curious about "> /dev/tty#" in /etc/rc.sysinit

[Robert P. J. Day]

  i was just perusing the /etc/rc.sysinit file to get a better
understanding of the intricacies of the boot process (yes, i need
a life), and noticed early on a loop that runs

  > /dev/tty1
  > /dev/tty2

and so on.  this is, of course, long before the mingetty
processes are started, so i'm curious as to what these null
redirections are doing.

  for a regular file, i know they would empty the file.
but what does this operation mean with respect to a special
device file?  a wild guess would be to clear the virtual 
console, but why would a null redirection do that?

  comments?

rday