WEBVTT - Short Stuff: Traffic Signals 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.000 Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh Clark, 0:00:07.080 --> 0:00:09.920 and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is short 0:00:10.000 --> 0:00:14.440 stuff about the invention of the traffic light, which I thought, 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:17.279 until very recently I knew where the first one was, 0:00:17.360 --> 0:00:19.800 but it turns out that is definitely up for debate 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:22.720 and probably even wrong. Yeah, you know, this was so 0:00:22.800 --> 0:00:24.680 chuck full of stuff. I kind of wondered if it 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:29.000 could be a full link thing, but then I decided, no, 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:31.760 let's just chuck this stuff. A bunch of stuff in 0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:35.440 this stuff. There you go, stuff it up, stuffer. So 0:00:35.520 --> 0:00:38.400 did you think the first one was in Cleveland in 0:00:38.440 --> 0:00:42.880 August of nineteen fourteen? Correct? Right, And that still gets 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:46.560 credit as such even though there are other traffic lights, 0:00:46.560 --> 0:00:47.840 And as we'll see with a lot of this stuff 0:00:47.840 --> 0:00:50.680 we talked about, there are a lot of like little improvements, 0:00:51.120 --> 0:00:53.840 whether they're automated, where they lit up and stuff like that. 0:00:53.880 --> 0:00:56.520 So I think that's why there's a lot of competing claims. Yeah, 0:00:56.520 --> 0:00:58.200 and it was one of those things where just a 0:00:58.280 --> 0:01:02.000 lot of people contributed to what we know and love 0:01:02.080 --> 0:01:04.679 as traffic lights today. I shouldn't say love what we 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:08.560 know and loathe in some cases as traffic lights today, 0:01:08.600 --> 0:01:11.759 because I'm sure I said as much in the Roundabouts episode. 0:01:12.200 --> 0:01:15.520 There's maybe nothing worse than sitting at a traffic light. 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:18.839 A red light when there is nobody coming from either 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:22.039 other direction is one of the worst things that can 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:25.600 happen to you that doesn't involve physical pain or grief. 0:01:26.560 --> 0:01:29.160 That is true. Uh. We want to shout out History 0:01:29.160 --> 0:01:32.160 dot Com, Rachel Ross from Life Science, and Larry Clark, 0:01:32.520 --> 0:01:35.480 not the filmmaker, but Larry Clark who wrote something for 0:01:35.600 --> 0:01:39.840 Washington State Magazine. Uh. And the book Highways to Heaven 0:01:39.959 --> 0:01:44.640 colin the Auto Biography of America. And in that book 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:47.400 there's yeah a t o. There's a few other first 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:50.040 listed in that book which are kind of interesting. Um, 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:53.080 left hand driving became the standard in nineteen o eight 0:01:53.440 --> 0:01:57.880 in America. That center dividing lines first started getting painted 0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:01.360 in nineteen eleven in Michigan, and then the first no 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:05.440 left turn sign in nineteen sixteen in Buffalo, New York. Yeah, 0:02:05.480 --> 0:02:08.560 and shout out to Christopher Finch, the author of that book. 0:02:08.720 --> 0:02:11.640 That's right. But what about Britain They had an idea 0:02:11.639 --> 0:02:15.919 about this long before nineteen Yeah, This to me is like, okay, well, 0:02:15.960 --> 0:02:18.800 there we go. We have the first traffic signal in existence, 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:22.800 and it happened to be in London, in Westminster, UM 0:02:22.840 --> 0:02:27.120 and it was based on a already um used design 0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:30.600 that people used for for railroads to say hey you 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:33.440 can pass or no, don't pass. It was pretty much 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:35.760 what you were trying to get across. And a guy 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:38.720 who worked on the railroad, John peak Night, said, you 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:41.920 know what, we've got a lot of congestion with buggies 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:45.160 and carriages and maniacs and um all sorts of people 0:02:45.280 --> 0:02:47.840 just running around. We need some sort of traffic signal 0:02:47.880 --> 0:02:52.000 for roads now too. Let's adapt that railroad thing into 0:02:52.040 --> 0:02:54.520 a traffic light. And he did. And again the first 0:02:54.520 --> 0:02:58.160 traffic light was in London and I believe eighteen sixty eight, 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:00.519 that's right. And it was a sim of war system, 0:03:00.560 --> 0:03:03.600 which meant it had little arms that raise up and down, 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:06.200 which is kind of fun. It was actually a mechanical 0:03:06.760 --> 0:03:10.520 and use gas lamps to light up the sign at 0:03:10.639 --> 0:03:13.320 night and there would be a cop there or whatever 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:17.840 you bobby UM station next to it to operate the signal. 