On 9 December 1868, London unveiled the world’s first traffic lights at the busy intersection of Great George Street and Bridge Street, right outside the Houses of Parliament.
The chaotic streets of Victorian Westminster, packed with pedestrians, horse-drawn carriages, and omnibuses, had become almost unmanageable. The London Times noted that day that foot passengers previously relied on “the arm and gesticulations of a policeman, often a very inadequate defence against accident”.
A railway-inspired solution
Railway manager John Peake Knight designed the pioneering signal using the semaphore system already familiar from Britain’s railways. Two coloured arms rose 20 feet above the street. When horizontal, they meant stop; when lowered to a 30-degree angle, vehicles and pedestrians could proceed with caution. At night, red and green gas lamps took over the stop-and-go signals.
A policeman still operated the mechanism manually, but the Times praised the new device as “extremely simple” and “handsome”.
Mixed reactions from Londoners
Not everyone shared the enthusiasm. One Daily Telegraph reader described it as “a monstrous thing resembling a Brobdingnagian lamp-post” topped by something that looked like “a pigeon-cote”, with a “large green eye of the most baleful expression”. Still, even critics admitted the concept was “no doubt, a very good and useful thing”.
Tragic end after just one month
Less than four weeks later, disaster struck. A gas leak caused an explosion that severely burned the policeman operating the lights. The Times later reported the area around the pillar had smelled of gas almost from the day of installation.
Authorities immediately abandoned the gas-powered system and returned to manual direction by police officers.
Legacy of the pioneering signal
Electric traffic lights later developed in the United States, beginning with Lester Wire’s red-and-green system in Salt Lake City in 1912. These American designs eventually returned to Britain and spread worldwide during the 1920s.
Yet history records that the very first traffic lights – however dangerous and short-lived – appeared on this day in 1868 outside the British Parliament, created to tame the same congestion problems that modern traffic lights still solve today.
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
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