The mysterious lights, noises, etc., in the old Terry mill, which have been heard and seen at intervals by passers-by for the last month and aroused their curiosity and suspicions, have been at last accounted for. Officers Pegues and Alexander, while looking for stray tramps in that neighborhood about fifteen days ago, investigated.
     They made their way through the darkness to the third floor, to the room of mystery, and found two young men who, when questioned, told the officers that they were working on an invention, which would, when completed, throw some light on science. The young men are Henry Garrett, son of Bishop Garrett, and Henry Sutton, son of Dr. Sutton.

.

FIRST TRAFFIC LIGHTS

     Henry (Dad) Garrett, pioneer in electronics and father of traffic safety in Dallas, died early Wednesday in his sleep at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Curtis Johnson, near Mesquite. He was 90.
     Garrett was the son of the late Alexander C. Garrett, the Episcopal bishop, who left a comfortable parish in Ireland to pioneer in North America.
     Garrett retired in 1940, after thirty-three years as superintendent of the Dallas fire and police signal division.
     Garrett, in 1923, used his inventive genius to create and install an automatic system of traffic lights, first in America, and copied all over the country.
     In the intervening years, Garrett confounded friends by using fully, a third of his salary from the city, to improve the equipment. He got basic patents on features of the system used throughout the world. From the City of Dallas, he expected, and got, nothing extra for this work.
     Garrett worked out a plan by which part of the traffic lights would keep in regular operation, while others cleared paths for racing fire engines.
     Garrett built WRR, the city's radio station, first municipally owned radio station in the world. He also built KVP, the police department broadcasting station.
     Garrett, also, was believed to be the first man in the world to build a radio into his car, and, as an early reporter said, roll along like a circus bandwagon, with the people staring and wondering where the music was coming from.
     Garrett, of medium size, was a man of many interests. He could play and build an organ. And, he had. Everyone was his friend. He was happiest when working with electricity, radio, or playing a piano or organ. Then, his blue eyes beamed.
     Until recent years, Garrett liked to visit with E. L. Archer, his successor, and electricians at the police and fire signal division headquarters at 2121 Main. He was modestly proud that the system had increased to 229 traffic signal lights and 678 fire alarm boxes over the city.
     Archer, and others, of the police and fire signal division headquarters, visited Garrett last at the Mesquite home, just before last Christmas. Like his clergyman father, Garrett spent his last days in blindness.
     Garrett's father died in February, 1924. At that time, Garrett shut everyone out of St. Matthew's Episcopal Cathedral and played a number of hymns on the organ, while his father's body was inside the casket. He rarely played the organ afterward.
     Funeral services will be held at 10 a. m. Thursday in Sparkman-Brand Chapel, 2115 Ross. The Rev. Bertram L. Smith, rector of Christ Episcopal Church, will officiate.
     Burial will be in Oakland Cemetery, where Bishop Garrett is buried. Pallbearers will be members of the fire and police signal division. They are E. L. Archer, K. M. Meador, W. M. Boyd, O. K. Snyder, R. A. Michael and M. C. Harvey.
     Garrett is survived by his daughter, Mrs. Johnson, and two sons, C. H. Garrett and F. A. Garrett, both of Dallas.