0:03:18.560 --> 0:03:20.840 And this was in December of eighteen sixty eight and 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:23.920 it was actually working well, and they thought this is 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:27.000 gonna be a huge success. And then about a month later, 0:03:27.880 --> 0:03:31.240 the one of those gas lights exploded in one of 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:34.239 those bobby's faces and they said, we're not going to 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:37.080 do this. And it was about forty years until things 0:03:37.080 --> 0:03:40.080 started happening again as far as traffic lights go. That 0:03:40.160 --> 0:03:44.120 must have been a really bad explosion on that poor 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:48.400 bobby because for for for forty years, like the English 0:03:48.440 --> 0:03:49.960 were like, no, you don't want to get near a 0:03:50.000 --> 0:03:52.920 traffic thing. Don't forget. That was a terrible idea. Now 0:03:53.080 --> 0:03:55.160 I can't tell you how many people were run down 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:58.160 or how many um buggies got hit by cars in 0:03:58.200 --> 0:04:01.760 the introim, but that's how bad that explosion was that 0:04:01.800 --> 0:04:04.520 they abandoned it entirely. And it wasn't even the Brits 0:04:04.560 --> 0:04:06.920 that picked it up again. It was the Americans who said, 0:04:06.960 --> 0:04:09.760 we need something here, let's try let's pick up where 0:04:09.800 --> 0:04:12.800 the Brits left off. And it's here that most people 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:16.920 say that the first traffic signal was invented, even though 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:21.279 again it was first invented in London, but the Americans 0:04:21.279 --> 0:04:25.000 tend to get the credit for it. But even among Americans, 0:04:25.080 --> 0:04:28.360 it's it's spread out over a ton of different inventors. Yeah. 0:04:28.440 --> 0:04:30.159 And you know the thing about that British one, it 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:32.799 wasn't even a traffic light problem. It was a gas 0:04:32.880 --> 0:04:39.320 lamp problem exactly. They blamed the messenger brother. Um. All right, 0:04:39.360 --> 0:04:40.960 well we'll do a little bit more before we go 0:04:41.000 --> 0:04:43.600 into a break. Yes, in America, there were a lot 0:04:43.640 --> 0:04:47.560 of people filing patents, like tons of patents being flung 0:04:47.600 --> 0:04:50.160 around in the early nineteen hundreds about this, you know, 0:04:50.279 --> 0:04:53.760 sort of very simple idea of a traffic light, uh 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:57.359 one of them, And this I think doesn't qualify because 0:04:57.400 --> 0:05:00.320 technically it's not a light, it is just a sign. 0:05:00.720 --> 0:05:06.200 In nineteen ten, Earnest Serene or Serene UH introduced the 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:12.200 automatic traffic signal in Chicago and it had again no lights, 0:05:12.200 --> 0:05:13.680 which is why I don't call it a traffic light. 0:05:13.720 --> 0:05:17.360 But it had the arms arranging across, rotating on an 0:05:17.360 --> 0:05:20.479 axis like a weather van. Yeah. I would say stop 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:22.760 and proceed and it would just kind of turn on 0:05:22.760 --> 0:05:26.280 its axis and face the right way, ideally to get 0:05:26.320 --> 0:05:28.360 people where they needed to go. Yeah. I think there 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:31.880 was probably a cop, not a bobby, a cop below 0:05:32.000 --> 0:05:34.360 operating it. So you had basically a traffic cop who 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:37.080 had to be stationed there working it. But it was 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:39.880 like kind of like the groundwork for the whole thing. Right, 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:43.640 The idea that you were telling one intersection or one 0:05:44.040 --> 0:05:48.680 um direction to not move while you're telling another opposite 0:05:48.720 --> 0:05:52.080 direction to move. That's the basis of a traffic signal. 