In 1934, Percy Shaw of Halifax patented a reflecting road stud, known as the cat’s eye. Two glass reflectors sit in a rubber housing set into the road. When a tire runs over the stud, the rubber closes over the glass and cleans it. A later patent added a well for rainwater, which helps keep the glass clear.
The wartime blackout gave production a huge boost.
In 1959, the British Motor Corporation launched the Mini, designed by Alec Issigonis. The car was just over ten feet long. Issigonis turned the engine sideways and put the gearbox in the engine’s oil sump, below it. The car ran on ten-inch wheels, for which new tires had to be developed.
The result was that 80 percent of the floor area could be used for passengers and luggage.
The engineer Christopher Cockerell tested an idea with household objects. He blew air into an upturned coffee tin placed over the pan of a pair of kitchen scales. With a second, smaller tin inside the first, the air lifted more than three times as much weight. One account says the inner tin was a cat food tin.
He filed his first patent in December 1955. On 25 July 1959, his hovercraft, the SR.N1, crossed the English Channel from Calais to Dover.
In 1932, George Carwardine, an engineer who worked on car suspension, applied for a patent on a new lamp. Springs near its base balance the arm, so the lamp stays in whatever position it is put. He made the first lamps in his workshop in Bath. From 1934, Herbert Terry and Sons of Redditch made and sold it as the Anglepoise.
It is often said that the lamp copies the human arm. That claim has been disputed.
In 1975, Andrew Ritchie, a young engineer, sketched a folding bicycle in his flat near the Brompton Oratory in London. It folds in three parts. Folded, the Brompton measures 58.5 by 56.5 by 27 centimeters.
In the eighteenth century, sailors could not find their longitude at sea without an accurate clock. The clockmaker John Harrison built three large sea clocks, known as H1, H2 and H3. He worked on H3 for 19 years.
His answer was H4, a timekeeper the size of a large pocket watch. On a trial voyage to Jamaica, it lost only about five seconds after two months at sea.
On 29 February 2012, the Raspberry Pi Foundation launched the Raspberry Pi, a computer the size of a credit card. It cost 35 dollars. The Raspberry Pi Foundation wanted to give the computers to schools eager to teach students how to program.
In coal mines, a naked flame could ignite firedamp, an explosive gas. In 1815, Humphry Davy found the answer in a fine wire gauze around the flame. The gauze let the light out, but the flame could not pass through its small holes and ignite the gas outside.
British English has many warm words for a clever solution.
Nifty: Clever and effective, usually in a small way.
Neat: Simple, tidy and clever.
Ingenious: Showing a clever and original idea.
A clever little gadget: A small device that solves a problem well. The word “little” adds approval.
Cracked it: Solved a hard problem at last.
Trevor Baylis had his home and workshop on Eel Pie Island in the Thames at Twickenham. After seeing a television program about the spread of AIDS in Africa, he set out to build a radio that needed no batteries or mains power. His first prototype combined a transistor radio, an electric motor from a toy car and the clockwork mechanism of a music box.
He patented the design in 1992. In 1994, a film about it on the BBC program Tomorrow’s World brought him an investor.