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Word of the Every So Often

picketwire: (noun) This is one of those terms you’ve probably heard many times in old Westerns, but never gave much thought to. It has nothing to do with either pickets or wires. It refers to the Purgatoire River in Southeast Colorado, which is what the Spanish originally called the El Rio de las Animas Perdidas en Purgatorio – the River of Lost Souls in Purgatory. Then the French tried to pronounce the Spanish, and early American settlers couldn’t pronounce either the French or the Spanish, so it became the Picketwire. Pretty much, it was a landmark common during the Colorado Goldrush, and now is home to some of the most extensive fossilized dinosaur tracks in the world. So next time you hear some hick in a Western refer to the picketwire... there you go.

The Daily Lesson

On August 5, 1914, the first electric traffic signal was installed at the corner of Euclid Avenue and East 105th Street in Cleveland, Ohio. It only had a red and a green light, and was manually operated by a police officer sitting in a booth.

Mind you, it wasn’t the first traffic signal. That honour goes to a gas powered one that was briefly used in London, beginning on December 9, 1868. Unfortunately, it exploded on January 2, 1869. Between 1869 and 1914, there were all sorts of variations on traffic signals, most of which were manually operated. Among them were the semaphore style lights, where an arm would raise and lower, signaling traffic to stop or go. There was also a carousel style light that was lit by a kerosene lantern.

1917 brought the first interconnected traffic lights, in Salt Lake City, where seven lights were all manually connected together, making it possible for the first time in history to catch a light. The yellow light was introduced in Detroit in 1920, so policemen, who were still operating the lights manually, could coordinate with other traffic cops, and motorist could argue, “No, sir, the light was yellow.” The first automatic traffic signals were placed on Broadway Street in Los Angeles in 1920.

If you’re wondering, or not, the first traffic ticket ever was not for running a red light. It was for speeding. On January 28, 1896, an English cop on a bicycle chased down a guy named Walter Arnold and cited him for going 8 miles an hour in a 2 mph zone. He was fined one shilling.

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The History of the Future: The End of Inventions

It was in June of 2336 that Professor Noland Marvin published his thoroughly comprehensive History of Everything Ever Invented. The book immediately became a standard reference for the International Patent and Copyright Office. Whenever somebody thought she had a novel idea, the IPCO would simply cross-reference it with Dr. Marvin’s History and confirm that it wasn’t novel in the least. In fact, it was quickly discovered that nothing new was left to invent. On March 18, 2337, the IPCO received its last query ever. That invention, too, had been thought of before.

Perhaps coincidentally, it was also in March of 2337 that MindFlix, the largest supplier of media on the planet, stopped suggesting what viewers might like to watch. They just told them what they were going to watch. And nobody seemed to mind, because, after all, it was really what they wanted to watch anyway.

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