Spotlight: Vetabelle Phillips Carter

Vetabelle Phillips Carter beside traffic lights

This is a photograph of Vetabelle Phillips Carter standing next to one of the three-signal traffic lights she invented.

MSS 068 Vetabelle Phillips Carter papers

Vetabelle Phillips Carter was a ground-breaking inventor from Southern Oregon who graduated from Ashland High School. She studied teaching at the University of Washington as a young adult and, after graduation, acquired a job teaching on a Native American reservation in Northern Washington. Later, she married Fred Carter, a traffic engineer, and the two moved to San Francisco, where she crafted light-up traffic signs. In 1930, she was awarded a patent for a three signal traffic light that accommodated color blind and illiterate drivers. Her light-up signs and traffic lights were implemented in cities up and down the West Coast. She also designed a cleansing women’s hair comb.

Spotlight: Vetabelle Phillips Carter