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Traffic Lights Are Way Older Than Cars, You Basically Know Nothing About Them

Erin Marquis
·1 min read
A stoplight is seen in front of the dome of the US Capitol as a government shut down looms in Washington, DC, on September 28, 2023.
A stoplight is seen in front of the dome of the US Capitol as a government shut down looms in Washington, DC, on September 28, 2023.


A stoplight is seen in front of the dome of the US Capitol as a government shut down looms in Washington, DC, on September 28, 2023.

Traffic lights are both common and controversial. From a city that only allowed green lights for drivers staying inside the speed limit, to the ethics of turning right on red, there are a ton of ways these simple devices affect our lives. But how did it come to be?

We’ve discussed the history of the traffic light here on Jalopnik before, but never in this granular detail of this new video from my favorite bow-tied YouTube presenter Lancer Geiger. Geiger presents history in his best PBS special voice on his YouTube channel, the History Guy.

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From there, it was a steady march of progress; a standardization of traffic police to lights control the giant, automatically timed orange dongles familiar to us today. The entire video is pretty fascinating. Take a look here.

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