Early traffic lights in Leeds

[FosseWay]

Everyone knows that the first set of automatic traffic lights in the UK was installed in Princes Square, Wolverhampton, in 1927.

I've come across a reference to another very early installation, this time in Leeds in 1928. I have a little book passed on to me by my grandmother, entitled Recollections: Sixty Years Ago and Onwards. It is written by three spinster sisters, Henrietta, Janet, and Beatrice Mary Walker, who were born in the 1850s and set down their memories, mostly of childhood and young adulthood but with some more recent comments, in the mid-1930s. They died within a few years of each other between 1937 and 1942, and there is a handwritten dedication to my great-grandmother dated 14 February 1935, to give an idea of when it was written.

Anyway, these sisters lived in Leeds and one of the chapters covers things that changed in their lifetime in the city. One paragraph reads:

It may be noted Leeds has yet another claim. I saw in March, 1928, the first Robot installation in the country being tried at the junction of Park Row and Bond Street. This automatic signalling is of real use to all who are not colour blind. "Safety First" has been the loud appeal from printed posters, and now the high standard painted black and white with three signals on it, shows a red disc on which in white light is shown the word "Stop," an amber light below it has "Caution," and a green light shows the word "Go." In 1930 we are having our first "National Safety Week."

(Actually, thinking about it, the tense of that last sentence rather suggests that this was being written in 1930.)

She - I think the "I" here is Henrietta - is evidently not familiar with the earlier installation in Wolverhampton. It's interesting that she uses the term "robot" - which AIUI is the standard word today for traffic lights in South Africa. Was it a standard term in wider English back then?

I've had a dig around and haven't been able to find much about early installations like this, other than the Wolverhampton one. Does anyone know more?

[Owain]

What I'm wondering is why that junction (now partially pedestrianised) would've been considered sufficiently worse than any of the others in that vicinity to merit the set of lights!

It's quite close to the station, which I'd imagine would've been busier...

[traffic-light-man]

I've definitely seen seen other reference to these signals being the first.

I do wonder if the distinction is that the Wolverhampton one was a trial which was then replaced with a permanent set at a later date, whereas the Leeds ones were installed only a year later but were set to stay from day one.

[Ross Spur]

I've come across a reference to another very early installation, this time in Leeds in 1928...

It may be noted Leeds has yet another claim. I saw in March, 1928, the first Robot installation in the country being tried at the junction of Park Row and Bond Street. This automatic signalling is of real use to all who are not colour blind. "Safety First" has been the loud appeal from printed posters, and now the high standard painted black and white with three signals on it, shows a red disc on which in white light is shown the word "Stop," an amber light below it has "Caution," and a green light shows the word "Go." In 1930 we are having our first "National Safety Week."

..
Does anyone know more?

Just the date. There is a picture of the new signals in the Leeds Mercury of 17 March 1928. "A new electrical automatic traffic signal device was in operation at the junction of Park Row and Bond Street yesterday. At each left hand corner is a standard with three discs which light up in turn."

They were described as successful in the 13 August 1928 edition. Just one downside when new in March - crowds gathered to watch the novelty and to criticise the motorists' response to the changing lights. Twenty people had their pockets rifled by pickpockets whilst they were absorbed by the lights!

[FosseWay]

What I'm wondering is why that junction (now partially pedestrianised) would've been considered sufficiently worse than any of the others in that vicinity to merit the set of lights!

It's quite close to the station, which I'd imagine would've been busier...

Yes, I wondered similarly. I first looked up the location on Google satellite view and saw the current layout, thinking that it must have been a major junction in former times. But as the link to the 6" map shows, it doesn't seem particularly major then, either.

I do wonder if the distinction is that the Wolverhampton one was a trial which was then replaced with a permanent set at a later date, whereas the Leeds ones were installed only a year later but were set to stay from day one.

Henrietta Walker wrote that the installation was "being tried". I don't know how much significance to give that, but it sounds as if the Leeds scheme was also a trial.

Just the date. There is a picture of the new signals in the Leeds Mercury of 17 March 1928. "A new electrical automatic traffic signal device was in operation at the junction of Park Row and Bond Street yesterday. At each left hand corner is a standard with three discs which light up in turn."

They were described as successful in the 13 August 1928 edition. Just one downside when new in March - crowds gathered to watch the novelty and to criticise the motorists' response to the changing lights. Twenty people had their pockets rifled by pickpockets whilst they were absorbed by the lights!

