Percy Shaw, (15 April 1890 – 1 September 1976) was an English inventor and businessman. He
patent
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...
ed the reflective road stud or "
cat's eye" in 1934, and set up a company to manufacture his invention in 1935.
Biography
Percy Shaw was born in
Halifax in the
West Riding of Yorkshire
The West Riding of Yorkshire is one of three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire, England. From 1889 to 1974 the administrative county County of York, West Riding (the area under the control of West Riding County Council), abbreviated County ...
, 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
Boothtown
Boothtown is a suburb of Halifax, West Yorkshire, England, which falls within Town Ward, one of the 17 wards of Calderdale.
Its history was dominated by the mills of the textile industry. Rawson's Mill on Old Lane is now disused and designat ...
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
apprentice
Apprenticeship is a system for training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study (classroom work and reading). Apprenticeships can also enable practitioners to gain a ...
d to a
wire drawer, 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 the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. After his father's death in 1929, he started his own small business as a road contractor, repairing roads until his death in the 1970s. He received an OBE in 1965.
Invention
![LIGHTDOME](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/LIGHTDOME.JPG)
Shaw was inventive, even at an early age, but his most famous invention was the
cat's eye 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 (Queensbury Road, part of the
A647
The A647 is an A road in West Yorkshire, England that begins in Leeds and ends in Halifax. The road is long.
Route
The road begins at the Armley Gyratory and goes via Armley, by-passes Stanningley and Pudsey, then onwards via Thornbury to th ...
with a very steep drop to one side) 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 and reflected his headlights back to him, allowing him to take corrective action and remain on the road. In an interview with
Alan Whicker
Alan Donald Whicker (2 August 1921 – 12 July 2013) was a British journalist and television presenter and broadcaster. His career spanned almost 60 years, during which time he presented the documentary television programme ''Whicker ...
, 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 schoolchildren 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
car
A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people instead of goods.
The year 1886 is regarded as ...
headlamps by
tram
A tram (called a streetcar or trolley in North America) is a rail vehicle that travels on tramway tracks on public urban streets; some include segments on segregated right-of-way. The tramlines or networks operated as public transport are ...
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 (patents Nos. 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
A ministry of transport or transportation is a ministry responsible for transportation within a country. It usually is administered by the ''minister for transport''. The term is also sometimes applied to the departments or other government age ...
and the
blackout in the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
gave a huge boost to production and the firm, located near Shaw's home in
Boothtown
Boothtown is a suburb of Halifax, West Yorkshire, England, which falls within Town Ward, one of the 17 wards of Calderdale.
Its history was dominated by the mills of the textile industry. Rawson's Mill on Old Lane is now disused and designat ...
, 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
OBE for services to exports in the
birthday honours list
The Birthday Honours, in some Commonwealth realms, mark the King's Official Birthday, reigning British monarch's official birthday by granting various individuals appointment into Order (honour), national or Dynastic order of knighthood, dynastic ...
in 1965.
He became eccentric in later life, removing the carpets, curtains and much of the furniture from his isolated home, and keeping four televisions running constantly (respectively tuned to BBC1, BBC2 and ITV, all with the sound turned down)
with a fourth showing BBC2 in colour. On each Friday a few friends would come to the house and Percy would supply crates of bottled ale and boxes of potato crisps. He told
Alan Whicker
Alan Donald Whicker (2 August 1921 – 12 July 2013) was a British journalist and television presenter and broadcaster. His career spanned almost 60 years, during which time he presented the documentary television programme ''Whicker ...
that the reason for keeping the TVs on simultaneously was so that his friends could watch whichever of the then existing channels they chose to, and there would be no arguments. One luxury was his
Rolls-Royce
Rolls-Royce (always hyphenated) may refer to:
* Rolls-Royce Limited, a British manufacturer of cars and later aero engines, founded in 1906, now defunct
Automobiles
* Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, the current car manufacturing company incorporated in ...
Phantom
Phantom may refer to:
* Spirit (animating force), the vital principle or animating force within all living things
** Ghost, the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that can appear to the living
Aircraft
* Boeing Phantom Ray, a stealthy un ...
. 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
probate
Probate is the judicial process whereby a will is "proved" in a court of law and accepted as a valid public document that is the true last testament of the deceased, or whereby the estate is settled according to the laws of intestacy in the sta ...
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
Elland
Elland is a market town in Calderdale, in the county of West Yorkshire, England. It is situated south of Halifax, by the River Calder and the Calder and Hebble Navigation. Elland was recorded as ''Elant'' in the Domesday Book of 1086. It ha ...
.
In 2005, he was listed as one of the 50 greatest
Yorkshire
Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other Eng ...
people in a book by
Bernard Ingham
Sir Bernard Ingham (born 21 June 1932) is a British journalist and former civil servant. He was Margaret Thatcher's chief press secretary throughout her time as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. He was knighted in Thatche ...
.
Commemoration
A pub in Broad Street, Halifax, is named for Shaw. A
blue plaque
A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place in the United Kingdom and elsewhere to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person, event, or former building on the site, serving as a historical marker. The term i ...
was erected by the
Halifax Civic Trust
Halifax commonly refers to:
*Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
* Halifax, West Yorkshire, England
*Halifax (bank), a British bank
Halifax may also refer to:
Places Australia
*Halifax, Queensland, a coastal town in the Shire of Hinchinbrook
* Halifax ...
.
References
* John A. Hargreaves, "Shaw, Percy (1890–1976)", ''
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...
'',
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, September 2004; online edition, January 2008
last accessed 1 September 2009 Giles Chapman, ''The Daily Telegraph'', 18 August 2007
Robert Colvile, ''The Daily Telegraph'', 30 November 2007
Percy Shaw O.B.E. 15 April 1890 to 1 September 1976 from Reflecting Roadstuds Limited
External links
Halifax Today article on Percy ShawCatseye Patent GB457536 (Improvements relating to blocks for road surface marking)Design Museum(Archive copy: 3 September 2013)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shaw, Percy
1890 births
1976 deaths
People from Halifax, West Yorkshire
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
20th-century British inventors