How our phone’s navigation apps killed SigAlert

We killed Loyd Sigmon twice.

The first time, the universe killed him – in the proverbial fashion of a universal goodbye, that is, someone who lived to be 95 years old,

But his second death? We did it. Death at the hands of technology. Death by being erased. Death by relying on apps instead of your brain.

There’s no doubt that the driving-direction app that guides you on the road is making the most of Lloyd Sigman’s name and his namesake child, Southern California’s masterpiece, a life-saver and time-saver: SigAlert,

SigAlert is a warning issued by Caltrans to Southern Californians driving two- and four-wheel-drive vehicles that Unexpected highway or freeway disturbances This will last at least half an hour – so plan your way accordingly.

Many broadcasters used to air regular traffic reports, and some still do. Some local TV stations’ newscasts will send you on your way to work or home or in the evening with road information. And if you’re already on the go, radio stations do the same – but less frequently than they used to.

KIIS and KFI are among those still in the traffic mix, and KNX offers its “Traffic on the Fives” report. Yet the most sought-after traffic news is found on the K-APP – the phone app.

But they are mostly Without Sig. As people move away from terrestrial radio, they’re also moving away from SigAlert. The word made it into the Oxford English Dictionary in the 1990s, but Caltrans says that as far as it knows, “SigAlert” doesn’t show up in your average traffic app.

It would be a shame if the term SigAlert became obsolete. It’s easier to navigate the beautiful mess of LA freeways with SigAlert’s 30,000-foot view than with the close-quarters navigation of a phone app.

Loyd Sigman was a radio executive and part owner of radio station KMPC – along with cowboy star-turned-mogul Gene Autry. Sig’s baby was born 70 years ago this autumn on November 17, when he first demonstrated how it could captivate any layman listening to the radio.

His red light arrangement was not as grand or great as “What hath God wrought?”—Samuel Morse’s first Morse code telegraph message 110 years earlier—but when you stand facing downward 42,000 pounds of honey spilled while speeding on the 605 freewayYou will not be ready to listen to the poem.

Other cities have adopted the SigAlert service, but Southern California embraced SigAlert wholeheartedly and incorporated it into its vocabulary; it was one of the first quintessential LA things I learned when I moved here. It survives a variety of spellings — Sig Alert, Sigalert, Sigalert, Sigg-Alert, Sigg-Alert. Speaking of loneliness, SigAlert even has its own traffic app, so pop it in your pipe and smoke away, Waze.

Now I tell you The Story of SigAlertbefore it turns black.

Lloyd Sigman was born in 1909, the same year that Guglielmo Marconi and Karl Ferdinand Braun received the Nobel Prize for “their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy.”

At military school in Missouri, the other boys nicknamed Sigman the “Radio Bug.” He made “Sig” his amateur radio handle. One Christmas, he built a crystal radio receiver set for his father, which the family said was at least as good as any Atwater Kent or Stromberg-Carlson radio receiver on the market.

In his late 20s, he was working as an engineer at a station owned by the McMillan Petroleum Company in Kansas City—which somehow Local call letters The KMPC owners wanted him to work in L.A., and lured him with tickets out west, a rented convertible car, reservations at the Beverly Wilshire, and one other thing. at the Brown Derby,

However, the attack on Pearl Harbor soon saw him put in uniform and sent to Europe, where he headed up communications for Supreme Allied Command. The SIGCIRCUS he created was a truck-mounted mobile radio broadcasting unit that sent messages between the US and Europe – and supposedly also between the White House and Downing Street. By the end of the war, he was a lieutenant colonel, and he returned to LA convinced that America needed to keep its peacetime ears on a wartime level.

In November 1954, he first demonstrated the SigAlert system to military and civilian defense officials. He said: If the enemy’s hydrogen bombs are coming our way, we should be warned in advance.