Thanks! Interesting to note that people's capacity for criticising everyone else's behaviour at junctions dates back to the very beginning

[Chris5156]

I’d never heard of this before at all, but it’s rather lovely and - as a son of Leeds - I’m very glad I now know!

What I'm wondering is why that junction (now partially pedestrianised) would've been considered sufficiently worse than any of the others in that vicinity to merit the set of lights!

It's quite close to the station, which I'd imagine would've been busier...

Yes, I wondered similarly. I first looked up the location on Google satellite view and saw the current layout, thinking that it must have been a major junction in former times. But as the link to the 6" map shows, it doesn't seem particularly major then, either.

It is a very strange location to choose for one of the earliest signal installations. Back then all four arms would have been open to motor traffic but it would surely have been one of many fairly ordinary junctions between a main street and some side streets.

At that time major junctions in a city like Leeds would have been equipped with a police officer on point duty. I’d suggest that this location might have been chosen precisely because it wasn’t a major junction: after all, this was the installation of a new technology, tried perhaps only once before in the UK, to see how it went.

It would, in fact, be strange to have entrusted one of the city’s busiest junctions to it, and the police - whose word would have been god in matters of traffic control back then - would be unlikely to consent to giving it a trial run at a critical location. (Even in the 1930s, when signals were becoming commonplace, the police were fighting back in London and other cities with claims that automatic signals could not manage queues of traffic as well as an officer on point duty.) So it was probably chosen because it was a busy-ish location, that would have benefitted from some sort of control, but which didn’t have a police officer allocated to it.

[ManomayLR]

Just a note to say this thread has been moved to Street Furniture.

Carry on…

[Steven]

At that time major junctions in a city like Leeds would have been equipped with a police officer on point duty. I’d suggest that this location might have been chosen precisely because it wasn’t a major junction: after all, this was the installation of a new technology, tried perhaps only once before in the UK, to see how it went.

It would, in fact, be strange to have entrusted one of the city’s busiest junctions to it, and the police - whose word would have been god in matters of traffic control back then - would be unlikely to consent to giving it a trial run at a critical location. (Even in the 1930s, when signals were becoming commonplace, the police were fighting back in London and other cities with claims that automatic signals could not manage queues of traffic as well as an officer on point duty.) So it was probably chosen because it was a busy-ish location, that would have benefitted from some sort of control, but which didn’t have a police officer allocated to it.

Which makes sense, but then Princes Square was a critical location in Wolverhampton city centre!

Granted, the difference in size between the two cities may have impacted on this, but perhaps it's just the difference between the risk averseness levels of the Chief Constable of Wolverhampton Police v that of the Chief Constable of Leeds Police - which may not be the way round people may think as there was certainly a police officer assigned as backup to the Princes Square lights - you can see them basically stood on a box underneath the original lights in the photo on the Wiki.

[KeithW]

Everyone knows that the first set of automatic traffic lights in the UK was [url=https://www.sabre-

I've come across a reference to another very early installation, this time in Leeds in 1928. I have a little book passed on to me by my grandmother, entitled Recollections: Sixty Years Ago and Onwards. It is written by three spinster sisters, Henrietta, Janet, and Beatrice Mary Walker, who were born in the 1850s and set down their memories, mostly of childhood and young adulthood but with some more recent comments, in the mid-1930s. They died within a few years of each other between 1937 and 1942, and there is a handwritten dedication to my great-grandmother dated 14 February 1935, to give an idea of when it was written.

Anyway, these sisters lived in Leeds and one of the chapters covers things that changed in their lifetime in the city. One paragraph reads:

It may be noted Leeds has yet another claim. I saw in March, 1928, the first Robot installation in the country being tried at the junction of Park Row and Bond Street. This automatic signalling is of real use to all who are not colour blind. "Safety First" has been the loud appeal from printed posters, and now the high standard painted black and white with three signals on it, shows a red disc on which in white light is shown the word "Stop," an amber light below it has "Caution," and a green light shows the word "Go." In 1930 we are having our first "National Safety Week."

(Actually, thinking about it, the tense of that last sentence rather suggests that this was being written in 1930.)

She - I think the "I" here is Henrietta - is evidently not familiar with the earlier installation in Wolverhampton. It's interesting that she uses the term "robot" - which AIUI is the standard word today for traffic lights in South Africa. Was it a standard term in wider English back then?

