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N0KFQ > TODAY 20.11.11 20:39l 52 Lines 2440 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 14120_KB0WSA
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Nov 20
Path: IZ3LSV<IW0QNL<VE2PKT<N9PMO<N0KFQ<KB0WSA
Sent: 111120/1926Z 14120@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.0.4
Nov 20, 1923:
Garrett Morgan patents three-position traffic signal
On this day in 1923, the U.S. Patent Office grants Patent No.
1,475,074 to 46-year-old inventor and newspaperman Garrett Morgan
for his three-position traffic signal. Though Morgan's was not
the first traffic signal (that one had been installed in London
in 1868), it was an important innovation nonetheless: By having a
third position besides just "Stop" and "Go," it regulated
crossing vehicles more safely than earlier signals had.
Morgan, the child of two former slaves, was born in Kentucky in
1877. When he was just 14 years old, he moved north to Ohio to
look for a job. First he worked as a handyman in Cincinnati; next
he moved to Cleveland, where he worked as a sewing-machine
repairman. In 1907, he opened his own repair shop, and in 1909 he
added a garment shop to his operation. The business was an
enormous success, and by 1920 Morgan had made enough money to
start a newspaper, the Cleveland Call, which became one of the
most important black newspapers in the nation.
Morgan was prosperous enough to have a car at a time when the
streets were crowded with all manner of vehicles: Bicycles,
horse-drawn delivery wagons, streetcars and pedestrians all
shared downtown Cleveland's narrow streets and clogged its
intersections. There were manually operated traffic signals where
major streets crossed one another, but they were not all that
effective: Because they switched back and forth between Stop and
Go with no interval in between, drivers had no time to react when
the command changed. This led to many collisions between vehicles
that both had the right of way when they entered the
intersection. As the story goes, when Morgan witnessed an
especially spectacular accident at an ostensibly regulated
corner, he had an idea: If he designed an automated signal with
an interim "warning" position_the ancestor of today's yellow
light_drivers would have time to clear the intersection before
crossing traffic entered it.
The signal Morgan patented was a T-shaped pole with three
settings. At night, when traffic was light, it could be set at
half-mast (like a blinking yellow light today), warning drivers
to proceed carefully through the intersection. He sold the rights
to his invention to General Electric for $40,000.
73, K.O. n0kfq
Another old retired guy
E-mail: n0kfq@winlink.org
N0KFQ@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
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