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Short Stuff: Traffic Signals · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh Clark,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is short
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: stuff about the invention of the traffic light, which I thought,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: until very recently I knew where the first one was,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: but it turns out that is definitely up for debate
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: and probably even wrong. Yeah, you know, this was so
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: chuck full of stuff. I kind of wondered if it
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: could be a full link thing, but then I decided, no,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: let's just chuck this stuff. A bunch of stuff in
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: this stuff. There you go, stuff it up, stuffer. So
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: did you think the first one was in Cleveland in
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: August of nineteen fourteen? Correct? Right, And that still gets
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: credit as such even though there are other traffic lights,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: And as we'll see with a lot of this stuff
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: we talked about, there are a lot of like little improvements,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: whether they're automated, where they lit up and stuff like that.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: So I think that's why there's a lot of competing claims. Yeah,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: and it was one of those things where just a
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: lot of people contributed to what we know and love
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: as traffic lights today. I shouldn't say love what we
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: know and loathe in some cases as traffic lights today,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: because I'm sure I said as much in the Roundabouts episode.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: There's maybe nothing worse than sitting at a traffic light.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: A red light when there is nobody coming from either
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: other direction is one of the worst things that can
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: happen to you that doesn't involve physical pain or grief.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: That is true. Uh. We want to shout out History
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: dot Com, Rachel Ross from Life Science, and Larry Clark,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: not the filmmaker, but Larry Clark who wrote something for
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Washington State Magazine. Uh. And the book Highways to Heaven
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: colin the Auto Biography of America. And in that book
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: there's yeah a t o. There's a few other first
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: listed in that book which are kind of interesting. Um,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: left hand driving became the standard in nineteen o eight
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: in America. That center dividing lines first started getting painted
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: in nineteen eleven in Michigan, and then the first no
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: left turn sign in nineteen sixteen in Buffalo, New York. Yeah,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: and shout out to Christopher Finch, the author of that book.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: That's right. But what about Britain They had an idea
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: about this long before nineteen Yeah, This to me is like, okay, well,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: there we go. We have the first traffic signal in existence,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: and it happened to be in London, in Westminster, UM
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: and it was based on a already um used design
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: that people used for for railroads to say hey you
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: can pass or no, don't pass. It was pretty much
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: what you were trying to get across. And a guy
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: who worked on the railroad, John peak Night, said, you
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: know what, we've got a lot of congestion with buggies
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: and carriages and maniacs and um all sorts of people
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: just running around. We need some sort of traffic signal
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: for roads now too. Let's adapt that railroad thing into
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: a traffic light. And he did. And again the first
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: traffic light was in London and I believe eighteen sixty eight,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: that's right. And it was a sim of war system,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: which meant it had little arms that raise up and down,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: which is kind of fun. It was actually a mechanical
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: and use gas lamps to light up the sign at
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: night and there would be a cop there or whatever
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: you bobby UM station next to it to operate the signal.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: And this was in December of eighteen sixty eight and
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: it was actually working well, and they thought this is
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: gonna be a huge success. And then about a month later,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: the one of those gas lights exploded in one of
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: those bobby's faces and they said, we're not going to
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: do this. And it was about forty years until things
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: started happening again as far as traffic lights go. That
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: must have been a really bad explosion on that poor
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: bobby because for for for forty years, like the English
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: were like, no, you don't want to get near a
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: traffic thing. Don't forget. That was a terrible idea. Now
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many people were run down
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: or how many um buggies got hit by cars in
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: the introim, but that's how bad that explosion was that
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: they abandoned it entirely. And it wasn't even the Brits
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: that picked it up again. It was the Americans who said,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: we need something here, let's try let's pick up where
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: the Brits left off. And it's here that most people
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: say that the first traffic signal was invented, even though
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: again it was first invented in London, but the Americans
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: tend to get the credit for it. But even among Americans,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: it's it's spread out over a ton of different inventors. Yeah.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: And you know the thing about that British one, it
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: wasn't even a traffic light problem. It was a gas
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: lamp problem exactly. They blamed the messenger brother. Um. All right,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: well we'll do a little bit more before we go
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: into a break. Yes, in America, there were a lot
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: of people filing patents, like tons of patents being flung
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: around in the early nineteen hundreds about this, you know,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: sort of very simple idea of a traffic light, uh
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: one of them, And this I think doesn't qualify because
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: technically it's not a light, it is just a sign.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: In nineteen ten, Earnest Serene or Serene UH introduced the
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: automatic traffic signal in Chicago and it had again no lights,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: which is why I don't call it a traffic light.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: But it had the arms arranging across, rotating on an
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: axis like a weather van. Yeah. I would say stop
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: and proceed and it would just kind of turn on
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: its axis and face the right way, ideally to get
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: people where they needed to go. Yeah. I think there
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: was probably a cop, not a bobby, a cop below
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: operating it. So you had basically a traffic cop who
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: had to be stationed there working it. But it was
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: like kind of like the groundwork for the whole thing. Right,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: The idea that you were telling one intersection or one
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: um direction to not move while you're telling another opposite
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: direction to move. That's the basis of a traffic signal.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: I agree, And maybe we should take a break, okay,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: and maybe talk about another other couple of people who
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: didn't get their due credit fair enough. So, Chuck, there's
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: a guy named Lester Wire who, like you were saying,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: doesn't really give his due credit outside of um, the