     Our town isn't much on statues; there's only a handful to memorialize the men and women of another day who had a part in the building of it.
     We're more inclined to name a street or a park for someone we would honor, or forget them altogether.
     But, silent tributes blink all over the city -- all over the world -- to remind us of Henry (Dad) Garrett.
     Garrett, in 1923, gave Dallas its first automatic traffic signal lights, and a claim to being the first in the nation to control traffic with lights. He pioneered the police and fire signal system here, first in the nation, and installed the first radio in an automobile (1920) with a pair of antennas that would put present-day chrome antennas to shame.
     His genius for invention is one of the colorful pages of Dallas' past.
     Garrett's father was the revered and storied Episcopal churchman, Alexander C. Garrett, whose story we hope to tell in some future column.
     During his father's work among Indians in Canada, Henry Garrett was born, in 1861. He was 15 when his father came to Dallas to set up the Episcopal diocese that was the labor of his life, until his death, a beloved bishop, and blind, at age 92.
     Henry Garrett set up an electrical supply business here, but he was always at the organ for Sunday services. Once, he built an organ for himself; concerts he gave at his business firm downtown drew visitors from far and near.
     When services were held in old St. Matthew's Cathedral for his father, Henry Garrett asked others to remain outside the church for awhile. Alone, with his father's casket, Garrett went to the organ and played some hymns. He seldom played afterward.
     He came to be known simply as "Dad" Garrett, another city employe, and one of its most faithful.
     In his college days in Tennessee, Garrett had rigged up a campus telegraphic network. And, with the coming of automobile traffic, he put his inventive nature to work on traffic control.
     Firemen racing to fires needed signals that could be operated at a central station to warn other motorists to yield right of way.
     Garrett improvised a sign-flashing network with a switch and a sewing machine motor. He became signal officer for the Dallas fire department, a career that held his interest until his death in 1952, at age 90.
     When Dad Garrett had founded the city's first police radio station (KVP), he saw the need for car radios.
     Garrett told of it later:
     "Everyone said it could never work. I rigged up a spark transmitter at the old fire station (near the present City Hall), threw a mess of wiring and radio parts into my sedan, and drove up to White Rock Lake. At the old pump station, I mounted a home-made receiver in the front seat of the car. An aerial was tied to the top of the station smokestack. I took another length of wire to ground the receiver in the lake water. ..."
     He received signals from the downtown transmitter. But, he could hardly drive around with the aerial on a smokestack and the ground wire in the lake. Signals continued to come in after the ground wire was removed, but silence came when he unhooked the aerial wire.
     He hit on the idea for two "fishing pole" aerials mounted on the car fenders and coiled about them.
     Until recent years, many old-timers were around, who remembered Dad Garrett and his car radio system. By 1921, the City of Dallas was broadcasting a general alarm from a 50-watt police radio for a bandit who had held up the Dallas post office.
     Even when reports came, that the message had been heard in points as distant as northern New Mexico, some of Dad Garrett's ideas were the subject of general laughter.
     But, general approval was not long in coming. By 1931, the City of Dallas ordered 20 radio-equipped cars, first of what has become a fleet tied into a communication network.
     Traffic lights have become so ordinary, that the early start in Dallas is scarcely remembered.
     It has been said that Dad Garrett could have made millions. But, he gave his ideas, royalty free, to the City of Dallas.

     Dallas and the nation have reason to remember long, Henry M. (Dad) Garrett, the former signal officer for the City of Dallas, who died Wednesday in his ninetieth year.
     Traffic congestion is far less, and traffic safety is far greater, in Dallas, because of the work of this notable man. He invented and installed the automatic control of the traffic lights, by which, both motorists and pedestrians move in Dallas. That was back in 1923, almost the beginning of the Motor Age. It was the first system in this country and, probably, the first in the world. He also was the first to make such control "selective," whereby fire and police lanes could be cleared through a part of the controlled area without halting all traffic within it.
     Out of this early-day advance against traffic chaos, Dallas was able to pioneer one of our most notable safety measures. This is the training of pedestrians to cross dangerous street intersections on signal lights only. It has been recognized throughout the nation as one of Dallas' achievements, and it has been widely copied in late years. This saving of thousands of lives, over the decades, is due, in large part, to Dad Garrett's foresight and skill.
     There are other lasting credits to Dad Garrett's practical genius. He not only built the first radio-broadcasting station for any city in the world, Station WRR, he also pioneered in the use of radio to communicate police and fire alarms to moving automobiles. He was a modest, kind and deeply spiritual soul withal, a worthy, if less well-known son of his famous father, the Episcopal missionary bishop of Dallas, the Rt. Rev. Alexander C. Garrett.

.