Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Traffic Signals

Episode Date: December 29, 2021

The history of traffic signals is way more interesting than you might think. Trust us.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 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 chock full of stuff, I kind of wondered if it could be a full link thing. But then I decided, no, let's just chuck 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 1914? Correct. Right. And that still gets credit as such, even though there are other traffic lights. And as we'll see with a lot of this stuff we talk about, there are a lot of like little improvements, whether they're automated or 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, but we know and loathe in some cases as traffic lights today, 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. We want to shout out history.com, Rachel Ross from Live Science, and Larry Clark, not the filmmaker, but Larry Clark, who wrote something for Washington State Magazine, and the book Highways to Heaven,

colon the auto biography of America. And there's a few other first listed in that book, which are kind of interesting. Left hand driving became the standard in 1908 in America. That center dividing lines first started getting painted in 1911 in Michigan. And then the first no left turn sign in 1916 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 about this long before 1914. Yeah, this to me is like, oh, okay, well, there we go. We have the first traffic signal in existence, and it happened to be in London in Westminster. And it was based on a already used design that people use for railroads to say, hey, you can pass or no, don't pass. It was pretty much what you

were trying to get across. And a guy who worked on the railroad, John Peake Knight said, you know what, we've got a lot of congestion with buggies and carriages and maniacs and 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 traffic light was in London in, I believe, 1868. That's right. And it was a semaphore system, which meant it had little arms that raise up and down, which is kind of fun. It was actually mechanical and use gas lamps to light up the sign at night. And there would be a cop there, or whatever you call it, a Bobby. Station next to it to operate the signal. And this was in December of 1868. And it was actually

working well. And they thought this is going to be a huge success. And then about a month later, one of those gas lights exploded and one of those Bobby's faces. And they said, we're not going to do this. And it was about 40 years until things started happening again, as far as traffic lights go. That must have been a really bad explosion on that poor Bobby, because for 40 years, like the English were like, no, you don't want to get near a traffic signal. Forget that was a terrible idea. Now, I can't tell you how many people were run down or how many buggies got hit by cars in that interim. But that's how bad that explosion was that 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, 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 blame the messenger. Brother. 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 around in the early 1900s about this sort of very simple idea of a traffic light. One of them,

and this, I think, doesn't qualify because technically it's not a light. It is just a sign. In 1910, Ernest Serine introduced the automatic traffic signal in Chicago and it had, again, no lights, which is why I don't call it a traffic light, but it had the arms arranged in a cross rotating on an axis. Like a weather vane. Yeah. So it 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 had to be stationed there working it. But it was kind of like the groundwork for the whole thing, right? The idea that you were telling one intersection or one

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. And maybe talk about another other couple of people who didn't get their due credit. Fair enough. Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new iHeart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an

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Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, there's a guy named Lester Weier who, like you were saying, doesn't really get his due credit outside of the Mormon held areas of Utah. Yeah, I guess you could say that. This was in 1912 in Salt Lake City. And he made something that kind of looked like a birdhouse. It was a wooden box. This actually had red and green lights on a pole. And it was attached to the trolley wires overhead to give it power. Very smart. And I don't know why Lester Weier doesn't get the credit then. That was full two years before Cleveland. Yeah, and it's basically a birdhouse. It didn't even look a bit like it. It's a birdhouse. But I don't know why he doesn't

get credit either, but he doesn't. A couple of years after that, 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 Lester Weier already had his in Salt Lake City two years before. But James Hogue is the one who gets the credit for that, that one that was installed in 1914 at the corner of Euclid and I think East 105th in Cleveland. And James Hogue went whole hoag by having four traffic signals that faced every direction of traffic so that you could coordinate them. And I think it was set up so that it was impossible to give conflicting signals so that you couldn't tell two opposite directions to go at the same time. It just

couldn't happen. That's right. We should shout out William Giglieri of San Francisco 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 in 1917. I think, and I'm trying to go chronologically here, in 1920 William Potts, 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 just red or green so you had people going, going, going, going and then other people stopping and then it still may be 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 1923 Garrett Morgan, quite the inventor. Garrett was the actual first African American to own a car at all in Cleveland. Like I said, quite the inventor, quite the inventor invented the gas mask as well incidentally and Garrett 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 chance to get out of the intersection which was a really big safety feature. Yeah and Garrett Morgan is very often credited as the father of the traffic signal because he sold his patent to GE for 40 grand which is about 600 and something thousand today

and GE mass produced these things. It was like really cheap and easy to produce and so they started popping up everywhere which is I think why he often gets the credit even though his came almost 10 years after that Cleveland one. 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 and it said stop on one side and go on the other 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 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 but I do remember a time there were that where they didn't have that overlap. Yeah I remember that too it was just even that long ago. No it was kind of like just a free for all basically just go as fast as you can. Yeah like as soon as the other one turned red the other one was green so it's funny that Garrett Morgan thought of this in the 1920s and it went away for a while I guess. Yeah we also have to shout out John Allen who I was not only an inventor but a bit of an entrepreneur if you ask me. Yeah so this was the first street level pedestrian traffic signal right? Right and I think they had them before that in the 1930s but they were integrated into the traffic light

themselves right? Yeah and they right off the bat basically came up with the walk or don't walk signal as we understand it today like that upright 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 but John Allen his is kind of funny he had the word 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 mart basically if they want to pay the money for that. 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 with you I'm glad it didn't catch on. Oh boy that reminds me of one of my most hated things is the advent of the gas pump advertisements. Oh and they're so loud too. Oh god I can't turn those off quick enough. No I'm with you they're pretty bad Chuck agreed. 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 you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.