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A BRIGHT IDEA TO DESIGN REFLECTOR

Cat’s eyes, which helped to bring safety to Britain’s roads, are celebrating their 70th birthday. ROBERT BULLARD looks back on the man who invented them

Each year, cars get safer to drive, roads get wider and straighter, and pedestrians get better protection. But one of the greatest influences on today’s road safety are cats eyes, which are 70 years old this year.

Their inventor, Percy Shaw, was born in Halifax in April 1890. He was an imaginative and enterprising youth, and seems to have spent his time selling fruit and vegetables around the local neighbourhood, coming up with ideas for inventions and - having left school at 13 – leaning the skills of manufacturing.

His first success came in the early 30s, when he set up a business constructing tarmac paths and drives. It also provided him with his first successful invention. For out of an old Ford engine, three solid-tyred wheels and various other bits and pieces Shaw developed a small mechanical pavement roller.

But today the eccentric Yorkshireman is better known for his another invention, the catseyes that run down the middle of our roads.

For years night time drivers had relied on the reflections of their headlights in the tramlines to guide them through the country’s smog-like air. But when the lines were drug up, as trams made way for buses, Percy realised that motorists urgently needed a replacement to safeguard their safety.

There is a sentimental story that, when driving home late one night, Percy was saved from driving over the edge of a precipice by the reflection of his lights in a cat’s eyes ahead of him, and he set to work trying to replicate what had saved him.

Shaw dismissed this as romantic fiction. Instead, he says that one night he was struck by the reflection from a road sign and in a blunt Yorkshire fashion thought to himself, “we want those things down on the road, not up there.”

Whatever the source of his inspirational idea, in 1935, after several years of trial and improvement, Percy Shaw patented what he called ‘Catseyes’– two aluminium-backed lenses mounted in rubber, set in a cast-iron casing in the road.

Orders for the eyes were rather slow at first. But Shaw’s future was sealed when, in 1937, the Ministry of Transport ran a competition to identify the best road reflector. Two years later Shaw’s invention was the only one still around and soon afterwards, boosted by the need for them during WW2 blackouts, nearly every road in Britain had been dug up and inserted with them.

Initially Percy imported the lenses from Czechoslovakia and got hold of the rubber from Manchester. But later all of the components were manufactured and assembled by his company, Reflecting Roadstuds, next to his house in Halifax. Over the years it grew to be a 20-acre site employing 130 people and exporting all over the world – and for which, in 1965, Shaw was awarded the OBE.

Shaw’s master stroke was in designing something that was not only potentially life-saving, but also maintenance free and self-cleaning. Realising that the lenses would quickly get dirty, he built a small reservoir within the casing, which would fill up with water when it rained, and a lip just below the lenses. This meant that, every time a car ran over the catseyes, the lenses would be wiped and the water would squirt upwards and clean them. So don’t complain next time it rains!

Everyone has always assumed that Percy Shaw made a fortune out of his invention - after all, he sold fifteen million of them during his lifetime.

But there was not much to show for his wealth beyond a custom-built Rolls Royce, a large collection of television sets and, apparently, a cellar full of his favourite ‘White Shield’ beer.

Instead, Shaw lived simply and frugally. His house had no curtains or carpets, and his living room was said to be like a railway station waiting room. He cooked all his own meals, and was known for wearing moth-eaten pullovers.

When he died, a bachelor, on 1st September 1976, Percy Shaw had lived all but two of his years in the same house in Boothtown, Halifax. He may have travelled all over the world, but as far as he was concerned, “there’s nothing going on abroad, I’d rather stay in Halifax”.

Shaw’s catseyes have now been updated, and in the future they could be even more useful than they already are. Equipped with the right technology, they could forewarn motorists of speed restrictions and accidents, advertise nearby tourist attractions, or inform police of stolen cars. Maybe on day – and sooner than 70 years!

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