Ok - my first guest blog; these pictures need so much more explanation - the experience was truly magnificent. These are pictures of two baby Barried Owls. They were next door on a branch of a tree just watching us, maybe 15 feet away. They would make a loud sound, not quite a owl "hoot", but not quite a whistle either, somewhere kind of in between. Our neighbor, tied a piece of chicken on a fishing pole and would cast it towards them and reel it back. The babies would soar through the air and "pounce" on the moving bait. She could pull it almost to her feet and they would follow the entire way. Sometimes they would just sit on the ground near her feet,eating their catch, looking up with their huge dark brown eyes, their heads almost rotating a full 360 degrees. I'm assuming their parents were near, but we never saw them. They stayed for about an hour....watching us as much as we were watchng them.
Here's some info on the Barred Owl - enjoy;
FLIGHT & HUNTING: Barred owls are often out at night, dawn or dusk, but can be seen during the day. When hunting, they usually perch in a tree and watch and listen for prey. Then they swoop down and grab it with their talons (claws). Their toes are special. Normally, two go forward and two go back. This helps them get a good grip on their prey. But they can turn a back toe forward if they want. This may help them to hold on to a perch tree. Barred owls (like all owls) are carnivores (meat-eaters). They can eat mice, squirrels, foxes, rabbits, bats, small birds, other owls, snakes, lizards, fish, fiddler crabs, and bugs. Since they eat the whole animal (except for the wings of birds), they swallow a lot of fur and bones they can’t digest. Owls will regurgitate (re-gir-ji-tate) or vomit pellets of fur and bones. If you find a pile of little furry balls under a tree, you have found an owl’s perch tree or eating spot. If you pick the pellet apart, you can see the tiny bones and fur of the animals it has eaten. The same male and female stay together on a 1 square mile territory all year. They do not migrate. Each year they use the same nest. The mother lays 2-3 white, almost round eggs. When the babies are born, they are covered with white fluffy down and their eyes stay closed for a whole week. It is a long time before they can fly, about 40 days.
please do something about the color of the text on the LI "home photo" that appears at the top of the page. the orange (slogan) is literally illegible against the foliated background, and the tan/white/whateverthehellcolorthatis for the name ain't much better. thanks for your consideration, and in general, i am against owls. mr frick
from the west coast desk of LI news comes this report..........i thought i recognized the name "barred owl" as it has been in our regional news as of late. for those old enough to remember, the plight of the northern spotted owl gained national attention in the late eighties as a poster child for environmental groups. it was eventually awarded endangered species status and consequently loads of acres of old growth forest was kept from logging, as this is the owls habitat. fast forward 20 years and the northern spotted owl population is again on the decline, now from predation by barred owls.
"The barred owl either eats [spotted owls], kicks them out of their habitat, or mates with them—and sometimes the offspring are fertile," said Steven Courtney, vice president of the Sustainable Ecosystems Institute (SEI) in Portland, Oregon.
finally, in a feeble attempt to jump-start this lame blog, i propose a dirty joke contest. i've spoken with colin and he has agreed to furnish the winner (democratically chosen) with 100 of the new james madison $1 coins and a blumpkin in any beaches bathroom of the winner's choosing. sounds fair to me. so enter those jokes!
kicking it off: why did the feminist cross the road? to suck my dick! how many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? two--one the screw it in an one to suck my dick!
Most people have heard of the oriental race which puzzled over the foundations of the universe, and decided that it must be supported on the back of a giant elephant. But the elephant? They put it on the back of a monstrous tortoise, and there they let the matter end. If every animal in nature had been called upon, they would have been no nearer a foundation. Most ancient peoples, indeed, made no effort to find a foundation. The universe was a very compact little structure, mainly composed of the earth and the great canopy over the earth which they called the sky. They left it, as a whole, floating in nothing. And in this the ancients were wiser than they knew. Things do not fall down unless they are pulled down by that mysterious force which we call gravitation. The earth, it is true, is pulled by the sun, and would fall into it; but the earth escapes this fiery fate by circulating at great speed round the sun. The stars pull each other; but it has already been explained that they meet this by travelling rapidly in gigantic orbits. Yet we do, in a new sense of the word, need foundations of the universe. Our mind craves for some explanation of the matter out of which the universe is made. For this explanation we turn to modern Physics and Chemistry. Both these sciences study, under different aspects, matter and energy; and between them they have put together a conception of the fundamental nature of things which marks an epoch in the history of human thought.
