Garrett Augustus Morgan
Traffic Signal | Buillth — Never Forget
The amber light at every intersection on earth — the one that says "slow down, the light is about to change" — was put there by a Black inventor. Garrett Augustus Morgan added the warning signal that makes modern traffic flow safe. He also invented the gas mask. He also personally used his gas mask to rescue workers trapped underground while others stood outside. He was that kind of man.
Who Was Garrett Augustus Morgan?
Garrett Augustus Morgan was born in 1877 in Paris, Kentucky — the son of two formerly enslaved parents, Elizabeth Reed and Sydney Morgan. He left school at 14 and moved north to Cincinnati, then to Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked a series of jobs while teaching himself mechanics and developing the practical engineering intuition that would define his career.
He opened a sewing machine repair shop in Cleveland — and was good enough at it to expand into manufacturing sewing equipment. From there, he built a tailoring business and eventually a hair salon supply company, developing and marketing a chemical hair processing solution. He was a businessman first and an inventor by calling — a man who identified problems, built solutions, and commercialized them.
He was also Black in early 20th-century America, which meant that commercializing his inventions required navigating a marketplace that was not always interested in knowing who had built the product it was buying.
The Invention That Changed Everything
In 1916, there was a disaster in Cleveland. A tunnel beneath Lake Erie — being constructed as part of the city's water supply system — experienced a methane explosion that trapped workers underground. Toxic fumes filled the tunnel. Rescue attempts failed. Multiple rescuers were overcome by the gas.
Morgan had invented a breathing hood — what we now call a gas mask — in 1914. He had been trying to market it to fire departments and industrial operations, with limited success. The day of the tunnel disaster, he took his invention to the scene, went into the tunnel, and helped rescue multiple survivors who would otherwise have died.
His gas mask design — which filtered air through a wet sponge to remove particulates and provided clean breathing through a connected hood — was the only thing that allowed anyone to go into that tunnel. The design was foundational. Gas masks used in WWI were developed in part based on Morgan's work.
The traffic signal came a few years later. The intersection was becoming deadly. Early cars and horse-drawn vehicles shared roads without reliable signals, and two-position traffic lights (stop and go) created dangerous moments when drivers had no warning before a change. Morgan's three-position traffic signal added the amber warning phase — the moment between green and red that gives drivers time to stop safely.
He patented the design in 1923 and sold the patent to General Electric for $40,000. General Electric used it. Every intersection in the world now uses it. The amber light is Morgan's.
What History Did With His Name
The story of Morgan's gas mask rescue at the Cleveland tunnel became local news — and then something complicated happened. When it was reported that the rescuer was a Black man, some of the people who had praised the gas mask and its inventor suddenly became less enthusiastic. Marketing the device to Southern fire departments became difficult. Morgan reportedly used a white representative to demonstrate the product in some markets to avoid racial resistance.
He eventually sold the traffic signal patent and moved on. He lived until 1963, long enough to see his inventions become ubiquitous and his name remain obscure. He received the City of Cleveland's Medal of Merit in 1931. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame decades after his death. He deserved both while he was alive.
Why It Still Matters
There are approximately 330,000 traffic signals in the United States alone. Globally, the number runs into the millions. Every one of them uses the three-position cycle — red, amber, green — that Morgan invented. Traffic signal technology is credited with preventing millions of accidents and saving millions of lives since its introduction.
The amber light. The two-second window where the intersection goes from green to red and drivers have a moment to decide. That moment saves lives every day, billions of times. Garrett Augustus Morgan put it there.
Garrett Augustus Morgan is part of the Buillth Never Forget collection. His story is on the shirt. Now you know.