New Delhi: It has been 101 years that the first electric traffic signal system was installed and Google is commemorating its anniversary today with a special doodle on its homepage.
The world’s first electric traffic signal was put into place on the corner of Euclid Avenue and East 105th Street in Cleveland, Ohio, on August 5, 1914.
There have been various competing claims regarding who was behind the world’s first traffic signal.
In 1868, a device installed in London featured two semaphore arms that extended horizontally to signal ‘stop’ and at a 45-degree angle to signal ‘caution.
In 1912, one Lester Wire, a policeman in Salt Lake City, Utah, mounted a handmade wooden box with coloured red and green lights on a pole with wires attached to overhead trolley and light wires.
In 1923, inventor Garrett Morgan is credited behind inventing the traffic signal based on his T-shaped design which was patented in that year and later sold to General Electric.
However, the system installed in 1914 is regarded as the first electric traffic signal based on a design by James Hoge. It consisted of four pairs of red and green lights that served as stop-go indicators, each mounted on a corner post. It was wired to a manually operated switch inside a control booth, the system was configured so that conflicting signals were impossible.
Google’s doodle today shows the traffic light which has red and green light, but no orange indicator, as carriages and vehicles stop and then zoom past it with the Google alphabets on them.
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