Percy Shaw
Percy Shaw, " 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 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
Invention
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 his driving down the difficult road (Queensbury Road, part of the A647 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, 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 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.[1]
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,
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)
In 2005, he was listed as one of the 50 greatest Yorkshire people in a book by Bernard Ingham.[2]
Commemoration
A pub in Broad Street, Halifax, is named for Shaw.[3] A blue plaque was erected by the Halifax Civic Trust.[4]
References
- ^ a b "Millionaire with a love of living is eighty today". Telegraph and Argus. 15 April 1970. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
- ^ Wainwright, Martin (13 October 2005). "The 50 greatest Yorkshire people?". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 April 2019.
- ^ "A Toast to the Memory of the Fathers of Invention". Wetherspoon News (Spring 2019): 57.
- ^ "List of Blue Plaques". Halifax Civic Trust. Archived from the original on 30 April 2019. Retrieved 30 April 2019.
- John A. Hargreaves, "Shaw, Percy (1890–1976)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edition, January 2008; last accessed 1 September 2009
- Cat's eyes of the future, Giles Chapman, The Daily Telegraph, 18 August 2007
- Percy Shaw: Man with his eye on the road, Robert Colvile, The Daily Telegraph, 30 November 2007
- Percy Shaw O.B.E. 15 April 1890 to 1 September 1976, from Reflecting Roadstuds Limited