City Lights

Abstract

This article analyses the introduction and diffusion of traffic lights into Dutch cities between 1920 and 1940, looking for patterns in their development. The article explores the question of why traffic lights in the Netherlands initially emerged – between 1926 and 1934 – in a broad range of color combinations, only to be reduced to the three standard colors we know today by the mid-1930s. The author uses the metaphor of quasi-revolutionary development, a theory of technological development that is well known to historians of technology, to analyze these patterns. In explaining this standardization process, the author explores both variation and selection, which began under the national government after legal reasons and pressure from Algemene Nederlandse Wielrijders Bond (ANWB), the Dutch tourist organization, forced it to intervene.

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