I've had a dig around and haven't been able to find much about early installations like this, other than the Wolverhampton one. Does anyone know more?

Well this is very likely to be a reference to the film Fritz Lang film - Metropolis which was released in 1928. The central character was a Robot (in the German original Maschinenmensch) built to run the city. It was highly rated, not bad for a relatively unknown German film maker.




The film is available on the internet archive
https://archive.org/details/fritz-lang- ... rospective

[astondb9]

You can see photos of the traffic lights in 1928 on this website: https://www.secretleeds.com/viewtopic.php?t=6490

The discussion concludes that Wolverhampton had the first automatic traffic lights on a trial, and they became permanent at a later date, but the Leeds ones became permanent first, making them the first "real" installation. Not sure if there is any truth to that, but it made it to the "History of Traffic Lights" Wikipedia page and several local news sites in the past.

[FosseWay]

The word "robot" dates from several years before Metropolis - it was first used in a play by the Czech writer Karel Čapek in 1920. The word is related to the Slavic word for "work".

I'm interested in the application of the word to traffic lights because it's quite a jump between a robot in human-like form (like the Maschinenmensch) and a simple device that shows coloured lights. It's also interesting to note that in the traffic light sense, the word arose and then died out in the UK, apparently, while surviving in South Africa.

[jnty]

The word "robot" dates from several years before Metropolis - it was first used in a play by the Czech writer Karel Čapek in 1920. The word is related to the Slavic word for "work".

I'm interested in the application of the word to traffic lights because it's quite a jump between a robot in human-like form (like the Maschinenmensch) and a simple device that shows coloured lights. It's also interesting to note that in the traffic light sense, the word arose and then died out in the UK, apparently, while surviving in South Africa.

I agree, although I suppose it is very directly replacing a single human. Perhaps the word started being used early in development of the idea when perhaps more human-like approaches were being thought about (perhaps like railway signal 'arms') and persisted as the ultimate approach morphed to something not especially human-like at all. Having said that, what did point duty officers do at night?

[FosseWay]

Having said that, what did point duty officers do at night?

Sleep?

While that's a facetious reply, there is some sense to it - the authorities wouldn't pay for an officer to stand around doing nothing when the traffic levels didn't warrant it. Police on point duty would be there when the traffic situation warranted it, and not when it didn't, which will have been disproportionately during the hours of darkness. With traffic lights, you may as well let them run 24/7 once you've installed them, and there is also the question of how you effectively communicate part-time traffic lights to drivers, so the default is that they're on all the time even with traffic volumes that human direction wouldn't have bothered with.

That said, in the winter, the dark hours include periods when traffic will have been considerable. I know that traffic police tended to have reflective gloves, but I'd imagine that they'd have needed some kind of lighting to effectively regulate traffic in the dark, and to avoid being run over.

[KeithW]

The word "robot" dates from several years before Metropolis - it was first used in a play by the Czech writer Karel Čapek in 1920. The word is related to the Slavic word for "work".

I'm interested in the application of the word to traffic lights because it's quite a jump between a robot in human-like form (like the Maschinenmensch) and a simple device that shows coloured lights. It's also interesting to note that in the traffic light sense, the word arose and then died out in the UK, apparently, while surviving in South Africa.

Indeed it was BUT I suspect it was more familiar to the women involved than the average inhabitant of Leeds. In fact Karol Čapek didnt invent the word. Robot is drawn from an old Slavonic word, robota, for “servitude,” “forced labor” or “drudgery.” it was essentially the European version of serfdom so a robot was a serf.

[Bryn666]

You can see photos of the traffic lights in 1928 on this website: https://www.secretleeds.com/viewtopic.php?t=6490

The discussion concludes that Wolverhampton had the first automatic traffic lights on a trial, and they became permanent at a later date, but the Leeds ones became permanent first, making them the first "real" installation. Not sure if there is any truth to that, but it made it to the "History of Traffic Lights" Wikipedia page and several local news sites in the past.

