Where did the first traffic lights appear (4 photos)

The world's first electric traffic lights were installed on 5 August 1914 in the American city of Cleveland, Ohio. Four traffic lights appeared at the intersection of 105th Street and Euclid Avenue, had only two signals each - red and green, and when switching between signals also made a special sound.





The first traffic lights deciphered the signal - when to stop, when to go

Now it may seem amusing that all this the system was controlled by a policeman sitting right there, at the crossroads, in glass booth. The signals, as far as one can understand, switched to depending on the actual traffic situation, and not within the given time intervals.

It is also interesting that despite the beginning of operation, he himself the traffic light was not patented - although in the USA then everything was patented and all.

Only at the end of 1923, someone Garrett Morgan received a patent to a three-position traffic light - that is, with three signals, including yellow. He is said to have invented "standby mode" after witnessing an accident. between car and horse-drawn carriage.



The first traffic lights were also of an unusual shape for us

However, by this time in Europe, traffic lights are also already used - and, in fact, just as selectively. So in 1922 they were already in Paris, Habsburg, etc. - but apparently only some difficult intersections, since their number can literally was counted on the fingers.

Say, in Paris at first there was only one traffic light - on crossroads of Rue de Rivoli and Sevastopol Boulevard. British at first, they could also boast of only one traffic light, and he was not in London, but in the city of Wolverhampton, where he appeared only in 1927.





One of the first traffic lights in the US - with two more signals

In the USSR, the first traffic light appeared at the very end of 1930. - in Moscow, at the corner of Petrovka and Kuznetsky Most streets, and after a couple of years, another traffic light appeared nearby - at the corner with Neglinnaya. First Soviet traffic lights, like American ones, worked in the "manual" mode. management".

Since 1933, the "test period", which showed the convenience of the new technology, ended, and traffic lights began to appear throughout Moscow.

Around the same time, traffic lights appeared in Leningrad, but this is a separate occasion for humor about the eternal disagreements between Leningrad and Moscow from a series of differences between curbs and curbs. The fact is that for some time, traffic lights were installed in Moscow, which have green the signal was at the top, and in Leningrad - at the bottom.



The first Soviet traffic light in Moscow

Later in the USSR they came to a common denominator, so to speak - but even here, in the end, everything had to be changed.

The fact is that in the end the "Moscow" model was chosen - that is, with a green signal at the top. So it was until 1959, then The USSR joined international agreements on this matter and colors traffic lights are arranged in the order in which they are used now - that is, in the end, as it was in Leningrad.