CELEBRATING BLACK AUTOMOTIVE HISTORY | Garrett Morgan

By Ian Cooper-Smith

On November 20, 1923, the U.S. Patent Office subsequently granted Patent No. 1,475,074 to 46 year old inventor Garrett Morgan for his three-position traffic signal. Morgan’s addition of a third position was a significant innovation as it further regulated crossing vehicles. Born to two enslaved parents from Paris, Kentucky, Morgan later moved north to Cleveland, Ohio where he worked as a sewing-repairman. In 1907 he opened his own repair shop, and by 1920 Morgan had made enough money to not only start a weekly newspaper, the Cleveland Call, but also become the first African American in Cleveland to own their own car. Although several innovations had already been made to Sirrine’s original signal system, the abrupt switch from “go” to “stop” without an interval still left motorists with little time to react. After witnessing a horrific carriage accident, Morgan dedicated himself to designing an automated signal system with a “warning”  position; this third position could also be set to a halfway-point during the night, acting as a blinking yellow “caution” light if needed. His T-shaped poll design was not only efficient but was also cheap to produce. He thus sold the model to General Electric for 40,000 dollars in 1923 (equivalent to 676,278 dollars in today’s money). By 1930, the revised traffic system had been implemented across the country. By then, motor vehicle fatality rates had fallen by half and almost every major American city and most small towns had been outfitted with at least one traffic light. The traffic light became so integrated within American culture that it was often considered a metric of progress, and eventually, as they became more common, if a town or city had only one traffic light it was considered an embarrassment. As a result, many were installed in places that weren’t particularly useful or convenient simply for the status appeal. However, while the initial implementation of the traffic system was decorative for many, they ultimately proved invaluable as the United States expanded and improved its infrastructure in the following decades to include freeways and other complex roadway systems.