Inventor / Industrial Designer
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Percy Shaw OBE, was the manufacturer and inventor of the catseye road stud, he was born on 15 April 1890 at Heginbottom Fold, 32 Ovenden Road, Halifax.
An early motoring enthusiast, Shaw's experience of negotiating the hazardous descent from Queensbury to Halifax after the removal of the tramlines, which had guided the motorist at night and in fog, induced a concern to improve road safety. Whether it was the reflection of his car headlamps on a reflective roadsign, as Shaw insisted in 1968, or his brother Cecil's perhaps apocryphal story of a cat's eyes transfixed in a beam of light, he realized by 1934 the need for reflecting studs set into the road surface as markers on unlit roads.
A patent for a prototype road stud, in the shape of a Maltese cross, was approved in 1935 and a company formed, with the catseye as its registered trademark, and Percy Shaw as managing director. Initially, luminous glass lenses were obtained from Czechoslovakia and rubber pads from Manchester, but subsequently all components were manufactured and assembled on a 20 acre site at Boothtown, adjacent to Shaw's home.
A series of further patents modified the original design, including the incorporation of a self-wiping mechanism, but orders were slow until Ministry of Transport backing, and the Second World War blackout, provided a major boost to production. Widening markets after the war ensured continuing expansion. In 1965 Shaw was appointed OBE for services to exports, and by the time of his death in 1976 some 15 million catseyes had been manufactured.
It was widely, if inaccurately, assumed that Shaw's invention had made him a multi-millionaire. While Shaw himself often joked about his high tax liability, rumours of a £17 million personal fortune were repeatedly denied, and probate records reveal a relatively modest personal estate of £193,500.
Apart from the luxury of a customized Rolls-Royce and a profusion of television sets, Shaw's lifestyle was essentially unostentatious. He owned only two suits and often appeared attired in worn, moth-eaten pullovers.
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