 Similar contracts resulted in the production of 1/4 of a million pairs of gymshoes, 47,000 pairs of heavy snow boots for the French Army, 16,000 tyres and 2.5 million feet of hosepipe.The Second World War brought another boom with the production of millions of civilian gas masks and barrage-balloon fabric.In 1958, the company produced Britain's first traffic cones for the M6 motorway.