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Modern traffic lights are an American invention. Red-green systems were installed in Cleveland (1) **in** 1914. Three-colored signals were (2) **installed** in New York in 1918. They used (3) **to** be operated by hand from a tower in the middle of the street. The first lights of this type appeared in London, on the junction between St. James Street (4) **and** Piccadilly, in 1925. Automatic signals were installed a year later. In the (5) **past**, traffic lights used to be very special.