Electric automatic traffic signal

In 1923, Garrett Morgan submitted a patent for an electric automatic traffic signal. He was the first African
American to own a car in Cleveland, Ohio. His design used a T-shaped pole unit with three positions. There was Stop and
Go, and a light that signaled all vehicles to stop to clear the intersection. Morgan sold the rights to his traffic signal to
General Electric for $40,000. According to government records, the United States had roughly 300,000 traffic lights
installed in 2018. In 1923 he came up with the device that led to our three-way traffic lights. He saw that existing
mechanical stop-and-go signals were dangerous, since they had no caution signal to buffer traffic flow. So, he patented a
three-armed signal. It indicated stop and go for traffic in two directions.