Cat's eye - reflecting bunny (helkurjänes)

Please help me travel safely and see a lot of great geocachers.

Percy Shaw, OBE (15 April 1890 – 1 September 1976) 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

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 him 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 on 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 on the road.

In 1934, he patented his invention (patents Nos. 436,290 and 457,536), based on 1927 reflecting lens patent of Richard Hollins Murray. A year later, Reflecting Roadstuds Ltd was formed to manufacture the devices. Sales were initially slow, but approval from the Ministry of Transport and the blackout in the Second World War gave a huge boost to production, and the firm, located near Shaw's home in Boothtown, grew in size making more than a million road studs a year, which were exported all over the world. A later patent added a rainwater reservoir to the rubber shoe, which could be used to wash the glass "eyes" when a car drove over the stud. Such a success was the invention of the "cat's eye" that he was rewarded with an OBE for services to exports in the birthday honors list in 1965.

• 1934. aastal patenteeris Nottinghami teetööline Percy Shaw maailma esimese helkuri, mille loomise idee tekkis tal öösel valgustamata teel sõites. Nimelt märkas mees, et teepervel seisva kassi silmad peegeldavad autotulede valgust. Sarnane omadus, peegeldada silmadele langenud valgust, on ka paljude süvaveekalade ja maismaakiskjaliste silmadel.
• Esimene helkur kujutas kummist raamiga ääristatud marmorklotsi. Mõni aasta hiljem ühendati omavahel kaks leiutist – plast ja helkur – ning marmorist helkurid vahetati välja plasti vastu. 1947. aastal võeti n-n kassisilmad maanteedel kasutusse, selle leiutaja pärjati aga Briti impeeriumi ordeniga, sest sündinud oli teed rajav innovatsioon liiklusohutuse valdkonnas.