Black History Month, Garrett Morgan & the Stop Light

What greater influence on a society than the semifore? Pictured above are the stop lights at 101 and Wayzata Boulevard. Once the most traveled intersection in Minnesota (early 1900 during Garrett

Morgan's youth). This intro from his bio: "Garrett Morgan is one of those rare people who are able to come up with an extraordinary inventions which have a tremendous impact on society - and then follows that up with even more! Garrett Morgan was born on March 4, 1877 in Paris, Kentucky the seventh of 11 children born to Sydney and Elizabeth Morgan. Garrett, at the early age of 14 decided that he should travel north to Ohio in order to receive a better education." And later in the article about Garrett it continues: "One day he witnessed a traffic accident when an automobile collided with a horse and carriage. The driver of the automobile was knocked unconscious and the horse had to be destroyed. He set out to develop a means of automatically directing traffic without the need of a policeman or worker present. He patented an automatic traffic signal which he said could be "operated for directing the flow of traffic" and providing a clear and unambiguous "visible indicator." Satisfied with his efforts, Morgan sold the rights to his device to the General Electric Company for the astounding sum of $40,000.00 and it became the standard across the country. Today's modern traffic lights are based upon Morgan's original design."