Percy Shaw, OBE was an English inventor and businessman. He
patentA patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
ed the reflective road stud or "
cat's eyeThe cat's eye is a retroreflective safety device used in road marking and was the first of a range of raised pavement markers. It originated in the UK in 1933 and is today used all over the world....
" in 1934, and set up a company to manufacture his invention in 1935.
Biography
Shaw was born in
HalifaxHalifax is a minster town, within the Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale in West Yorkshire, England. It has an urban area population of 82,056 in the 2001 Census. It is well-known as a centre of England's woollen manufacture from the 15th century onward, originally dealing through the Halifax Piece...
in the
West Riding of YorkshireThe West Riding of Yorkshire is one of the three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire, England. From 1889 to 1974 the administrative county, County of York, West Riding , was based closely on the historic boundaries...
, the fourth child and second son of James Shaw, a dyehouse labourer who worked at a local mill, and his second wife Esther Hannah Morrell. Shaw's father also had seven children by his first wife, Jane Brearley, who died in 1883. In 1892, his parents moved their large family to
BoothtownBoothtown is a suburb of Halifax, West Yorkshire, England.Located on the A647 Halifax to Bradford. It was on this road that Percy Shaw came up with the idea of cat's eyes as an aid to road safety...
in Halifax, where Shaw lived for the rest of his life.
Shaw was educated at Boothtown Board School, and started work as a labourer in a cloth mill at the age of 13. He became apprenticed to a
wire drawerWire drawing is a metalworking process used to reduce the cross-section of a wire by pulling the wire through a single, or series of, drawing die. There are many applications for wire drawing, including electrical wiring, cables, tension-loaded structural components, springs, paper clips, spokes...
, but the low wages on offer were not attractive and he soon took a series of unskilled jobs in local engineering works. He was thus well placed to join his father in a new business repairing small machine tools used in munitions production during
World War IWorld War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. After his father's death in 1929, he started his own small business as a road contractor.
Invention
Shaw was inventive, even at an early age, but his most famous invention was the
cat's eyeThe cat's eye is a retroreflective safety device used in road marking and was the first of a range of raised pavement markers. It originated in the UK in 1933 and is today used all over the world....
for lighting the way along roads in the dark. There are several stories about how he came up with the idea. The most famous involves him driving down the difficult road from the Old Dolphin public house in Clayton Heights to his home in Halifax, when a cat on a fence along the edge of the road looked at the car, reflected his headlights back to him, allowing him to take corrective action and remain on the road. In an interview with
Alan WhickerAlan Donald Whicker, CBE is a British journalist and broadcaster. His career has spanned over 50 years.-Background:Whicker was born to British parents in Cairo, Egypt...
, however, he told a different story of being inspired on a foggy night to think of a way of moving the reflective studs on a road sign to the road surface. Further, local school children who were taken on visits to the factory in the late 1970s were told that the idea came from Shaw seeing light reflected from his
carČar is a village in the municipality of Bujanovac, Serbia. According to the 2002 census, the town has a population of 296 people.-References:...
headlamps by
tramA tram is a passenger rail vehicle which runs on tracks along public urban streets and also sometimes on separate rights of way. It may also run between cities and/or towns , and/or partially grade separated even in the cities...
tracks in the road on a foggy night. The tram tracks were polished by the passing of trams and by following the advancing reflection, it was possible to maintain the correct position in the road.
In 1934, he patented his invention (patent No. 436,290 and 457,536), based on the 1927 reflecting lens patent of Richard Hollins Murray. A year later, Reflecting Roadstuds Ltd was formed to manufacture the devices. Sales were initially slow, but approval from the Ministry of Transport and the
blackoutA blackout during war, or apprehended war, is the practice of collectively minimizing outdoor light, including upwardly directed light. This was done in the 20th century to prevent crews of enemy aircraft from being able to navigate to their targets simply by sight, for example during the London...
in the Second World War gave a huge boost to production and the firm, located near Shaw's home in
BoothtownBoothtown is a suburb of Halifax, West Yorkshire, England.Located on the A647 Halifax to Bradford. It was on this road that Percy Shaw came up with the idea of cat's eyes as an aid to road safety...
, grew in size making more than a million roadstuds a year, which were exported all over the world. A later patent added a rainwater reservoir to the rubber shoe, which could be used to wash the glass "eyes" when a car drove over the stud. Such a success was the invention of the "cat's eye" that he was rewarded with an
OBEThe Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
for services to exports in the birthday honours list in 1965.
He became eccentric in later life, removing the carpets and much of the furniture from his home, and keeping three televisions running constantly (respectively tuned to BBC1, BBC2 and ITV, all with the sound turned down) with a fourth in reserve. One luxury was his
Rolls-RoyceThis a list of Rolls-Royce motor cars and includes vehicles produced by:*Rolls-Royce Limited *Rolls-Royce Motors , which was owned by Vickers between 1980 and 1998, and after that by Volkswagen...
PhantomRolls-Royce has used the Phantom name on luxury cars over the past century:* Rolls-Royce Phantom I, 1925–1931* Rolls-Royce Phantom II, 1929–1936* Rolls-Royce Phantom III, 1936–1939* Rolls-Royce Phantom IV, 1950–1959...
. He never married and he died from cancer and heart disease at Boothtown Mansion, Halifax, where he had lived for all but two of his 86 years. Despite rumours of a personal fortune, his personal estate was admitted to
probateProbate is the legal process of administering the estate of a deceased person by resolving all claims and distributing the deceased person's property under the valid will. A probate court decides the validity of a testator's will...
in December 1976 at a value of £193,500. He was an agnostic, but his funeral was held at Boothtown Methodist Church, and he was cremated in
EllandElland is a market town in Calderdale, in the county of West Yorkshire, England, south of Halifax, by the River Calder and the Calder and Hebble Navigation. The area of Elland was called Elant in the Domesday Book...
.
In 2005, he was listed as one of the 50 greatest
YorkshireYorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
people in a book by
Bernard InghamSir Bernard Ingham is a journalist and former civil servant who is best known as Margaret Thatcher's Chief Press Secretary while she was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Today Ingham lectures in Public Relations at Middlesex University in London...
.
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