Salt Lake City is home of the invention of the world’s first electric traffic signal.
In 1912, Lester F. Wire headed the Salt Lake Police Department’s first traffic squad in order to control the chaos of the City’s streets. Traffic congestion consisted of private automobiles, horses and buggies, trolley cars, and pedestrians all sharing the same city streets without any concept of right-of-way , specific stops for trolley cars, or even which side of the street cars should drive on.
Lester Wire wrote the first traffic regulations for Salt Lake and appointed traffic patrolmen to direct traffic at the busy intersection of 200 South and Main Street.
The patrolman was required to stand on a small platform in the middle of the intersection in order to direct traffic and avoid the numerous vehicle accidents that had been occurring. However, the working conditions for these patrolmen were not ideal; they were required to work long hours and were required to stand outside in all weather conditions.
Lester Wire wanted to find a better method for controlling traffic in Salt Lake and designed what is believed to be the world’s first electric traffic signal.
The earliest traffic signal light was installed in 1868 outside the British Houses of Parliament in London and these early designs were similar to railway signals with raising arms and red and green gas lamps for night use; this gas design ultimately failed in 1869 when it exploded.
His first design of the electric traffic signal to be put into use looked like a bird house and consisted of a square wood box with a pitched roof and contained red and green lights inset on all four sides.
It was mounted on a pole, wired to the electric lines used by the trolley cars, and placed in the middle of the intersection at 200 South and Main Street; this first electric traffic signal was manually operated by a patrolman who would occupy a booth on the side of the road and switch the lights to control traffic. The traffic light was eventually automated in 1924.
The new traffic signal was not well received by Salt Lake City residents and most considered it a novelty item and many chose to disregard the “flashing bird house” and Police sometimes found the traffic signal damaged or vandalized during the night.
People from larger cities were impressed by the light and many other cities choose to adopt and improve the design. The cities of Cleveland, Ohio and Detroit, Michigan, were two of the earliest cities to use the electric traffic signal.
In 1914 James Hoge designed a red and green electric signal with a buzzer that warned of color changes and this system was adopted in Cleveland. In 1920 William Potts in Detroit designed and in 1922 patented his three colored light, four-way, electric traffic light.
Lester Wire continued to improve his traffic signal design, even when he became a detective for the Salt Lake City police department and traffic congestion was no longer his primary concern. He eventually developed a durable metal stoplight using the smokestack from a locomotive engine; this light looked very similar to the modern traffic signals except that he only used the red and the green lights.
A few years after Lester Wire’s death in 1958, his sister Edith attempted to gather the original material and documents relating to her brother for a small museum.
She attempted to secure the original stoplight from the Tracy Aviary were it had been used as a bird house but she was told it had disappeared sometime shortly after Lester’s death. The original metal stoplight had been displayed in Syracuse, New York, for many years but when Edith asked that it be returned to Utah for display in a museum, Syracuse responded that it had been thrown out two days before her letter arrived.
After Edith’s death in 1973, she willed her estate to continue the Lester Wire museum but ultimately there was not enough money to support her wishes; The trustees of her estate and the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) agreed to use the assets of her estate to create and maintain a suitable memorial and the Lester Farnsworth Wire Memorial Library was incorporated into UDOT’s headquarters.
The Lester Wire Library continues to be operated for the use of UDOT employees and holds original material from Lester Wire; the Library has expanded to include modern materials to better serve UDOT various needs.
Sources and External Links:
- Linda Thatcher, Lester F Wire Invents the Traffic Light, Beehive History 008, 1982.
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Historic photographs of Lester Wire and his electric traffic lights
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