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