Kind of want to cover my entire house in linoleum right now to be honest.

These days the British are generally good at inventing things but relatively hopeless at making money from them.

There is much more to tell about cat's eyes. They had a self cleaning feature that when a vehicle ran over the rubber mounting it would compress and it would be wiped to clean it. Ingenious!!

Sir Alec Jeffreys, has caught more criminals, saved thousands of lives on death row, brought criminals to justice decades after the crime, with his invention of DNA finger printing... a total hero IMHO.

Also the Hovercraft invented by Chris Cockerell an English Inventor.

It’s a good job the cat was facing towards Percy Shaw, otherwise he would have invented the furry pencil sharpener.

The most earth shattering British invention or discovery in 20th- 21st Century, is the element GRAPHENE which is still being adapted for hundreds of materials and uses including computer parts, motor vehicle coverings and aeroplane manufacture due its lightness, contactivity and micro strength.

Harrison’s chronometer was the result of a giant set of shipwrecks involving the wonderfully named Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell

With Harrison actually invented something far less well known but even more important whilst developing the Nautical Chronometer, the Bi Metal Strip which was used to automatically adjust for temperature changes to maintain accuracy in the mechanism. It's used in a huge number of things today, but from a British point of of view is most important for allowing the electric kettle to turn itself off.

As a proud Englishman , I enjoyed your video immensely, thank you. Kindest Bob England

I was once scrolling through KZfaq, and a gentleman was talking about inventions. I was gobsmacked. Practically everything out there in the modern world was invented by the British . It’s too numerous to list. It’s incredible.

It's interesting that the first synthetic dye was purple, as this was a notoriously difficult colour to produce using natural sources: one reason why many ancient societies like the Romans restricted the wearing of purple to the elite class.

Never mind the hypodermic noodle. Did you know that though champagne is French, it took a Brit to invent the champagne bottle?

Percy Shaw was telling a tale - the cats eyes arose from a chevron sign at the bend on a road from Rose Linda's pub above Halifax. Cut glass spheres were embedded in the white chevrons reflecting headlights back to the driver. He immediately thought "we want them in t' road" and set about doing it. He kept the patent for his invention and, though wealthy, spent very little. A typical Yorkshireman and interesting character.

The the forerunner to today's skyscraper was invented in my home town of shrewsbury its was the first iron framed building

And the very first ATM customer, in 1967, was a UK comedy actor called Reg Varney, who was in the sitcom, 'The Rag Trade', & was later the star of 'On The Buses', a hugely popular sitcom set in a London bus garage!!

Lino is great. It is waterproof, slip resistant, antibacterial and biodegradable. An excellent choice for bathrooms and kitchens.

Cavity Magnetron ? Just about every kitchen has one.

The world's first ATM cash machine...Enfield London 1967.

You have missed what is probably the most important British invention, the Jet Engine! Yes, the Germans had a jet fighter in WWII, but they were designed from drawings copied from the inventor Frank Whittle. Unfortunately he was in the RAF and unable to patent it. After the war the British gave designs to the US for FREE!

I've always known the name of 'cats' eyes' - it's the sort of thing my Dad told us when we were kids....but the that's how my Dad was. One of the reasons we measure longitude from Greenwich is because that was where the Marine Chronometer was developed. (it's also quite a convenient place on the globe to position the zero point). The story of the Harrison Clock is quite well known in the UK.

