User:KLF37/sandbox

Lester Farnsworth Wire, received appointment to the West Point Military Academy by Senator Reed E. Smoot, but was unable to attend. As head of the first traffic squad he created the first regulation codes for Salt Lake City and appointed patrolmen at the busy Main Street and 200 South area. He wanted a better way to control traffic so that his men did not have to to stand for hours in busy areas through differing weather conditions. The first prototype was a wooden box with a pitched roof that contained red and green lights on all four sides. It was then mounted to a pole, wired to the electrical lines of the trolley cars and operated by hand by one of the patrol men whom sat in a booth on one side of the road. Because of its bird house like appearance, observers called the booth the “flashing birdhouse”. Five years after Wire’s invention, Salt Lake City became the first interconnected traffic signal system in the United States. Wire never married.