Who invented road signs?

Question

They seem to be similar, if not the same all over the world... who organised this uniformity? And who was the person(s) who came up with the signs and the idea to make them similar in the first place?

Answer 1

"The earliest road signs were milestones, giving distance or direction; for example, the Romans erected stone columns throughout their empire giving the distance to Rome. In the Middle Ages multidirectional signs at intersections became common, giving directions to cities and towns.

"Traffic signs became more important with the development of automobiles. The basic patterns of most traffic signs were set at the 1908 International Road Congress in Rome. Since then there have been considerable change. Today they are almost all metal rather than wood and are coated with retroreflective sheetings of various types for nighttime and low-light visibility."

...

"In 1968, the European countries signed the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic treaty, with the aim of standardizing traffic regulations in participating countries in order to facilitate international road traffic and to increase road safety. Part of the treaty was the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals, which defined the traffic signs and signals. As a result, in Western Europe the traffic signs are well standardised, although there are still some country-specific exceptions, mostly dating from the pre-1968 era."

Answer 2

A Mr Derek Shins invented road signs.

Answer 3

Mr Derek Shins

Answer 4

Pirates. They used to hide their looted treasures in the sea shores underneath the sand, and in order to locate the spots (where they had their booty), they used to erect road signs. That's how road signs originated.

Answer 5

They just seemed to crop up to let people know how to get to a certain city or how far it was

Answer 6

The first guy who got lost.

Answer 7

Father Chrismas, in order to find all the chimneys.

Answer 8

derek shins

Answer 9

the Romans