Sec. 1 The Bricks of the Cosmos More than two thousand years ago the first men of science, the Greeks of the cities of Asia Minor, speculated on the nature of matter. You can grind a piece of stone into dust. You can divide a spoonful of water into as many drops as you like. Apparently you can go on dividing as long as you have got apparatus fine enough for the work. But there must be a limit, these Greeks said, and so they supposed that all matter was ultimately composed of minute particles which were indivisible. That is the meaning of the Greek word "atom." Like so many other ideas of these brilliant early Greek thinkers, the atom was a sound conception. We know to-day that matter is composed of atoms. But science was then so young that the way in which the Greeks applied the idea was not very profound. A liquid or a gas, they said, consisted of round, smooth atoms, which would not cling together. Then there were atoms with rough surfaces, "hooky" surfaces, and these stuck together and formed solids. The atoms of iron or marble, for instance, were so very hooky that, once they got together, a strong man could not tear them apart. The Greeks thought that the explanation of the universe was that an infinite number of these atoms had been moving and mixing in an infinite space during an infinite time, and had at last hit by chance on the particular combination which is our universe. This was too simple and superficial. The idea of atoms was cast aside, only to be advanced again in various ways. It was the famous Manchester chemist, John Dalton, who restored it in the early years of the nineteenth century. He first definitely formulated the atomic theory as a scientific hypothesis. The whole physical and chemical science of that century was now based upon the atom, and it is quite a mistake to suppose that recent discoveries have discredited "atomism." An atom is the smallest particle of a chemical element. No one has ever seen an atom. Even the wonderful new microscope which has just been invented cannot possibly show us particles of matter which are a million times smaller than the breadth of a hair; for that is the size of atoms. We can weigh them and measure them, though they are invisible, and we know that all matter is composed of them. It is a new discovery that atoms are not indivisible. They consist themselves of still smaller particles, as we shall see. But the atoms exist all the same, and we may still say that they are the bricks of which the material universe is built. [Illustration: _Photo: Elliott & Fry._ SIR ERNEST RUTHERFORD One of our most eminent physicists who has succeeded Sir J. J. Thomson as Cavendish Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge. The modern theory of the structure of the atom is largely due to him.] [Illustration: _Photo: Rischgitz Collection._ J. CLERK-MAXWELL One of the greatest scientific men who have ever lived. He revolutionised physics with his electro-magnetic theory of light, and practically all modern researches have had their origin, direct or indirect, in his work. Together with Faraday he constitutes one of the main scientific glories of the nineteenth century.] [Illustration: _Photo: Ernest H. Mills._ SIR WILLIAM CROOKES Sir William Crookes experimented on the electric discharge in vacuum tubes and described the phenomena as a "fourth state of matter." He was actually observing the flight of electrons, but he did not fully appreciate the nature of his experiments.] [Illustration: _Photo: Photo Press_ PROFESSOR SIR W. H. BRAGG One of the most distinguished physicists of the present day.] But if we had some magical glass by means of which we could see into the structure of material things, we should not see the atoms put evenly together as bricks are in a wall. As a rule, two or more atoms first come together to form a larger particle, which we call a "molecule." Single atoms do not, as a rule, exist apart from other atoms; if a molecule is broken up, the individual atoms seek to unite with other atoms of another kind or amongst themselves. For example, three atoms of oxygen form what we call ozone; two atoms of hydrogen uniting with one atom of oxygen form water. It is molecules that form the mass of matter; a molecule, as it has been expressed, is a little building of which atoms are the bricks. In this way we get a useful first view of the material things we handle. In a liquid the molecules of the liquid cling together loosely. They remain together as a body, but they roll over and away from each other. There is "cohesion" between them, but it is less powerful than in a solid. Put some water in a kettle over the lighted gas, and presently the tiny molecules of water will rush through the spout in a cloud of steam and scatter over the kitchen. The heat has broken their bond of association and turned the water into something like a gas; though we know that the particles will come together again, as they cool, and form once more drops of water. In a gas the molecules have full individual liberty. They are in a state of violent movement, and they form no union with each other. If we want to force them to enter into the loose sort of association which molecules have in a liquid, we have to slow down their individual movements by applying severe cold. That is how a modern man of science liquefies gases. No power that we have will liquefy air at its ordinary temperature. In _very_ severe cold, on the other hand, the air will spontaneously become liquid. Some day, when the fires of the sun have sunk very low, the temperature of the earth will be less than -200 deg. C.: that is to say, more than two hundred degrees Centigrade below freezing-point. It will sink to the temperature of the moon. Our atmosphere will then be an ocean of liquid air, 35 feet deep, lying upon the solidly frozen masses of our water-oceans. In a solid the molecules cling firmly to each other. We need a force equal to twenty-five tons to tear asunder the molecules in a bar of iron an inch thick. Yet the structure is not "solid" in the popular sense of the word. If you put a piece of solid gold in a little pool of mercury, the gold will take in the mercury _between_ its molecules, as if it were porous like a sponge. The hardest solid is more like a lattice-work than what we usually mean by "solid"; though the molecules are not fixed, like the bars of a lattice-work, but are in violent motion; they vibrate about equilibrium positions. If we could see right into the heart of a bit of the hardest steel, we should see billions of separate molecules, at some distance from each other, all moving rapidly to and fro. This molecular movement can, in a measure, be made visible. It was noticed by a microscopist named Brown that, in a solution containing very fine suspended particles, the particles were in constant movement. Under a powerful microscope these particles are seen to be violently agitated; they are each independently darting hither and thither somewhat like a lot of billiard balls on a billiard table, colliding and bounding about in all directions. Thousands of times a second these encounters occur, and this lively commotion is always going on, this incessant colliding of one molecule with another is the normal condition of affairs; not one of them is at rest. The reason for this has been worked out, and it is now known that these particles move about because they are being incessantly bombarded by the molecules of the liquid. The molecules cannot, of course, be seen, but the fact of their incessant movement is revealed to the eye by the behaviour of the visible suspended particles. This incessant movement in the world of molecules is called the Brownian movement, and is a striking proof of the reality of molecular motions.
