When one looks up the history of road safety devices, few have such an appealing story as that of the Cat’s Eye lane marker invented in 1934 by Percy Shaw. Here was an inspired Yorkshireman who after taking a car journey down a dark road one night noticed the glint of light coming off some tram tracks beside him as well as the reflective eyes of a local cat. The combination triggered an epiphany and his revolutionary new reflective road studs. Shaw certainly deserves a great deal of credit, but as is often the case when we choose to retell history, other pioneers sadly get lost and forgotten.
The other week I was fascinated to purchase an American cast iron road-stud which possibly dispels the myth that Percy got there first. Of the two Percy’s design was certainly better, but for the idea a man named Erickson looks to have got there 8 years before him.
A simplified history of US road safety
This is not the place for an in depth study of road markers, but the advent of the motorcar at the very end of the 19th Century fundamentally revolutionised our understanding of what to expect from a road. While simple beaten earth tracks had been sufficient for millennia beforehand, the physical speed and growing number of motorized vehicles at the very start of the 20th Century meant brand new measures were needed to ensure everyone stayed safe while sharing the roads. Each country was to independently come up with their own ways of doing this, but for its sheer diversity and scale the USA had more issues than most. In the very early days there was no joined up thinking and each of the 48 States was entirely responsible for maintaining and supporting their own roads. This surely created many conflicting and confusing road markings for the emerging motorist.
Finally in 1914 the American Association of State Highway & Transport Officials (AASHTO) was set up with the primary aim of creating and funding a more unified Federal highway system. Their first success was to help pass the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916, but with America’s participation in WW1 shortly afterwards its effectiveness was limited as funds found themselves redirected to the war effort. In 1921 a new Federal Aid Highway Act was passed which secured an annual $75 million input into the national highway network (maintained at this annual level until 1930). There was also a new rule that each State had to maintain up to 7% of their roads as part of a National Highway system. These two objectives of funding and unification led to a great age of road development in the US.
Image attribution: USFS via Flikr
In 1926 US roads were finally numbered and in 1927 AASHTO released the ‘Manual and Specifications for the Manufacture, Display and Erection of US Standard Road Markers’. This was not a catchy title but was a good first attempt at trying to get everyone to use the same markers. Despite this the manual still differentiated between rural and urban roads and failed to cover many aspects including road markings. To those in the construction industry AASHTO’s progressive work would have convinced them of an imminent new national market for road signs and markers.
First there was light
Looking at relevant patents we can see that there were actually quite a few from the 19-teens onwards which aimed to illuminate key parts of the road to assist night-time driving. Most of these relied on simply sinking electric lights into the surface of the road at junctions, roundabouts and dangerous curves. Examples of a few can be seen below, but while most would have happily worked in principle, the never-ending cost of replacing bulbs and repair work would have made such lights instantly unviable on a national level.
In 1926 an Englishman named RH Murray invented what is so far considered the first reflective glass bead (cataphote) and it is this glass bead that Percy Shaw would incorporate into his famous Cat’s Eye of 1934. The bead was quickly taken up in the US for use on road signs and advertising.
What is not known is that earlier in the same year (1926) an American named Knut Edwin Erickson patented his own retro-reflective road stud (first filed in January 1926) which also used these reflecting glass beads. This patent was obviously submitted 8 years before Shaw’s Cat’s Eye and 3 months before Murray’s.
Knut Edwin Erickson
Born in Norway in 1883 Knut emigrated to the US with his parents and siblings in 1901. He moved around during the first decade living in Minneapolis, Montana and then by 1910 in Washington State. During WW1 Knut settled in Spokane, Washington which at the time was undergoing rapid growth. In 1917 when he was drafted to the war effort Erickson was recorded as working as a Pay Master of the General Construction Company. This busy role would have exposed him to the newly emerging AASHTO and he also surely recognised the upcoming market potential for designing new road safety devices. Around 1917-18 he and his family moved to Portland Oregon where they would live for the next 28 years.
