STOP AND GO – The world of Red, Amber, and Green: Celebrating Innovation- World IP Day theme

On April 26, 2008 in General

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Today is the World Intellectual Property Day, the day that was earmarked in the year 2000 by the Member States of World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to celebrate intellectual property and more importantly to celebrate creativity on an annual basis at an international level. They chose April 26, the date on which the Convention establishing WIPO originally entered into force in 1970. One of the main reasons to have an annual celebration was to bring attention of common public on how relevant intellectual property is in their day-to-day lives. This year’s theme for the World IP Day is Innovation and respecting others’ IP.

For past couple of days I had been mulling over what topic I should pick to mark this important occasion. Several ideas arose and faded on the screen of mind. The list of ideas included writing about all the different facets of innovation, or differentiating it from invention. Yet another idea was to pick one from product innovation, process innovation, organization innovation, or social innovation and give some shining examples- and there are plenty from Kodak’s film roll, to 3M’s post it’s, to e-bay, to six sigma to McDonalds to day-care for kids! While my mind was playing the choosing and discarding game, I happened to visit this wonderful site http://www.ideafinder.com/history/timeline.htm and was absorbed by the fascinating details it had.

And my choice for an innovation that has touched everyone’s life, irrespective of the geographical boundaries, to which I pay tribute to today, is a simple device known generally by the name of “traffic light”.

“Traffic light” brings to our memory a world of red, green and amber, something which is so commonplace that one can’t imagine a world without it now. But the world did exist for a long time without these guiding lights.

The first usage of traffic light is reported to be in 1868s in London and was derived in it’s function from the railroad signals. Railroad signalling remains the foundation of modern traffic light system too. The first traffic light was a revolving lantern with red and green signals. It was gas illuminated and had a lever mechanism to manually select the appropriate color. However, it proved to be hazardous, and the world had to wait for a long time for a better alternative. There were attempts in 1912 for two color traffic signals but were not very successful.

The best solutions, usually come from people who have to use and manage the products, hence it is not surprising that the next solution came from a police officer responsible for managing traffic, in the city of automobiles,Detroit. Police Officer William L.  Potts of Detroit, Michigan, decided to adapt the automatic controlled railroad signals for street use, with little alteration to handle the right angle traffic of the streets.  With an investment of 37 dollars, Potts deviced the world’s first 4-way three color traffic light. It was installed in 1920 on the corner of Woodward and Michigan Avenues in Detriot. The first four-way traffic signal tower in the world was located at the Woodward and Michigan Avenue intersection in October, 1920. The tower was manually operated and had 12 lamps, three in each direction.

However, the commercialization of traffic lights is generally owed to another gentleman, Mr. Garrett Morgan of Cleveland, Ohio who invented the electric automatic traffic light, and filed a patent that was purchased by General Electric Corporation. GE under the umbrella protection of this patent, spearheaded the traffic light manufacture.

And now we have several other features that are added that include crosswalk signals, loudspeakers for the blind, specially shaped lights to help the color blind, cameras to monitor traffic, and several designs for mounts, poles etc to aid traffic signalling.

Whatever the future improvements in these tri-color devices, they will continue to speak a uniform language across man-made borders. Thank you dear guiding angels for keeping us safe and sound!

Sources: http://www.ideafinder.com/history/timeline.htm,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_light

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