How cat's eyes were invented

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2022

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

In 1934, the late Percy Shaw almost crashed while driving home from the pub on a foggy night in West Yorkshire, in England. He was saved when his headlights were reflected in the eyes of a cat and it gave him a brilliant idea. He invented reflective studs for the road and called them cat’s eyes. Rachel Naylor speaks to Percy's great-niece, Glenda Shaw. (Photo: Percy Shaw holding one of his cat's eyes, outside his factory in Halifax, England, in 1958. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and thank you for downloading the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service
0:09.7	with me Rachel Nilla. I'm going to take you back to the invention of cat size, the reflective
0:15.3	studs in the road. They were created by the late Percy Shore in England in the 1930s
0:21.6	and are now used all over the world. I've been speaking to Percy's great niece, Glenda
0:26.4	Shore. It's 1934 and we're in West Yorkshire in England. Percy Shore has spent the evening
0:34.2	drinking Whickred White Shield beer at the Old Dolphin pub in Queensbury. It's his favourite
0:39.6	pastime, but it's time to call it a night. And though Percy makes this dry poem to his
0:44.9	village Boothtown regularly, tonight you can barely see the road in front of him due to
0:50.0	thick fog. The road from Queensbury down to Boothtown is very steep and a bit twisty and there's
0:58.1	a sheer drop down to the valley below on one side. He was driving home and it's one of these
1:06.6	floaks. He saw something reflected that prompted him to stop on when he looked. He realised he was
1:14.5	on the wrong side of the road and he got straight onto the plummeted over the precipice.
1:21.2	That's Glenda Shore, Percy's great niece. And legend has it, it was a cat that saved Percy's
1:27.2	life as his headlights were reflected in its eyes and it gave him a brilliant idea.
1:34.1	Percy had left school at 13, but he was always fixing things and inventing. Growing up he'd had
1:40.4	lots of odd jobs, but by his forties and that fateful night he saw the cat. He worked laying
1:45.9	tarmac on roads. In fact invented a machine to level the tarmac at like a road roller to speed
1:55.6	up his work. Everything is done is always to solve a problem in his life. And Percy's next problem
2:03.7	to solve was how to drive home safely from the pub in Queensbury. Based on his brainwave on the
2:09.8	night he nearly crashed. He wanted to create something reflective in the road that would guide
2:14.7	his way. He took inspiration from road signs and discovered that the luminous material came from a
2:21.0	broad. It went to investigate to check us a vacuum. Where the mad boy came in glass. It's strange
	...

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