A Century with the Traffic Light

We love to complain about things, and one thing we love to complain about is traffic and how many chicken brained inbreds rush over a red light, forcing you to wait another cycle, adding a good few minutes to your trip.

We love complaining about congestion when a traffic light does not work due to load shedding or a general power outage, and we almost unwillingly feel sorry for these yellow piped three eyed robots when someone decided to uproot them using their car. I would dare to go as far as saying some of us actually talk to them, we beg for it not to change its light, or curse it when there is no oncoming vehicles and its gingerly sitting on red, almost out of spite.

It is a symbol of order, and on this day, 04 August, I would like to wish all robots around the world happy birthday. It was on this day in 1914 the first electric traffic light was put into place at the corner of Euclid Avenue and East 105^th Street in Ohio, America, 5 years after a center dividing line on the road. There has been attempts at this before when the need for navigating and controlling traffic arisen, including a variant where an operator would control these light manually, and the first system used in London in 1868, where two Semaphore arms would direct traffic by signaling horizontally to stop traffic, and at 45 degrees to signal caution.

First traffic light

This design and concept was mentioned in the August 1914 edition of the Cleveland Automobile club, saying: “This system is, perhaps, destined to revolutionize the handling of traffic in congested city streets and should be seriously considered by traffic committees for general adoption.”

If they only knew how dependant we are on this device. As much as we have a love hate relationship with these lights, the true evil began in the 1960’s, where a Dutch company who proudly called themselves Gasto, decided to allow these just, regulators of traffic lights to be tattle-tails. They invented the red light camera in 1965, and even gave it a name, the Gatsometer BV. This system was first used in Israel in 1969 as a means of traffic enforcements, and only got some major attention from the USA in the 80’s, it is also about the same time that an early bird manufactures called Poltech international started making them for a variety of countries, including South Africa.