There are nine traffic lights between my house and my daughter's school. If we leave at exactly 7:22 in the morning we can usually glide through green lights all the way...unless there is someone tripping the sensors at the cross streets...which happens frequently. If we leave at exactly 7:21, we hit every red light. Sometimes we make it to school in four minutes, sometimes in 15. It has been said that we spend 7 years of our life sitting at red lights...and another 7 in the bathroom. Sigh.
I recall my paternal grandmother telling me about one of the first traffic lights installed in the US. It was in Cleveland at Euclid Ave. and 105th. St. She said it made little buzzing noises so you could hear it as well as see it. I wonder where that light is now.
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On August 5, 1914, several years before Garrett Morgan invented his T-shaped semaphore-type signal, the American Traffic Signal Company installed red and green traffic lights at each corner of the intersection of 105th Street and Euclid Avenue in Cleveland.
ReplyDeleteThe installation was patterned after the design of Cleveland inventor James Hoge (Sessions 1971; Mueller 1970), whose U.S. patent #1,251,666 describes a system of electrically powered stop-go indicators, each mounted on a corner post. In Hoge's design, the signals are wired to a manually operated switch housed inside a control booth, and are electrically interlocked in such a way as to make conflicting signals impossible. Also described in the patent is a system to allow communication between the signal controller and the police and fire departments. The Cleveland installation incorporated all of the above elements in some form or other, plus a bell to warn the drivers of color changes.