0:05:53.279 --> 0:05:56.160 I agree, And maybe we should take a break, okay, 0:05:56.640 --> 0:05:58.840 and maybe talk about another other couple of people who 0:05:58.880 --> 0:06:21.240 didn't get their due credit fair enough. So, Chuck, there's 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:24.000 a guy named Lester Wire who, like you were saying, 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:27.200 doesn't really give his due credit outside of um, the 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:30.719 Mormon held areas of Utah. Yeah, I guess you could 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:32.800 say that. This is a nineteen twelve in Salt Lake 0:06:32.839 --> 0:06:35.400 City and he made something that kind of look like 0:06:35.440 --> 0:06:39.560 a birdhouse. It was a wooden box had this actually 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:42.120 had red and green lights on a pole and it 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:45.159 was attached to the trolley wires overhead to give it power. 0:06:45.560 --> 0:06:49.440 Very smart. I don't know why Lester Wire doesn't get 0:06:49.440 --> 0:06:52.480 the credit. Then that was full two years before Cleveland. Yeah, 0:06:52.520 --> 0:06:56.360 he um and it it. It's basically a birdhouse. It 0:06:56.360 --> 0:06:58.440 didn't even look a bit like it. It's a bird house. 0:06:58.520 --> 0:07:01.760 But um, I don't know why he doesn't get credit. Either, 0:07:01.800 --> 0:07:05.920 but he doesn't um. A couple of years after that, 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:09.000 that's where the Cleveland one came in. That everybody says 0:07:09.080 --> 0:07:12.560 that's the first traffic signal. I still don't understand why 0:07:12.640 --> 0:07:15.640 it was considered the first traffic signal if lesser Wire 0:07:15.640 --> 0:07:18.880 already had his Insalt Lake City two years four. But 0:07:19.000 --> 0:07:22.000 James Hogue is the one who gets the credit for that, 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:24.800 that one that was installed in nineteen fourteen at the 0:07:24.840 --> 0:07:26.960 corner of Euclid and I think East A hundred and 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:31.400 fifth in Cleveland, and James Hoge went whole Hogue um 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:36.920 by having four traffic signals that thank you, that faced 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:41.080 every direction of traffic so that you could, um, you 0:07:41.120 --> 0:07:43.960 could coordinate them, and I think it was was set 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:47.320 up so that it was impossible to give conflicting signals, 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:50.200 so that you couldn't tell two opposite directions to go 0:07:50.320 --> 0:07:54.720 at the same time. Like it just couldn't happen. That's right. Uh, 0:07:54.880 --> 0:07:59.920 we should shout out William Giglieri of San Francisco, But 0:08:00.000 --> 0:08:03.040 because I think the distinction here was that his light 0:08:03.520 --> 0:08:06.000 was the first automatic light, that's a big one that 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:08.680 used red and green lights, and this was a nineteen seventeen, 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:12.840 I think, and I'm trying to go chronologically here. In 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:17.960 nineteen twenty, William Pott's a cop in Detroit, not a bobby. 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:21.640 He developed some automatic traffic light systems, and I think 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:24.720 this was the first one to use the caution light 0:08:24.880 --> 0:08:27.840 use all three colors. That was a huge innovation because 0:08:27.920 --> 0:08:29.600 up to that point it was as red or green. 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:32.600 So you had people going, going, going, going, and then 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:35.880 other people stopping and then it still maybe going and 0:08:36.000 --> 0:08:39.160 you could have an accident. Adding like that little caution light, 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:41.920 that's a that was a lifesaver, literally a big deal. 0:08:42.360 --> 0:08:47.000 And we have to shout out in Garrett Morrigan, quite 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:50.839 the inventor. Garrett was the actual first African American to 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:54.800 own a car at all in Cleveland. Like I said, 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:57.680 quite the inventor. Quite the inventor invented the gas mask 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:01.599 as well. Incidentally, and Arett invented it was a T 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:05.280 shaped pole with it did have three positions on it 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:09.559 had stop and go, but this one was the first one, 0:09:09.679 --> 0:09:13.840 I believe, to have everyone stop for a moment of 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:17.480 time at least so it would give other people a 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:19.480 chance to get out of the intersection, which was a 0:09:19.520 --> 0:09:22.640 really big safety feature. Yeah, and UM Garrett Morgan is 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:26.160 is very often credited as the father of the traffic 0:09:26.200 --> 0:09:30.640 signal because he sold his patent to GE for forty grand, 