WILLOUGHBY, CLEVELAND — You come across them every time you're on the road.

Traffic signals help keep things moving and make things stop, but they mostly they help keep people alive. That is the very reason Garrett Morgan invented it.

After Morgan witnessed a fatal crash between a car and horse-drawn carriage, he went home and figured out we needed some kind of delay.

Until then, traffic signals had only two options: stop and go.

Morgan, who was African-American, first tested the three-way traffic signal 100 years ago this month in the city of Willoughby, chosen for its traffic flow.

That wasn’t Morgan’s only life-saving invention. He invented the hooded mask, the gas mask, which saved many soldiers’ lives during World War I.

Morgan also discovered a hair-straightening liquid that he used on his own hair, but he was more than an inventor to his family.

“Every Friday night there was a fishing show on the radio. He had a big black leather chair. We’d listen to that fishing show together. It came on at 7:30,” said his grandson Garrett Morgan III.

Morgan was born to freed slaves in Kentucky and moved to Cleveland after leaving the family farm at age 14. His descendants spoke at a recent meeting of the Willoughby Historical Society. 

“Despite his fame for his inventions, he was a humanitarian first. The stop light and the gas mask have nothing to do with one another other than they’re both humanitarian efforts. His interest was largely in people,” said Garrett Morgan IV, Morgan’s great-grandson.

Morgan eventually sold his rights to the traffic signal to General Electric for $40,000, the equivalent of more than $700,000 today.

After testing in Willoughby, the first three-way traffic signal was installed at the corner of Euclid Avenue and E. 105th Street In Cleveland.

The Willoughby Historical Society rededicated a refurbished replica of the signal to mark its 100th anniversary.