British achievements given to the world: England was the first modern democracy, the creator of the industrial revolution, mass-production, the first (manu)factories, discovered how to mass-produce iron, (Abraham Derby, at Ironbridge Gorge), then went on to mass-produce steel (and invent stainless steel) and then invent Portland cement, on which the modern world is built. Although slavery hadn’t really existed in England for centuries, England was the first country to formalise that slavery was impossible in England. In 1772, England carried out the greatest act of genuine altruism in the history of the world, with the fight against the slave trade, which cost billions in today’s money, but from which the British gained nothing. Most of the great nations of the world, including the USA, use English law, including common law, and English values, including free speech (from the 1690s), banning of torture (from the 1640s), no one above the law (1215), jury trials (1100s), innocent until proven guilty. England pioneered the introduction of mechanical machines into farming, the first understanding of electricity, reliable navigation at sea (John Harrison, who invented the first practical marine chronometer), time zones (prime meridian runs through London for a reason), discovery of anti-biotics, the first understanding and common use of vaccines, first use of statistics to discover cause of disease, plus England was the country that first used metal framed building (for skyscrapers). Railways: (Thomas Newcomen, Richard Trevithick, James Watt, and George Stephenson "Father of the Railways"), the electric motor (Michael Faraday), the telephone (Alexander Graham Bell), the steam turbine (Charles Parsons), and industrial hydraulics (Joseph Bramah and William George Armstrong). Television: John Logie Baird. Modern radar: (the cavity magnetron, invented by Sir John Randall and Harry Boot.) In 1940 Winston Churchill offered the magnetron to the Americans in exchange for their financial and industrial help for the war effort. The jet engine (Sir Frank Whittle), then the first commercial jet airliner, the Comet, and the first supersonic airliner, the Concorde. England taught America about nuclear chain reaction, and thus the atomic bomb. (Sir James Chadwick was a British physicist who was awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the neutron in 1932. In 1941, he wrote the final draft of the MAUD Report, which inspired the U.S. government to begin serious atomic bomb research efforts. He was the head of the British team that worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. He was knighted in Britain in 1945 for his achievements in physics.) Some of the great British names that have had a positive influence on the world: Sir Isaac Newton, William Shakespeare, Charles Darwin, Charles Babbage (“father of the computer”) and Alan Turing, Professor Stephen Hawking, Alexander Fleming, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Sir Winston Churchill, Robert Baden-Powell, Charles Dickens, Florence Nightingale, T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”), Edward Jenner (inventor of the smallpox vaccine), Sir Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the World Wide Web), James Clerk Maxwell (Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory, and the resulting equations, were recognised as the greatest advance in scientific knowledge since Newton’s Principia), Joseph Lister (founder of antiseptic medicine).

John Harrison is now very well known, in large part because the American writer Dava Sobel wrote a best-selling book about it called Longitude. it was even made into a 4 part TV drama. Dava Sobel also has an asteroid named after her and is an eclipse chaser (she's observed eight of them). The original linoleum factory was built in Staines, close to Heathrow Airport. That rather nondescript place is now called Staines on Thames, which sounds like the outcome of a chemical spillage, so maybe appropriate. Also, linoleum is now back in fashion for the rich, as there are companies that make special, bespoke versions and some interior designers favour the stuff.

the friction match was another one, Johnny Walker, from Stockton on Tees

The genius of the cats eyes was making them self-cleaning.

You forgot the fax machine but then nearly everyone else has forgotten as well😂🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🦄🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🦄

I aged 78 was bought up in houses all floor covered in what the English called Lino we never used the term linoleum. Same with Worcestershire sauce a real mouth mangler so as usual we abbreviated it to the phonetic "Wooster sauce".

The way cats eyes self clean every time they are run over is genius in itself, the weight of the car pushes the rubber down into a little void which in the UK at least will usually have some rainwater in hey presto clean cats eyes.

A fascinating inventor that you might spend hours on, is James Clerk Maxwell. A true polymath. Pioneer of electromagnetism, light, colour, friction of gases, motion, heat, governors..... and more. He was also by all accounts, a very likable person with a mischievous sense of humour. He grew up in the wilds of Galloway and when sent to school in Edinburgh, he was known as "dafty", because of his rural habits. He doesn't get a fraction of the recognition that he deserves unfortunately.

Cool video. This could be a series with also the American version. My fav lesser known British invention is the Christmas Card. It brings such joy and connects people wonderfully.

The ejector seat was another British invention.

What an interesting wee video. Thank you.

"Cat's eyes" were so named because the originals were a robber block in an iron 'bucket' buried in the road that contained two glass reflectors. Then driven over the rubber compressed the 'eyes' down into the bucket on to a wiper that kept them clean and shiny. They are all plastic tiles now with reflective goop on them, but same idea.

Linoleum was instrumental in hip hop culture!

