Mondo Knows Facts

Cat's eyes came from a self-cleaning road stud

Percy Shaw patented a rubber reflector that wiped itself under each wheel Yorkshire inventor Percy Shaw registered his reflecting road stud in 1934 after noticing how light caught tram rails and a cat's eyes at night. The rubber base squashes under a passing wheel, and the raised housing presses the glass lenses against it, so the reflector cleans itself. Britain still uses them on many unlit roads. It sits in Mondo's everyday life collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Cat's eyes came from a self-cleaning road stud: Yellow raised pavement markers along Bear Creek Road on the
Famartin ยท CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท licence ยท source

Where this comes from

Encyclopaedia Britannica

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Tags: roads, safety, invention

Cat's eyes came from a self-cleaning road stud: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?
Percy Shaw patented a rubber reflector that wiped itself under each wheel. The figure is taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a everyday life fact?
Yes. It sits on the Everyday Life shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?
The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.