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Percy Shaw

Percy Shaw, English businessman, invented the cat's eye (died 1976)

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Born
April 15, 1890
Died
September 1, 1976
Zodiac sign
Aries
Birth year
1890

About Percy Shaw

Percy Shaw, was an English inventor and businessman. He patented the reflective road stud or "cat's eye" in 1934, and set up a company to manufacture his invention in 1935. 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.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Percy Shaw was born

Percy Shaw was born in 1890. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Headlines and milestones

  • Top headlineWounded Knee Massacre — last major conflict with Native Americans
  • Technology milestoneElectric chair used for first execution
  • Notable inventionElectric chair
  • World population~1.5B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderBenjamin Harrison
  • U.S. population63.0M

1890 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Percy Shaw's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure18902026
Postage stamp$0.02$0.73
Population63.0M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.