6:00 You missed the factoid that Whitehead's daughter married Captain Von Trapp of the Sound of Music, she was his first wife and mother of most of the children.

One of my favourite but less publicised British 'invention/ discovery' is stainless steel, by Harry Brearley, in Sheffield in 1913. The impact this has had globally with its antiseptic and non-rusting qualities has helped transform healthcare, industry, and the home.

I love your deep dive into all things British, you do it to the point and with subtle humour.

My bank originally used the cheque-point. You had to sign up at the bank to use it and I was given 10 separate cheques, similar to travellers cheques. Each was worth £10 and had to be precisely located in an opening drawer. After a bit of palaver, a £10 note was dispensed and the cheque was retained. The system was obviously intended as an `emergency money' facility after hours, rather than a convenient way of accessing funds, which the card system came to be. I didn't use it very often, but it was reassuring to know that I could get cash when needed. This was when a credit card purchase necessitated putting you card on a small flatbed contraption, a purchase receipt and carbon copy laid on top of it, and then a slider was pushed across by the proprietor to impress the card details onto the receipt. Things have certainly moved on...

Kirkcaldy in Fife used to have several lino factories and the smell was quite intense, and unmistakable, as you passed through!

In the U.K. we just said LINO instead of Linoleum BUT we pronounce it LYNO( ask your hubby) !

Not forgetting the flush toilet that we gave to the World.

Wow, you certainly packed a lot into this video Kaylin! All very interesting.

When I was a lad in the 1950s and 60s Kirkcaldy was famous for the smell of linseed oil coming from the lino factory

Ken Dodd finished Percy's cats eyes story by saying; if the cat was facing the other way he'd have invented the Pencil Sharpener :)

The Marine Chronometer is probably the invention launched the British Empire, it meant accurate navigation world wide

Sir Trevor Baylis (R.I.P.) Inventor of the clockwork radio and clockwork torch (flashlight). No batteries, no plug socket? No worries, just wind it up and go.

As always fascinating and informative!

I enjoy these informative videos and look forward to the next one.

I believe the French first tried preserving food in glass jars.

First person to use an installed ATM was Reg Varney from On the Busses

We call linoleum: Lino. [lie-no] Cats eyes are different colours to denote different warnings. Red = warning. Don’t cross unless it’s an emergency. Green = slip road White denotes lane division. Yes we’re all taught about it in our Driving lessons. (But that may be in theory tests now).

Without John Harrison's marine chronometer the British Empire may not have existed as we know it. It gave the Royal Navy and British merchant shipping an advantage in navigation at sea that enabled them to expand the empire against competitors like Spain, France and Holland, and also to deliver goods to and from the colonies more quickly and reliably than anybody else.

One of my great great grandfather was a clock maker and apprentice John Harrison…I have one of his clocks.

There's a great 2000 documentary about Harrison and the competition to design the first functional marine chronometer. It's called Longitude. A tv movie on the life of Harrison came out in 1990s sometime, too, but I forget its name.

Lino, as they call it, is extremely practical. It can expend a little in use. I'd use it again

Very surprised you didn't include Sir William Tuttingham, inventor of the mechanism for showing mild irritation in a queue of people. Still used to this day & commonly referred to as a 'tut'.

The flushing cardboard toilet ended up a damp squib.😂

6:04 Robert Whitehead is a distant relative of mine. One interesting fact is that on one trip to meet with the Austria-Hungarian Navy board, he took along his granddaughter,. Agathe Whitehead. There she met and later married Captain Georg von Trapp. She was mother to his first 7 children, before she died of TB in 1922. The children became better known as the von Trapp family singers - made famous by the film "The Sound of Music". which was based on the true story. of widower Georg marrying his children's new Governess then escaping Nazi Austria.

As an Englishman, and with all due respect, a disproportionate number of British inventions came from the Scots.

