MCI wants to celebrate something that we all take for granted, the traffic light. On the 3 August 1926, at the junction of St James and Piccadilly in London, the first successful set of traffic lights were installed and operated manually by policemen. They had the now familiar red, amber and green lights and were operated by a large lever at the side of the light box.
There is some dubiety as to who invented the traffic lights and when. There were earlier versions of traffic lights back in 1868, invented by a railway signaller called J.P. Knight. There may not have been any cars at this time, but the volume of horse-drawn vehicle traffic was becoming a real problem.
The lights were installed outside the Houses of Parliament by Knight, but the lights were gas operated and exploded, killing a policeman. After that, Britain was hesitant to take this invention further. This gave the inventors in the USA a chance to lead the race to develop a safe system, but they were having problems with explosions too. Some people say a safe version was finally invented by a Utah police officer called Lester Wire, but the first patent was granted to a Garrett Augustus Morgan (also from the USA). It certainly isn't clear who the real inventor was.
Stranger yet, it was not an offence in the UK to disobey the traffic lights until the 1930 Road Traffic Bill!
Have a good weekend everyone!
