International Day of Traffic

In our life there is a lot of things that we are used to not noticing. And one of these things is a traffic light. It would seem that the traffic controller, three colors, automatic control, which can be simpler and more primitive ?! Ah, no! Such "three-eyed" habitual to our eyes and rhythm of life has passed a whole half-century history of its development and formation.

Birthday of a traffic light

August 5 marks the international day of traffic lights. It is this day of 1914 that is considered the official "birthday" of the device. Served this installation of the world's first predecessor of the modern regulator: a two-tone sound apparatus in the city of Cleveland. This "great-grandfather" of modern traffic lights had red and green lights, and also issued a long signal when switching between them.

However, as often happens in history, the official date does not coincide with the date of the real one. So, indeed the first prototype of the traffic light in the world was invented in the nineteenth century by Jay Knight. Established this unprecedented hitherto apparatus was near the Parliament building in London in 1868. But the traffic light did not last long: after only three years a policeman on duty was injured by a lamp explosion. A scandal broke out, and the device was buried for as long as fifty years.

The new birth of traffic lights was received only in 1910, when the two-color model was patented. The tricolor same devices - the closest prototypes of the modern - were first shown on the streets of New York and Detroit in troubled jazz twenties. And only after checking in action, these devices have become ubiquitous located on the streets of American and European cities. As for the Soviet expanses, here the celebration of the traffic lights appeared only in the thirties of the twentieth century, together with actually the traffic light. The first copy was installed in Leningrad in January 1930 at the corner of Liteiny and Nevsky Prospects, the second - in December of the same year in Moscow at the corner of the Kuznetsky Most and Petrovka, and the third - a little later in Rostov-on-Don .

Thus, the traffic light, despite its seeming simplicity, has a long and complex history of becoming, having lived it, it has become a truly inseparable part of our life, prosperity and security. It is for this in the calendar of memorable days he was allocated a special date (August 5), and in many cities of the world he installed monuments and sculptures.