How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

by Daniel Immerwahr

The octagonal stop sign came from Michigan, born when a Detroit police sergeant clipped the corners off a square sign to give it a more distinctive shape. But the early signs were yellow, not red. The first national agreement of U.S. state highway professionals rejected the use of red on any sign, since it was hard to see at night. So the U.S. stop sign, adopted as an international standard in 1953, was yellow. Yet just a year later, in 1954, the United States changed its mind about the yellow. Experts thought that red better signified danger, and new developments in industrial chemistry allowed for durable, reflective red finishes. So, to what I can only imagine was the apoplectic fury of traffic engineers worldwide, the United States abandoned the global standard—its own standard, designed in Michigan and foisted on the world—and began to replace its yellow signs with red ones. This, more than anything, showed the stupefying privilege the United States enjoyed in the realm of standards. It could force other countries to adopt its screw thread angle in the name of international cooperation. But it was never bound by those imperatives itself.