The map men did a vid on the marine chronometer and its brilliant.

such an informative and well made video 🫶

Cats eyes story. Many years ago, driving on a single track road in Scotland at night, a shadow leapt off the bank on the right, stopped broadside on the road turned it's head to look directly at me. I caught the reflection of its eyes on the left, and the curl of it's long tail on the right. It was almost the full width of the road, which in that area was little more than the width of my small car. Looking back I believe it was a panther. It was jet black. I rarely told this story as I knew the reaction I would get. What made it more believable was that about two weeks after that, a farmer about eight miles away was telling people that he was seeing a mountain lion at his farm. People were a bit sceptical, so he trapped it, alive. It lived its life out at a wildlife park not far from Kingussie in Scotland. The general theory, as neither of these species were native to the UK is that they were driven to Scotland's quieter regions and just released. To stop unqualified rich people from keeping wild animals as pets.the government made a law that people wishing to do so had to be qualified and had a license. Most of them just released them in the wild. The reflections in its eyes certainly scared the siht out of me, alone, in the pitch dark in the middle of nowhere at 11pm at night!

Percy Shaw gave his 'Cats eyes' invention away. He thought that any one could make them.

There was a brief resurgence of linoleum in the 1980s and we had it put down in our bathrooms. Some of our local fields were turned over to growing flax as well, and in the summer it was like patches of sky had fallen to earth with the bright blue colouring. The flowers only opened in the sunshine was well so the effects were magical. The flooring had a unique but pleasant smell, sort of oily and worthy, but the lino did not last for ever and it was hard to remove stains and in the end I replaced it.

There's a good display about cats eyes at the Halifax Industrial Museum. There's a good book about the marine chronometer by Dava Sobel called "Longitude". The story kicked off when a fleet under Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell was wrecked in the Scilly Isles, with much loss of life, because they didn't know their true position.

If I’m not mistaken cat’s eyes are different in the US than they are in the UK. The UK ones dip down when you drive over them (which actually enables the glass domes to be washed in the little puddles that gather in their casing) which prevents them from being broken, where the US ones are prone to breaking when driven over. I’m not 100% sure if that is completely correct/currently correct/urban myth to be honest but I thought it might be of interest to know that it’s at least a rumour…if not fact.

Did you find out about this on Celebrity Antique Road Show. It was on there a month or two ago. The Linoleum one i mean. 😂

You must have seen the only fools and horses episode about the Harrison marine chronometer.

Lino is a really great surface for kitchens and bathrooms , easily removed it needed . I seem to remember the discovery a Harrison watch featuring in Only fools and horses . A nice interesting mix .

Harrison's longitude story is on KZfaq drama of the same name. Great drama!!

I remember my first cash card, it was an NCR system. IIRC It was in the late 1960s and had punched holes in it like the 80 column cards used in data processing. The card was inserted in the machine, you entered your pin and £10 was issued. The card was retained and returned to the customer in the post. As far as I know the ATMs themselves were self-standing, ie they weren't connected to a computer. By the early 1970s Burroughs sold ATMs to The Midland Bank. They were huge machines, complicated and very unreliable, by this time the magnetic stripe was in use, and the card was returned to the customer.

Harrisons chronometers were spectacular, the documentary 'longitude' is well worth watching but if you want a laugh 'only fools & horses had a hilarious take on one of Harrisons last pieces.🤣🤣🤣

My mum was a Glaswegian who came down to England to live (and specifically work) in 1960. She met Percy Shaw at one point. And always told us that his story shows that there is a genius idea in everyone if they can find it.

Great Video & it's great the British created the most amazing inventions in the world that some people don't know about these days!

Whitehead bought an estate with his wealth in Worth Sussex. It was made into z model farm. Today it is a Franciscan order Abbey and school. The have his coat of arms over a fireplace which is constructed around a torpedo. Visit it some time and speak to the Abbot who is a fantastic speaker on many sociological themes.

The Frederick Walton invention Linoleum was manufactured in Staines, a couple of miles from my home and there is a bronze memorial in the town centre.

Percy Shaw lived his life as he always had, despite becoming wealthy due to cat's eyes. His only luxury was watching two televisions at the same time. This was shown in a documentary on his life, made many years ago.

