Editing Percy Shaw

{{Short description|English inventor of the reflective road stud (1890–1976)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2025}}
{{Use British English|date=November 2013}}
'''Percy Shaw''', {{post-nominals|country=GBR|OBE}} (15 April 1890 – 1 September 1976) was an English inventor and businessman.  He [[patent]]ed the reflective road stud or "[[cat's eye (road)|cat's eye]]" in 1934, and set up a company to manufacture his invention in 1935.
[[File:Catseye00.jpg|thumb|{{center|An early poster and catalogue image}}]]

==Biography==
Percy Shaw was born in [[Halifax, West Yorkshire|Halifax]] in the [[West Riding of Yorkshire]], 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]] 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]]d to a [[Wire drawing|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]]. 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==
[[File:LIGHTDOME.JPG|thumb|right|The retroreflective glass spheres shown set into a cat's eye in the United Kingdom.]]
Shaw was inventive, even at an early age, but his most famous invention was the [[Cat's eye (road)|cat's eye]] for showing the way along roads in the dark. There are several stories about how he came up with the idea. The most famous involves his driving down the difficult road (Queensbury Road, part of the [[A647 road|A647]] with a very steep drop to one side) from the Old Dolphin public house in [[Clayton, West Yorkshire|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]], 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 [[Reflection (physics)|reflected]] from his [[car]] headlamps by [[tram]] 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.<ref name=":0">{{cite news|title=Millionaire with a love of living is eighty today|url=http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/|accessdate=21 February 2016|work=Telegraph and Argus|date=15 April 1970}}</ref>

In 1934, he patented his invention (patents Nos. 436,290 and 457,536), based on the 1927 [[retroflector|retroreflecting]] 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 (United Kingdom)|Ministry of Transport]] and the [[Blackout (wartime)|blackout]] in the [[Second World War]] gave a huge boost to production and the firm, located near Shaw's home in [[Boothtown]], 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.<!--They are now replaced on many roads by reflective plastic.{{Fact|date=December 2007}}-->  Such a success was the invention of the "cat's eye" that he was rewarded with an [[Order of the British Empire|OBE]] for services to exports in the [[birthday honours list]] in 1965.

He became [[eccentricity (behavior)|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 with a fourth showing BBC2 in colour, all with the sound turned down).<ref name=":0" /> 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]] 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. His one luxury was his [[Rolls-Royce (car)|Rolls-Royce]] [[Rolls-Royce Phantom VI|Phantom]]. 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]] 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]].

In 2005, he was listed as one of the 50 greatest [[Yorkshire]] people in a book by [[Bernard Ingham]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/oct/13/books.britishidentity|title=The 50 greatest Yorkshire people?|first=Martin|last=Wainwright|date=13 October 2005|accessdate=30 April 2019|work=The Guardian}}</ref>

==Commemoration==
A pub in Broad Street, Halifax, is named for Shaw.<ref>{{Cite journal|work=Wetherspoon News|issue=Spring 2019|page=57|title=A Toast to the Memory of the Fathers of Invention}}</ref> A [[blue plaque]] was erected by the [[Halifax Civic Trust]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.halifaxcivictrust.org/blueplaqueslist.html|title=List of Blue Plaques|publisher=Halifax Civic Trust|accessdate=30 April 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190430165856/http://www.halifaxcivictrust.org/blueplaqueslist.html|archive-date=30 April 2019|url-status=dead}}</ref> The [[University of Huddersfield]] renamed the Queen Street Studios building 'Percy Shaw House' in honour of Shaw.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://students.hud.ac.uk/help/disability/accessibility/buildingplans/|title=University of Huddersfield Building Plans| publisher=University of Huddersfield| access-date=1 October 2024}}</ref>

==References==
<references/>
* John A. Hargreaves, "Shaw, Percy (1890–1976)", ''[[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]]'', [[Oxford University Press]], September 2004; online edition, January 2008; [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/38423 last accessed 1 September 2009]
* [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/2748288/Cats-eyes-of-the-future.html Cat's eyes of the future], Giles Chapman, ''The Daily Telegraph'', 18 August 2007
* [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/3634816/Percy-Shaw-Man-with-his-eye-on-the-road.html Percy Shaw: Man with his eye on the road], Robert Colvile, ''The Daily Telegraph'', 30 November 2007
* [http://www.percyshawcatseyes.com/index.php/history Percy Shaw O.B.E. 15 April 1890 to 1 September 1976], from Reflecting Roadstuds Limited

==External links==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20040509215935/http://www.halifaxtoday.co.uk/mk4custompages/CustomPage.aspx?PageID=39556 Halifax Today article on Percy Shaw]
* [http://v3.espacenet.com/origdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=GB457536 Catseye Patent GB457536 (Improvements relating to blocks for road surface marking)]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20140903062449/http://designmuseum.org/design/percy-shaw Design Museum] (Archive copy: 3 September 2013)
* [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-64512319 Cat's eyes: How a pub trip made the world's roads safer], BBC

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shaw, Percy}}
[[Category:1890 births]]
[[Category:1976 deaths]]
[[Category:People from Halifax, West Yorkshire]]
[[Category:Officers of the Order of the British Empire]]
[[Category:20th-century English inventors]]