Traffic light

A traffic light or traffic signal is a signaling machine positioned at a road meeting point or walker crossing to indicate when it is secure to drive, ride or walk, using a worldwide color code.

History

In the 1920s, after continued obliteration of a normal traffic light in its Tipperary Hill Irish neighborhood, the City of Syracuse in the United States gave up and installed a traffic light with green on the top. The Irish had objected to the fact that "British" red was placed above "Irish" green.On 10 December 1868, the first traffic lights were installed outside the Houses of Parliament in London. They resembled railway signals of the time, with semaphore arms and red and green gas lamps for night use.

The modern electric traffic light is an American formation. As early as 1912, Salt Lake City policeman Lester Wire set up the first red-green electric traffic lights. On 5 August 1914, the American Traffic Signal Company installed a traffic signal system on the corner of 105th Street and Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio. Based on the design of James Hoge, it had two colors, red and green, and a signal to give a warning for color changes. The first three-color traffic lights were introduced in New York and Detroit in 1920.

The first interrelated traffic signal system could be seen in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1917, with six linked intersections restricted at the same time from a manual switch. Automatic control of interrelated traffic lights was introduced March 1922 in Houston, Texas

The first automatic tentative traffic lights in England were deployed in Wolverhampton in 1927.

Garrett Morgan is sometimes incorrectly credited as the inventor of the traffic light. See

Ampelmännchen traffic lights have come to be seen as a nostalgic sign for the former German Democratic Republic.