Routes along early paths were often marked with broken twigs, sticks, or stones. More elaborate waymarkers were signs carved on rocks, pieces of vertical stones called stoops, stones piled into cairns, and marked trees. One variant encountered on prehistoric English ridgeways was to line the way with burial mounds or barrows of local chieftains. This practice was also common among Greeks and Romans, who often buried their dead in graves beside the approach of roads to their towns and cities. As traffic increased, signing grew in importance. Early in the 17th century, the Duc de Sully and Cardinal Richelieu introduced a system of destination signing at French crossroads using cairns or posts. In 1669 Louis XIV formalized the system in a royal order. In the U.S, systematic route marking began with a 1704 Maryland law requiring trees beside a route to be marked with an elaborate system of notches, letters, and/or colors. The system could indicate whether a road led to a ferry, church or courthouse. One south Maryland road between the Potomac and Patuxent rivers has retained the name Three Notch Road. At slow travel speeds it was always possible to ask someone for directions. At the end of the 19th century, the car was to render this procedure impractical. In 1894 the French Touring Club began erecting signs to aid its members. This paper describes how modern road signs began in the late 19th century when bicycle clubs erected many road signs.
Samenvatting