They’re a common fixture on virtually every road and something that millions of us pass by, and get stuck at, every single day.
But did you know that the first-ever electric traffic light was installed exactly 101 years ago today, on the corner of Euclid Avenue and East 105th Street in Cleveland, Ohio?
To celebrate the occasion, Google has featured a special Doodle on its homepage to honour the humble traffic light and the surprisingly complex history that led to its creation.
Traffic lights actually have their origins in 19th century London, when gas-lit signals were used by policemen to control the flow of horse-drawn carriages outside Parliament.
However, this proved to be short lived after a leak in the gas lines caused the hand-operated lights to spontaneously explode in 1869, killing the unfortunate police officer who was using it.
It took half a century for the idea of traffic lights to resurface, after Lester Wire, a former detective from Utah decided to attach wires to overhead cables and hang red and green lights off them.
He wasn’t the only one with the same idea, though, after Garrett Morgan, an inventor from Ohio witnessed a serious road accident and thereafter vowed to improve traffic safety.
Applying for a patent for a crank-operated traffic control device in 1922, local authorities were reluctant to invest in man-powered signals as it would require hiring round-the-clock staff.
Instead, electric lights – still a relatively new invention at this stage – were suggested instead, and the world’s first electric traffic light was installed in Cleveland on August 5th 1914.
“This system is, perhaps, destined to revolutionise the handling of traffic in congested city streets and should be seriously considered by traffic committees for general adoption,” an August 1914 edition of The Motorist stated. It wasn’t wrong.