But In spite of the cold warThey gave Sigman’s baby a cold shoulder. He took it to law enforcement, and it was a hit: a push-button alert that could tell millions of people in a matter of moments the emergency was over the radio airwaves, a low-tech version of the way people now see Amber Alerts.

It worked like this: Any law enforcement officer could call a police dispatcher with an emergency, who would record the information on the SIGMAN receiver-tape recorder device. The dispatcher then used a red light and a special “subcarrier” tone to alert radio station engineers that the announcement was ready for broadcast, and radio stations would interrupt their programming to broadcast it, reading, “This is a SIGALERT bulletin.”

First SigAlert issued on labor day 1955, Monday, on six radio stations that had signed up. A train had derailed at Union Station, and nurses and doctors were needed. So many people came that the crowd posed a small danger in itself.

The initial SigAlerts had a small town vibe, as if there was a town drummer. In the first three months, 86 SigAlerts were issued, of which only 36 were for traffic disturbances.

The rest of the warnings were about rabid dogs, warnings to specific people that their pharmacists had mistakenly made potentially lethal prescriptions, warnings about pending cases air raid siren testA warning about a flasher on a certain street corner, and a ship collision in the harbor.

Flooding on the 5 Freeway? Almost certainly a SigAlert scenario.

(KTLA-TV)

In December 1963, a SigAlert told Baldwin Hills residents that The dam in the hills above them was about to burstAnd it undoubtedly saved lives. A teenage boy riding a bicycle was hit by a car, and with only his school ID card to identify him, a SigAlert was sent out, and a woman who heard the boy’s description recognized him and put the police in touch with the boy’s mother.

Those early sets cost about $600. They were initially made by Packard-Bell in conjunction with Sigmon’s company, Federal Electronics Corp. The Long Beach Independent described it as a 9-by-8-by-7 inch “neat case” that could be easily plugged into a wall outlet. Within a year, four dozen cities in California and others in Arizona and Nevada had adopted the SigAlert system.

Sigman admitted that deep down he saw this as a way to attract listeners to KMPC. But when he picked up his device LAPD Chief William ParkerThe chief said he would adopt it–but it had to be available at every station. No competitive advantage. As a consolation, Parker named the system SigAlert, the story goes.

In 1965, to mark the 10th anniversary of SigAlert and its 10,000 alert mark, KTLA aired a half-hour TV program paying tribute to Sigmon and her child.

The California Highway Patrol took over operation of the system in 1969 and still uses it for bad accidents and late-night truck-fire comedy: thousands of gallons of hot tar, 2 tons of cantaloupes, 20 tons of plywood, a load of bras, an entire house still decorated with Christmas lights, an old-fashioned outhouse (empty), $7,000 in quarters and a body pulled out of the coroner’s van.

Sigman himself drove a white Cadillac with the license number SIGALRT, and in the spring of 2000 he moved permanently away from L.A. traffic to Oklahoma, where he died in 2004.

He and his SigAlert gave birth to a large following of Los Angeles air traffic reporters who were blessed with vivacity and excellent vision.

KIIS had “Commander Chuck Street,” KTLA had Jennifer York. Future TV news anchor Kelly Lang was appointed to the position Hawaii “Dawn O’Day” for rush hour duty as the morning traffic helicopter for KABC radio. (Her afternoon duty name was Eve O’Day.) It was radio, but the station dressed Lange in a form-fitting silver lamé jumpsuit with knee-high silver boots.

KFI had “Bruce Wayne, the KF-Eye-in-the-Sky”, and KNBC television had helicopter pilot Francis Gary Powers.

Wayne worked as an air traffic reporter for nearly 25 years. He died in 1986. When his Cessna plane crashed while taking off,

Powers and cameraman George Spears died in an accident in the San Fernando Valley in August 1977 while returning from shooting footage of bushfires near Santa Barbara. He Francis Gary PowersThe Air Force officer was piloting the U2 spy plane that was shot down by the Russians in 1960. Powers returned to the West after a prisoner exchange, and a short time later he arrived in Los Angeles.

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