"The Catseye is what great design is all about. Simple, functional, and beautiful"
James May, presenter of British TV show Top Gear
One night in 1933 when the road mender Percy Shaw (1890-1976) was driving home in Yorkshire, he saw the light of his car headlamps reflected in the eyes of a cat beside the road. This gave Shaw the inspiration that by replicating this effect he could produce a practical way of helping drivers navigate poorly lit roads.
Shaw's challenge was to create a device bright enough to illuminate roads at night, robust enough to cope with cars constantly driving across it, and that also required minimum maintenance. Shaw came up with a small-device that could be inserted into the road as -a marker. It consisted of four glass beads placed in two pairs facing in opposite directions, embedded in a flexible rubber dome. When vehicles drove over the dome, the rubber contracted and the glass beads dropped safely beneath the road surface. The device was even self-cleaning. The cast-iron base collected rainwater and whenever the top of the dome was depressed, the rubber would wash the water across the glass beads to cleanse away any grime, just as the eye is cleansed by tears. The patent for the Catseye was registered in 1934, and in 2001 the product was voted the greatest design of the twentieth century, ahead even of Concorde.
