whether he runs you over or not it was this chaos that BR the first inkling of a traffic light John Peak Knight an English Railway manager and inventor known both for improvements tending to the safety of rail passengers and for his skill and smartness in organizing vision for the pressure of traffic on popular holidays first broached the idea of a kind of traffic light in 1866 and's idea came directly from Railway signals which used semaphor with mechanical arms to display messages to train operators from a distance the device also use gas powered green and red lights to Signal drivers at night installation of the device came after a suggestion by the Parliamentary select committee because MPS were forced to risk their lives crossing the road near Westminster bridge on their way to work night was engaged to construct the 20ft tall semaphore when the arm was horizontal it instructed traffic to stop and when it was lowered to a 45° angle it meant to proceed with caution at its top were green and red powered gas lights with red meaning stop and green proceed the device had to be manually operated by a police officer began operation in December of 1868 but on January 2nd 1869 leaking gas caused an explosion which entered the officer and the whole idea was sheld there was a second installation in London Tower Bridge in 1894 where a similar semaphore system equipped with gas lights was installed it signaled both River traffic and Bridge traffic indicating whether the bridge was up or down numerous other similar devices were invented and installed around the United States after 1900 proliferating as Henry Ford made the automobile the dominant mode of transportation pre-electric semaphor were installed throughout the country such as one installed in Toledo Ohio in 1908 it had kerosene powered red and green green lights and arms 8 ft above the ground in 1910 Ernest sirene patented an automatic traffic signal that slowly spun with arms that read stop and proceed 1915 saw the First Mid intersection Towers which were tested in New York in an effort to reduce congestion the need for better traffic signals was becoming quickly apparent in San Francisco a man called Old blind bill was the cause of more traffic Tangles more motorman's profanity and more policemen's perplexity than anything else when he learned that the police controlled traffic with whistles he acquired an identical whistle for himself and when he needed to cross the street he simply blew it himself in New York traffic jammed twice a day forcing some to give up driving altogether in Chicago a Trolley Company complained that auto traffic had slowed their speeds 44% in the Central City in San Francisco automobiles outnumbered carriages by 1914 in 1912 Paris installed a traffic signal semaphor at a particularly dangerous inter intersection the traffic signal was invented by Edmund Gil to evolve order out of the chaos on Paris streets installed on top of a glass tower in the middle of the intersection it was meant to do the work of four traffic officers with four discs that hung off each side of the tower one side of the disc was red the other white with the white minning go and the red advising caution apparently worried that a car or Carriage would crash through the tower in the middle of the intersection at least eight officers were on hand to protect the tower and manually direct traffic while traffic got used to the new system in 1912 Salt Lake City traffic police officer Lester wire installed the first electric traffic light in downtown Salt Lake made of wood the device looked like a birdhouse and its red and green lights were powered by wires connected to trolley lines it was controlled manually by an officer at a switch and was first installed at the intersection of 200 South and Maine silly looking device inspired some jibes and he never patented The Invention which soon led to fancier metal Contraptions more like the ones that we use today in 1914 the first permanent red and green Traffic Light was installed in Cleveland Ohio at the corner of 105th in uclid Avenue invented by James hge it faced in two directions while officers continued to direct traffic from the sidewalk the public is pleased with its operation as it makes for greater safety and speeds up traffic the Cleveland public safety director wrote it might surprise you to know that these early signals all came before the world's first stop sign which wasn't installed until 1914 or 15 other systems were also invented including a laps bu one first demonstrated in New York and when they could be suspended from Crossings and display red and white signals in Los Angeles in New York 1920 saw John Harris develop a wooden housed two light system white for go and green for stop a four-way three-color light was invented in Detroit Michigan in 1920 by Police Officer William pots pots was concerned that the two-light system was difficult to sync with multiple officers and that traffic had to come to a sudden stop and the light changed from green to Red he added an amber light copying a color used in railroads signals and added a timer to coordinate signals it was first installed at the intersection of Woodward in Michigan in Detroit in October 1920 was one of the busiest intersections in the world which saw 20,000 Vehicles a day these lights had a single light for all directions so this the light was red in One Direction and had to be red the other Garrett Morgan a Cleveland inventor who had become successful in business witnessed a crash between an automobile and a carriage in 1922 which inspired him to create and patent a folding traffic signal system with arm that said stop and go but also had a third caution signal like pots yellow light his tle system had an attendant and it received a patent for it in 1923 General Electric purchased the patent when it began manufacturing stoplights Los Angeles installed 31 Acme traffic signal company signals by 1923 the typical kind with red and green lights and movable arms a bell rang for 5 seconds before the light changed traffic lights passed to Europe in the 20s with Paris getting its first lights in 1922 in Berlin in 1924 and London late to the party in 1931 12 bulb systems which could display all light colors in all directions appeared by 1928 and soon came hoods over the lamps and sand blasted lenses to make the lights more visible in daylight throughout the country many of the first systems were installed using money supplied by trolley and cab