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Reflections on a Stop Sign: 1936

March 1936. Washington, D.C. "No caption (man with stop sign)." Our second look in as many days at traffic sign history. Harris & Ewing photo. View full size.

March 1936. Washington, D.C. "No caption (man with stop sign)." Our second look in as many days at traffic sign history. Harris & Ewing photo. View full size.

 

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Reflector buttons

Modern stop signs also use spherical reflectors, but they are now teeny-tiny glass balls embedded into an adhesive tape, made by 3M.

Multi-purpose

"And by simple letter substitution, the sign can urge the motorist to shop!"

Shapes, Colors and Buttons

The color of this sign is likely yellow. While the octagon shape was adopted fairly early, making it red was optional in the absence of a durable inexpensive red paint. The need to reflect headlights for night use led to extensive use of small round "button" reflectors inside the text. This sign may have been testing letter coloring and reflectivity.

Sliding tile game?

Hey, boss, look at all the different words we can make if the letters can be swapped!

TOPS
SPOT
POTS
STOP
POST

Don't stop me, I'm on a roll here.

Upon close inspection

it seems the sign was a grade eight woodworking class project.

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