Sadly, I have yet to find much other detail on Knut and the Portland local museum doesn’t seem to have much on him either. What we do know is that in January 1926 he submitted his first patent for a reflective road stud, followed by another more detailed one a few months later. Around the same time he also set up his own business called ‘K.E. Ericsson Co Inc’ probably to manufacture and sell his new road safety devices. Marketing material from 1939 states ‘Ericson Owl Reflector buttons, made in two sizes, with one or two-way showing are designed to provide safe, reliable and efficient traffic stripe marking on state and county roads…’ These ‘Owl systems’ were obviously not just intended for cars but also pedestrian use as shown in a 1931 photo from the American Electric Railway Association magazine. However the small double sided buttons were clearly oriented to car lane marking. In 1941 at the age of 58 Knut sold the business and in 1946 moved away from the area. Knut Erickson died in California in 1965.
Erickson Patent Stud v. the Cat’s Eye ?
Since Erickson patented his reflecting safety road stud in 1926 there is no denying that he beat Percy Shaw to being the first by around 8 years. However, without much more research things are sadly not as clear cut as they could be. Looking at his patent Erickson has given a range of designs with most of them being single-sided, suggesting that they were intended for assistance stopping at junctions etc. Indeed there is no specific wording in the patent document which mentions use as lane markers. In some respects that is not surprising as even the early AASHTO road specification manuals did not bother to mention anything similar either. Instead, as mentioned before, it focussing on applying devices to junctions, blind spots and dangerous bends.
While Erickson’s original patent document from 1926 does not directly suggest using his studs to mark road lanes, there is no denying that the Erickson example stud I purchased was indeed intended for that purpose. It is not only double sided but the cataphotes have been angled to pick up the beams of the cars in both directions. Because Erickson’s original patent description had been quite broad it would have allowed him to vary his design without the need for new applications and he could have used his existing patent all the way through to 1941 when he sold up.
In truth therefore I don’t know when this exact variation of design was created by Erickson, and without further research all we can say is that it was produced between 1929-41. Of course, there is also the tantalising ‘Owl’ name which this stud bears to throw into the discussion. With such a similar connotation to Percy Shaw’s ‘Cat’s Eye’, who really copied who?!
Why do we not know of Erickson’s invention?
If not widely disseminated into society it is easy for inventions and inventors to be forgotten. From a pure design and practicality point of view Percy Shaw’s Cat’s Eye of 1934 is a far more versatile and clever concept. Shaw also had the foresight to patent his design around the world and tenacity to persist till successful. But uncomfortably Shaw’s version of how he thought up his invention seems to have varied slightly each time it was told.
While Erickson’s clever organic form was specially created to help slide the car wheel safely off the stud, it was still a mass of cast iron. This made it strong yet impractical for use in locations with snow as they would have caused havoc with the snow ploughs. This is always one reason cited why the US never really embraced the Cat’s Eye. Since Oregon and its neighbours do get regular annual snowfall, it is perhaps one reason why Erickson safety studs never sold well. I can certainly find little reference to them on the internet. Another reason maybe brings us back to the AASHTO. If their literature and organisational focus overlooked the need for lane safety markings until the post WW2 era, then highways officials in each State during the 1930s would have been far less likely to go ahead and purchase any. In truth when Erickson sold up in 1941 he left the road safety market before it had really begun.
Comparable later road safety devices in the US such as Bot’s Dots and reflective bead paint likewise did not appear until the 1950s. In the UK Shaw’s ‘Cat’s Eyes’ would begin to sell better only during WW2 due to the wartime blackout conditions. Ultimately, it appears that Knut was a man ahead of his time. That in his 1965 obituary he is cited as a road safety pioneer means that he and his family understood his contribution. Either way, perhaps it is time for someone to properly research Knut Eric Erickson so that his name can be re-instated back into the road safety history books where it firmly belongs.
There is no single resource I have found yet which relates to this subject fully ( and I don’t pretend to be a specialist either). Instead most pieces on the web are very centred on the story of Percy Shaw. However, for information around the subject here are just a few links that you might find interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KYBaoNPNgA
https://www.roadtrafficsigns.com/a-history-of-the-cataphote-reflector
http://www.rema.org.uk/pub/pdf/history-retroreflective-materials.pdf
https://www.realyorkshireblog.com/post/percy-shaw-the-yorkshire-inventor-of-the-cat-s-eye