The Wolverhampton installation was unique in that it was a four-way signal like the American type, and the signal unit that replaced it until the 1960s was the same. I agree it is likely that Leeds claimed the first "conventional" installation but Wolvo definitely had the first experimental automatic system.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4d/36/ab ... 9721b7.jpg
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy ... 94jMIrUjHo

Birmingham followed suit: https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/fea ... een-light/

[jnty]

You can see photos of the traffic lights in 1928 on this website: https://www.secretleeds.com/viewtopic.php?t=6490

The discussion concludes that Wolverhampton had the first automatic traffic lights on a trial, and they became permanent at a later date, but the Leeds ones became permanent first, making them the first "real" installation. Not sure if there is any truth to that, but it made it to the "History of Traffic Lights" Wikipedia page and several local news sites in the past.

The Wolverhampton installation was unique in that it was a four-way signal like the American type, and the signal unit that replaced it until the 1960s was the same. I agree it is likely that Leeds claimed the first "conventional" installation but Wolvo definitely had the first experimental automatic system.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4d/36/ab ... 9721b7.jpg
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy ... 94jMIrUjHo

Birmingham followed suit: https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/fea ... een-light/

What would have been the legal (and, if different, actual) priority rules followed at a junction like that prior to lights/when a policeman wasn't there?

[Bryn666]

You can see photos of the traffic lights in 1928 on this website: https://www.secretleeds.com/viewtopic.php?t=6490

The discussion concludes that Wolverhampton had the first automatic traffic lights on a trial, and they became permanent at a later date, but the Leeds ones became permanent first, making them the first "real" installation. Not sure if there is any truth to that, but it made it to the "History of Traffic Lights" Wikipedia page and several local news sites in the past.

The Wolverhampton installation was unique in that it was a four-way signal like the American type, and the signal unit that replaced it until the 1960s was the same. I agree it is likely that Leeds claimed the first "conventional" installation but Wolvo definitely had the first experimental automatic system.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4d/36/ab ... 9721b7.jpg
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy ... 94jMIrUjHo

Birmingham followed suit: https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/fea ... een-light/

What would have been the legal (and, if different, actual) priority rules followed at a junction like that prior to lights/when a policeman wasn't there?

Prior to the 1930s I dare say it was a free for all. The HC coming out tried to codify these matters, of course.

[jnty]

Having said that, what did point duty officers do at night?

Sleep?

While that's a facetious reply, there is some sense to it - the authorities wouldn't pay for an officer to stand around doing nothing when the traffic levels didn't warrant it. Police on point duty would be there when the traffic situation warranted it, and not when it didn't, which will have been disproportionately during the hours of darkness. With traffic lights, you may as well let them run 24/7 once you've installed them, and there is also the question of how you effectively communicate part-time traffic lights to drivers, so the default is that they're on all the time even with traffic volumes that human direction wouldn't have bothered with.

That said, in the winter, the dark hours include periods when traffic will have been considerable. I know that traffic police tended to have reflective gloves, but I'd imagine that they'd have needed some kind of lighting to effectively regulate traffic in the dark, and to avoid being run over.

Well yes - in winter the evening rush hour is always dark in Scotland, and during the darkest days much of the morning rush hour will be before sunrise too.

[FosseWay]

Well yes - in winter the evening rush hour is always dark in Scotland, and during the darkest days much of the morning rush hour will be before sunrise too.

Was there a "rush hour" in quite that way back then? What percentage of people drove to work? I've no idea either way, but my guess would be that the principal difference in traffic density would be between "within shop/office hours" and "outside shop/office hours". That doesn't exclude the need for traffic control in the dark, of course, but I suspect that the need for it at, say, 5.30 pm wouldn't have been hugely greater than at midday.

[Ross Spur]

Having said that, what did point duty officers do at night?

That said, in the winter, the dark hours include periods when traffic will have been considerable. I know that traffic police tended to have reflective gloves, but I'd imagine that they'd have needed some kind of lighting to effectively regulate traffic in the dark, and to avoid being run over.

Interesting case here from 1926 (reported on 14 January in Daily News London) which indicated that the police used lights to control traffic (at least at times). A motorist travelling through Mitcham had come across police directing traffic past a road obstruction. Passing the first time he was stopped by a policeman showing a red light. On returning two hours later he saw a different policeman showing a white light and took it that it meant to accelerate. He received a summons for dangerous driving.

In court it was told that the first policeman had placed a piece of red paper over his lamp since he did not consider the white light to be satisfactory. He considered he controlled traffic more successfully this way. The summons was dismissed, with the Chairman of the Bench saying that there should be a uniform plan of signalling at night and he suggested that the right authorities should take the matter into consideration.