Traffic Light Explosion

There are things we take for granted these days, without ever thinking about how they came to be or the trial and error that might have been involved. On such item, and one we sometimes wish hadn’t ever been invented, is the traffic light. Of course, with so many cars on the road, the traffic light is an absolute must at busy intersections, but maybe if they hadn’t been invented there wouldn’t be a ticket for running one…unless there was an accident, of course. The reality is that traffic lights these days are vital, and we all know it, so it is good that they were invented.

On December 9, 1868, London installed the world’s first traffic light outside the Houses of Parliament. Designed by John Peake Knight, a railway engineer, this system was operated manually by a police officer who stood beside it in all weather, rotating colored glass panels by hand. That in itself is rather shocking. Imagine becoming a police office, planning to fight crime, only to be told that you would be standing by a traffic light changing the colors manually. The gas-powered red and green lights were meant to manage horse-drawn carriages and pedestrians at busy intersections, but the setup was both dangerous and unreliable. The traffic light featured two gas lamps…one red and one green…used to signal when vehicles should stop or go, similar to railway signaling systems. Only a month into its use, a gas leak caused the light to explode, seriously injuring the officer and damaging nearby buildings. Now, not only was their work unfulfilling, but it could be deadly. In fact, the incident was so severe that the city abandoned traffic lights altogether for more than 40 years. I suppose it was just as well, because I think it would be very hard to find a police officer willing to work that position again.

All technology takes vision and a certain amount of faith, but this failed experiment highlighted Victorian England’s struggle to adapt new technology to fast-growing cities, and showed, quite vividly, how even simple ideas can backfire without proper testing or safety measures. The first electric traffic light, created by Lester Wire in 1912, was installed in Salt Lake City, Utah, featuring red and green lights and operated manually by a police officer. While it was still not automatic, the new system couldn’t explode anyway, it did have its own set of flaws. Then, on August 5, 1914, Cleveland, Ohio, became the first city to introduce an electric traffic signal with mechanisms to prevent conflicting signals, a big step forward in traffic management.