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The traffic direction indicator is an integral part of modern motor vehicles but in 1915 nothing equivalent existied.
The original idea came from my great grandfather, Henry Salter Neville. He was undertaking a traffic census on the Oxford to Banbury road in 1915 when he conceived the idea of a mechanical direction indicator. The headmaster of the local village school helped him to put his ideas onto paper and a working model was made by his friends William Trinder and Henry Osborne, "Cycle Factors and Gunsmiths" of Banbury.
The original model has been lost but my late mother remembered being fascinated by the light at the end of the arm designed to be illuminated at night.
The invention was patented in 1916 as No. 107279.
My grandmother, Amelia Coppins, took her father to Birmingham to try to interest motor manufactures, unsuccessfully.
The cost of keeping up the patent, it increased by £1 per year, was too much and the patent lapsed. However, it was soon taken up, free, and became part of vehicle design until superseded by the blinking front and rear lights.