Tins, the British got the idea from the French, Napoleon had offered a prize for a way to preserve food for his armies. The winner used glass bottles. The British development was to use tins instead, which were easier to manufacture & not so prone to breakages. Unfortunately, they used lead to make the joins, particularly bad news for Franklin's Artic expedition, when they got trapped in the ice for longer than they had allowed. Tins were originally thought of as a luxury food because they were more expensive than fresh. Until there was a scandal about what was being put in them!

CEREMONIOUSLY

I met Barclays's CEO who green-lighted the first ATM at a funuel. I asked him about this and described it as a British company who invented a machine to dispense cash using these American credit cards, seemed like good idea and was worth trying it out.

Englishman George Cayley - The father of aviation (1773-1857) Stanley Hooker - Short take-off , vertical landing system (VTOL) for the Hawker Harrier now used on the F 35 Jets, The US brought all the RAF's harriers when they were retired in 2011. Also the English landscape garden by William Kent, Charles Bridgeman and Capability Brown much loved throughout the world. And also the suit by a labour politician who wanted a change from the Victorian Coat and tails so he cut the tails off and et voilà!

Great video. Linoleum is an under-rated product. It can be very long lasting, and the possible patterns are infinite, but it has become confused in popular understanding with cheaper copy products which deteriorate faster and look cheap. John Harrison's grave is in a churchyard in Hampstead, if you ever go there - the story is told in a at least one book. His invention was vital for accurate navigation, which of course was important for a country increasingly dependent on seaborne trade. Pilkington Glass still exists but unfortunately is now a subsidiary of a Japanese group.

We also invented Lawnmower Racing.. Invented in a pub by a group of lads who wanted to go racing but decided they needed something cheap and great fun. We also invented the lawnmower, but that's another story.

Some of those I'd never heard of. We used to have Lino. The main problem is that it get's brittle and cracks. The other story about cat's eyes was that he got the idea from seeing wet tram lines at night. The saying 'Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead.' doesn't refer to Whitehead torpedoes. It refers to what we would call mines these days. On the clocks being affected by movement. Unscrupulous pigeon fanciers used to rock their timing clocks back and forth to make the clock go slower, then when they had recorded the time the pigeon arrived, they rocked the clock back and forth in the other direction to make it catch up with the correct time. This cheating became so widespread they had to fit a meter inside the clocks to check if there had been any tampering. The early tin cans had a small hole in the lid where the fruit, veg, meat whatever were poked through and then a small lid was soldered onto the centre with LEAD solder. Not very healthy. The can opener wasn't invented until 50 years after the can. My mother used to work in the Pilkington glass factory in St. Helens. 😃😃 You're getting better at pronouncing 'mirrors'. 😁😁 Ah yes but do you know who the first person was that used a cash machine? He was very famous at the time. 1984. The first online shopping purchase was made by 72-year-old grandmother Jane Snowball in Gateshead. She placed an order for margarine, cornflakes and eggs.

Interesting is the fact that while the metal can was invented early in the nineteenth century the can opener was only invented in the 1880s.

I have a 1957 Steelcase Tanker desk with a real linoleum surface. I'm really bummed that I can't replace it easily.

Most enjoyable.

you seem to have left of the chain saw it was used in Victorian era in the medical field for women at birth .

Tip. Harrison built a wooden clock it is still working today.cheers

Hi Kalyn! When did you move to the UK from your home country? 💝

Linoleum is naturally antiseptic so is usually used in medical establishments, and schools!

Hi Katlyn, there's a stretch of the A49 just below Chester where the cats-eyes still shine after you pass them, I thought I was seeing things when I saw them in my mirrors. I suppose the Ministry of Transport are trialling some new sort with their own power source.

whats the favourite floor covering of the Thundercats? lino

Seems like our Perce had different versions of how he invented Cat's Eyes.

The world is built on oops moments 😅

Harrison built a clock of wood which was accurade and remains so today

In total, John Harrison received £23,065 for his work on chronometers. He received it in increments but eventually it worked out as more than the original £20,000 prize.

There's a good display about cats eyes at the Halifax Industrial Museum.

Great video gorgeous

Cats eyes are not used in the USA/Canada the Raised Pavement Markers were independently invented in the USA they are similar but cheaper, and are much easier to break