Often in life, it’s the little annoyances and inconveniences of life that lead to the creation of grand solutions.

“Why didn’t I think of that?” is a common refrain when problems are resolved.

Charles Adler Jr., a prolific inventor, who enjoyed motoring, did not enjoy wasting valuable time at traffic signals, so he came up with the idea of a traffic-actuated signal.

“I was tired of being stopped by time signals for no reason at all,” Adler told The Evening Sun in a 1977 interview. “I thought it was outrageous that a human being should be subject to a clock.”

Before Adler’s invention was installed at Falls Road, and what was then Belvedere Avenue, today’s Northern Parkway, traffic signals were time operated.

“The whole principle of actuating signals by sound originated with me,” he tol

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