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Mormon held areas of Utah. Yeah, I guess you could
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: say that. This is a nineteen twelve in Salt Lake
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: City and he made something that kind of look like
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: a birdhouse. It was a wooden box had this actually
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: had red and green lights on a pole and it
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: was attached to the trolley wires overhead to give it power.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Very smart. I don't know why Lester Wire doesn't get
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: the credit. Then that was full two years before Cleveland. Yeah,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: he um and it it. It's basically a birdhouse. It
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: didn't even look a bit like it. It's a bird house.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: But um, I don't know why he doesn't get credit. Either,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: but he doesn't um. A couple of years after that,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: that's where the Cleveland one came in. That everybody says
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: that's the first traffic signal. I still don't understand why
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: it was considered the first traffic signal if lesser Wire
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: already had his Insalt Lake City two years four. But
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: James Hogue is the one who gets the credit for that,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: that one that was installed in nineteen fourteen at the
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: corner of Euclid and I think East A hundred and
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: fifth in Cleveland, and James Hoge went whole Hogue um
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: by having four traffic signals that thank you, that faced
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: every direction of traffic so that you could, um, you
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: could coordinate them, and I think it was was set
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: up so that it was impossible to give conflicting signals,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: so that you couldn't tell two opposite directions to go
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: at the same time. Like it just couldn't happen. That's right. Uh,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: we should shout out William Giglieri of San Francisco, But
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: because I think the distinction here was that his light
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: was the first automatic light, that's a big one that
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: used red and green lights, and this was a nineteen seventeen,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: I think, and I'm trying to go chronologically here. In
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: nineteen twenty, William Pott's a cop in Detroit, not a bobby.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: He developed some automatic traffic light systems, and I think
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: this was the first one to use the caution light
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: use all three colors. That was a huge innovation because
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: up to that point it was as red or green.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: So you had people going, going, going, going, and then
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: other people stopping and then it still maybe going and
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: you could have an accident. Adding like that little caution light,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: that's a that was a lifesaver, literally a big deal.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: And we have to shout out in Garrett Morrigan, quite
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: the inventor. Garrett was the actual first African American to
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: own a car at all in Cleveland. Like I said,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: quite the inventor. Quite the inventor invented the gas mask
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: as well. Incidentally, and Arett invented it was a T
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: shaped pole with it did have three positions on it
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: had stop and go, but this one was the first one,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: I believe, to have everyone stop for a moment of
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: time at least so it would give other people a
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: chance to get out of the intersection, which was a
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: really big safety feature. Yeah, and UM Garrett Morgan is
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: is very often credited as the father of the traffic
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: signal because he sold his patent to GE for forty grand,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: which is about six dred and something thousand today. UM
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: and GE mass produced these things. It was like really
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: cheap and easy to produce, and so they started popping
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: up everywhere, which is I think why he he often
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: gets the credit, even though his came almost ten years
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: after that Cleveland one. UM. But it's tough if you
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: look at the patent designs, it's tough to understand. You
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: really have to like sit and think about it. But
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: there were it was like a cross UM and it
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: said stop on one side and go on the other,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: but it would fold up so that it said stop
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: everywhere no matter what direction you were in like you
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: were saying, so there was a moment in between each
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: change where all all four directions were stopping. Yeah, and
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: we still have that overlap today on I feel like
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: I sometimes see lights in rural areas where they don't
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: have that overlap, or maybe they've all been changed over.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: But I do remember a time that where they where
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: they didn't have that overlap. Yeah, I remember that too.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: It wasn't even that long ago, no, huh. It was
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: kind of like just a free for all basically just
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: go as fast, like as soon as the other one
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: turned round. The other one was green. So it's funny
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: that Garrett Morgan thought of this in the nineteen twenties
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: and it went away for a while. I guess we
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: also have to shout out John Allen, who I was
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: not only an inventor, but a bit of an entrepreneur
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: if you ask me. Yes. So, this was the first
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: street level pedestrian traffic signal, right right, And I think
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: they had them before that in the nineteen thirties, but
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: they were integrated into the traffic light themselves, right yeah,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: And um, they right off the bat basically came up
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: with the walker don't walk signal as we understand it today,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: like that that up right palm that you're saying stop
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: with that was like the first one and it's still
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: in use. So that's a rare example of somebody figuring
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: out the best design initially, you know. Yeah, that's right.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: But John Allen his is kind of funny. He had
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: the words stop and go, but he pretty smart. I mean,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: it didn't catch on, thankfully, but he got on this
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: advertising thing really early and thought, hey, why don't we
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: do this, Why don't we have signals that are sponsored
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: and it could say like go to you know, quickie marked,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: basically if they want to pay the money for that
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Quickie mark I do. Could you imagine if that's what
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: it had turned into. I can, and I'm actually surprised
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: that it's not that way now. But yeah, it would
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: have been cute to look at now in retrospect. But
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm with you. I'm glad it didn't catch on.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Oh boy, that reminds me of one of my most
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: hated things is the advent of the gas pump advertisements.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Oh and they're so loud too. I can't turn those
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: off quick enough. No, I'm with you, they're pretty bad.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: Chuck agreed to the worst. Well, since we both think
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: that gas pump advertisements are as bad as it gets,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: that means, of course that short stuff is apt. Stuff
• 12:39
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• 12:42
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• 12:45
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