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Bedford vehicles were commonly fitted with a semaphore - if you look at the
passenger side of a Bedford QL, OY or OX you will see a white and red
painted steel pointer - normally this points down... however should the
driver wish to turn left he can twist a lever in the cab which connects via
a cable to the top of the Semaphore - the mechanism lifts the pointer to the
horizontal.... thus indicating the drivers intention to turn left. For the
military Bedford the pointer is made from flat steel - it is not illuminated
in any way. Illuminated semaphores were fitted to a variety of other
vehicles - I believe the Austin 7 is a likely civilian example of the use of
an illuminated semaphore.
I believe the term Semaphore comes from the Military Semaphore signalling
method which involved the use of flags to convey a message. For a vehicle it
is purley a flag indicating intended change in direction.... hence the
modern reference to "indicators".
One must remember that many vehicles of this vintage were not fitted with
turn indicators in the style we have today - and some had nothing at all -
like the smaller 15 CWT Bedford MW.
On the Bedford vehicles the Semaphore device was only fitted to the
passenger side of the vehicle - to turn right the driver was expected to
open the window and use his arm.
If anyone's really interested - I can take a photo of the device attached to
one of my Bedfords and send it to them.
Regards
Tim
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Mar 02 2000 - 22:30:38 PST