Frank H. Shaw born and educated in New Jersey. He began work at the Shaw Insulator co. when his father Henry M. Shaw was president. After serving as vice-president and general manager of the company the younger Shaw became president in 1936.

Shaw developed the first plastic radio tubebase and made many modifications to radio tubes and sockets. During and after the First World War he was responsible for much of the design of molded insulation for Signal Corps apparatus.

Shaw was instrumental in the development of the transfer molding process when in 1926 he led a team of molding experts at the Shaw Insulation Company, an achievement that earned him the plastics industry's John Wesley Hyatt Award in 1943. "by subjecting thermosetting material to heat and pressure and then "transferring" it in a plastic state form pressure pot to closed mold cavity, it is now possible to produce nueroud delicate and complicated moldings, aming them magneto housings for high-altitutde aircraft, firing pins, shell fuzes, gun stocks and complex electrical parts for Army and Navy use." (Modern Plastics, 20:11, 56

Shaw also earned a military citation for his work during World War II on the M-52 mortar fuse and on firing pins.

He was also a founding member of the Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI) in 1937. Frank Shaw was posthumously inducted into the Plastics Hall of Fame in 2002.

See: "John Wesley Hyatt Award for 1942," Modern Plastics 20:11 (July 1943), 56