0:09:30.679 --> 0:09:34.160 which is about six dred and something thousand today. UM 0:09:34.200 --> 0:09:37.120 and GE mass produced these things. It was like really 0:09:37.200 --> 0:09:39.680 cheap and easy to produce, and so they started popping 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:42.839 up everywhere, which is I think why he he often 0:09:42.880 --> 0:09:46.000 gets the credit, even though his came almost ten years 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:48.920 after that Cleveland one. UM. But it's tough if you 0:09:48.920 --> 0:09:51.720 look at the patent designs, it's tough to understand. You 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:53.880 really have to like sit and think about it. But 0:09:54.000 --> 0:09:57.640 there were it was like a cross UM and it 0:09:57.720 --> 0:09:59.720 said stop on one side and go on the other, 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:02.520 but it would fold up so that it said stop 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:04.720 everywhere no matter what direction you were in like you 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:07.400 were saying, so there was a moment in between each 0:10:07.480 --> 0:10:11.440 change where all all four directions were stopping. Yeah, and 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:14.520 we still have that overlap today on I feel like 0:10:14.559 --> 0:10:18.280 I sometimes see lights in rural areas where they don't 0:10:18.280 --> 0:10:21.720 have that overlap, or maybe they've all been changed over. 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:24.360 But I do remember a time that where they where 0:10:24.360 --> 0:10:27.120 they didn't have that overlap. Yeah, I remember that too. 0:10:27.160 --> 0:10:30.640 It wasn't even that long ago, no, huh. It was 0:10:30.720 --> 0:10:34.680 kind of like just a free for all basically just 0:10:34.760 --> 0:10:37.120 go as fast, like as soon as the other one 0:10:37.120 --> 0:10:39.160 turned round. The other one was green. So it's funny 0:10:39.200 --> 0:10:41.520 that Garrett Morgan thought of this in the nineteen twenties 0:10:41.559 --> 0:10:44.400 and it went away for a while. I guess we 0:10:44.440 --> 0:10:47.440 also have to shout out John Allen, who I was 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:49.960 not only an inventor, but a bit of an entrepreneur 0:10:50.040 --> 0:10:54.559 if you ask me. Yes. So, this was the first 0:10:54.920 --> 0:11:00.600 street level pedestrian traffic signal, right right, And I think 0:11:00.600 --> 0:11:03.720 they had them before that in the nineteen thirties, but 0:11:03.800 --> 0:11:08.480 they were integrated into the traffic light themselves, right yeah, 0:11:08.520 --> 0:11:11.920 And um, they right off the bat basically came up 0:11:11.920 --> 0:11:14.720 with the walker don't walk signal as we understand it today, 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:18.680 like that that up right palm that you're saying stop 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:21.640 with that was like the first one and it's still 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:25.319 in use. So that's a rare example of somebody figuring 0:11:25.320 --> 0:11:28.559 out the best design initially, you know. Yeah, that's right. 0:11:28.600 --> 0:11:31.000 But John Allen his is kind of funny. He had 0:11:31.440 --> 0:11:34.960 the words stop and go, but he pretty smart. I mean, 0:11:34.960 --> 0:11:37.960 it didn't catch on, thankfully, but he got on this 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:41.680 advertising thing really early and thought, hey, why don't we 0:11:41.720 --> 0:11:44.679 do this, Why don't we have signals that are sponsored 0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:52.080 and it could say like go to you know, quickie marked, 0:11:53.240 --> 0:11:55.360 basically if they want to pay the money for that 0:11:55.440 --> 0:12:01.160 Quickie mark I do. Could you imagine if that's what 0:12:01.200 --> 0:12:05.200 it had turned into. I can, and I'm actually surprised 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:07.760 that it's not that way now. But yeah, it would 0:12:07.800 --> 0:12:10.720 have been cute to look at now in retrospect. But 0:12:10.880 --> 0:12:12.880 I'm I'm with you. I'm glad it didn't catch on. 0:12:13.080 --> 0:12:15.200 Oh boy, that reminds me of one of my most 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:19.000 hated things is the advent of the gas pump advertisements. 0:12:19.440 --> 0:12:22.679 Oh and they're so loud too. I can't turn those 0:12:22.720 --> 0:12:25.040 off quick enough. No, I'm with you, they're pretty bad. 0:12:25.120 --> 0:12:29.120 Chuck agreed to the worst. Well, since we both think 0:12:29.200 --> 0:12:32.480 that gas pump advertisements are as bad as it gets, 0:12:32.559 --> 0:12:39.800 that means, of course that short stuff is apt. Stuff 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:42.400 you should know is a production of iHeart Radio. For 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:45.480 more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:48.600 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.