Cone

Traffic cones were invented in 1940 by American Charles D. Scanlon, who got the idea for the traffic cone while working as a painter for the Street Painting Department of the City of Los Angeles. The patent for his invention was granted in 1943.

The first traffic cones were used in the United Kingdom in 1958, when the M6 motorway opened. These traffic cones were a substitute for red lantern paraffin burners previously used during construction. In 1961, David Morgan of Burford, Oxfordshire, UK designed the first experimental plastic traffic cones, which replaced pyramid-shaped wooden ones previously used.
Recycled PVCs from bottles are often used to create modern traffic cones.
Being distinctive, easily portable and usually left unguarded, traffic cones are often stolen. Students are frequently blamed, to the extent that the British National Union of Students has attempted to play down this "outdated stereotype''
Traditionally, but unofficially, the Wellington Statue in Glasgow is decorated with a traffic cone. The presence of the cone is given as the reason the statue is in the Lonely Planet 1000 Ultimate Sights guide (at number 229) as a "most bizarre monument".
[Wikipedia]