Black History Month: Garrett Morgan, creator of the modern traffic signal

Garrett Morgan

(1877—1963) Inventor

Traffic lights stand out conspicuously in every civilized country in the world. The man responsible for making the modern traffic signal is Garrett Morgan.

After witnessing a collision between an automobile and a horse-drawn carriage, Morgan took his turn at inventing a traffic signal. He wasn’t the first inventor to do this; however, he did receive a patent in 1923 for a manual traffic-management device that could be manufactured cheaply. It was a T-shaped pole unit that featured three positions: Stop, go and an all-directional stop position.

Morgan sold the rights to his traffic signal to the General Electric Corp. for $40,000. His invention was used throughout North America until it was replaced by the automatic red-, yellow- and green-light traffic signals now used around the world.

Morgan also perfected another life-saving device that is used all over the world and even now by our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan: the gas mask.

Morgan patented a safety hood and smoke protector in 1914. Two years later, he made national news when he used his gas mask to personally rescue 32 men trapped in a tunnel beneath Lake Erie. The publicity sold the safety hood to firehouses across the United States. Some historians cite the Morgan’s design as the basis for early U.S. Army gas masks used during World War I.

Morgan died on Aug. 27, 1963, at the age of 86. Shortly before his death, he was awarded a citation for his traffic signal by the United States government.

Sheldon Scruggs