companies which saw huge advantages in better traffic also in 1928 Charles Adler Jr an inventor from Baltimore installed the first actuated traffic signal when that could be made to change based on the action of a driver his was sonically actuated which meant that the lights could be changed by a stopped car simply honking I was tired of being stopped by time signals for no reason at all Edler explained I thought it was outrageous that a human being should be subject to a clock the lights were meant to be used at low traffic intersections and the first was installed in Baltimore on February 22nd 1928 GE produced number of Lights with the same design But ultimately the idea of a sonically actuated light fell by the wayside The Invention however is important because it began the concept of actuated lights in general and most traffic lights today are actuated with sensors that detect cars and react to the traffic in 1929 Adler installed the first pedestrian push button in Baltimore another kind of actuated signal advancing technology next aim to take the manually controlled traffic lights and make them automatic thus largely removing the need for traffic lece sold together automatic timers were invented for military applications during World War I but were so to be used in traffic light systems adoption of automatic lights was slow in part because administrators thought drivers wouldn't obey lights if there wasn't an officer present in 1922 the K hin company which made lights for railroads installed automatic timers and traffic lights for the first time in Houston New York and La adopted them by 1924 and they were in use all over the country adopting automatic lights came down to cost because it replaced entire traffic officer departments the New York Police Department reassigned all but 500 of its 6,000 traffic officers which Sav $12.5 million a year by 1930 the semaphores and Towers were gone replaced by the three light system we know today they seem to have played a part in safety as well as motor vehicle fatalities decreased by 50% from 1914 to 1930 streets in the United States are crowded with fast moving Automobiles and in practically every city and town today the motorist finds traffic lights to Aid him on his way traffic lights also incurred new costs including electrical engineers and traffic surveys to set timers efficiently at first cities used platoon systems where all the lights changed at once but that system caused problems because drivers would race to make as many lights as possible by the mid 1920s automation systems allowed control over turns at three-way intersections reversal of lanes at rush hour and traffic activation research on how to use the staggered lights to best relieve congestion at peak times like commuters and rush hour began to form in this period GE installed the first staggered system on 16th Street in Washington DC which eventually doubled commuting speed within 2 years the system was appearing all over the country and Tokyo installed the first system outside of the US Engineers organized in various professional groups helping to spread the system around the world and while individual countries do things a little differently the basic three-color system is largely universal one exception is that Japan calls their go light blue instead of green thanks to a quirk of Japanese language history it took a long time for the Japanese to start using a word for green before that green things were generally described as blue and even after a word for green developed it was usually still considered a shade of blue in the Modern Age Japanese bureaucracy called the light blue and when some protested the government mandated through a cabinet order that traffic lights use the bluest shade of green possible in 1935 the Federal Highway Administration created the manual for uniform traffic control devices mandating the use of red yellow and green for traffic lights in the United States Syracuse New York was the first city to make all of the lights in the downtown sector automatic automation continued to improve and in the 1950s the Advent of computers led the systems that could react to traffic and sensors were placed at intersection so computers could change lights when necessary Denver Colorado put 120 lights with sensors measuring traffic Under Computer control in 1952 and it wasn't until the '90s that designers introduced traffic timers which count down the time until the light changes International conventions have sought to keep traffic rules and signals substantially the same across borders starting with the 1931 Geneva Convention concerning the unification of Road signals which was then modified with the 1949 Geneva protocol on road signs and signals and finally the 1968 B convention on road signs and signals modern Traffic Control Systems have continue to become more extensive and sophisticated trying to deal with things like more cars on the road and greater congestion and modern cities are turning to Advanced Technologies like artificial intelligence to help make the system more efficient but while cars have changed a lot since electric traffic lights were added at the beginning of the last century the lights themselves at least since we added the yellow light look pretty much the same that they did 100 years ago although on some of them we've added a few things like those red and green dedicated turn arrows heck traffic lights are such a part of culture that metaphors for traffic lights abound the whole red light green light thing is used from everything from children's games to corporate project statuses so while traffic might continue to evolve I think it's safe to say that the traffic light will be with us for a long time to come I hope you enjoyed watching this episode of the history guy and if you did please feel free to like And subscribe and share the history guy with your friends and if you also believe that history deserves to be remembered then you can support the history guy as a member on YouTube a supporter on our community and locals or as a patron on patreon you can also check out our great merchandise shop for book a special message from the history guy on [Applause] [Music] cameo [Music] [Applause] 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Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 136,619

Keywords: history, history guy, the history guy

Id: OLLxUMQkGdo

Length: 15min 42sec (942 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 23 2023