Sec. 2 The Wonder-World of Atoms The exploration of this wonder-world of atoms and molecules by the physicists and chemists of to-day is one of the most impressive triumphs of modern science. Quite apart from radium and electrons and other sensational discoveries of recent years, the study of ordinary matter is hardly inferior, either in interest or audacity, to the work of the astronomer. And there is the same foundation in both cases--marvellous apparatus, and trains of mathematical reasoning that would have astonished Euclid or Archimedes. Extraordinary, therefore, as are some of the facts and figures we are now going to give in connection with the minuteness of atoms and molecules, let us bear in mind that we owe them to the most solid and severe processes of human thought. Yet the principle can in most cases be made so clear that the reader will not be asked to take much on trust. It is, for instance, a matter of common knowledge that gold is soft enough to be beaten into gold leaf. It is a matter of common sense, one hopes, that if you beat a measured cube of gold into a leaf six inches square, the mathematician can tell the thickness of that leaf without measuring it. As a matter of fact, a single grain of gold has been beaten into a leaf seventy-five inches square. Now the mathematician can easily find that when a single grain of gold is beaten out to that size, the leaf must be 1/367,000 of an inch thick, or about a thousand times thinner than the paper on which these words are printed; yet the leaf must be several molecules thick. The finest gold leaf is, in fact, too thick for our purpose, and we turn with a new interest to that toy of our boyhood the soap-bubble. If you carefully examine one of these delicate films of soapy water, you notice certain dark spots or patches on them. These are their thinnest parts, and by two quite independent methods--one using electricity and the other light--we have found that at these spots the bubble is less than the three-millionth of an inch thick! But the molecules in the film cling together so firmly that they must be at least twenty or thirty deep in the thinnest part. A molecule, therefore, must be far less than the three-millionth of an inch thick. We found next that a film of oil on the surface of water may be even thinner than a soap-bubble. Professor Perrin, the great French authority on atoms, got films of oil down to the fifty-millionth of an inch in thickness! He poured a measured drop of oil upon water. Then he found the exact limits of the area of the oil-sheet by blowing upon the water a fine powder which spread to the edge of the film and clearly outlined it. The rest is safe and simple calculation, as in the case of the beaten grain of gold. Now this film of oil must have been at least two molecules deep, so a single molecule of oil is considerably less than a hundred-millionth of an inch in diameter. Innumerable methods have been tried, and the result is always the same. A single grain of indigo, for instance, will colour a ton of water. This obviously means that the grain contains billions of molecules which spread through the water. A grain of musk will scent a room--pour molecules into every part of it--for several years, yet not lose one-millionth of its mass in a year. There are a hundred ways of showing the minuteness of the ultimate particles of matter, and some of these enable us to give definite figures. On a careful comparison of the best methods we can say that the average molecule of matter is less than the 1/125,000,000 of an inch in diameter. In a single cubic centimetre of air--a globule about the size of a small marble--there are thirty million trillion molecules. And since the molecule is, as we saw, a group or cluster of atoms, the atom itself is smaller. Atoms, for reasons which we shall see later, differ very greatly from each other in size and weight. It is enough to say that some of them are so small that it would take 400,000,000 of them, in a line, to cover an inch of space; and that it takes at least a quintillion atoms of gold to weigh a single gramme. Five million atoms of helium could be placed in a line across the diameter of a full stop. [Illustration: An atom is the smallest particle of a chemical element. Two or more atoms come together to form a molecule: thus molecules form the mass of matter. A molecule of water is made up of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. Molecules of different substances, therefore, are of different sizes according to the number and kind of the particular atoms of which they are composed. A starch molecule contains no less than 25,000 atoms. Molecules, of course, are invisible. The above diagram illustrates the _comparative_ sizes of molecules.] [Illustration: INCONCEIVABLE NUMBERS AND INCONCEIVABLY SMALL PARTICLES The molecules, which are inconceivably small, are, on the other hand, so numerous that if one was able to place, end to end, all those contained in, for example, a cubic centimetre of gas (less than a fifteenth of a cubic inch), one would obtain a line capable of passing two hundred times round the earth.] [Illustration: WHAT IS A MILLION? In dealing with the infinitely small, it is difficult to apprehend the vast figures with which scientists confront us. A million is one thousand thousand. We may realise what this implies if we consider that a clock, beating seconds, takes approximately 278 hours (i.e. one week four days fourteen hours) to tick one million times. A billion is one million million. To tick a billion the clock would tick for over 31,735 years. (In France and America a thousand millions is called a billion.)] [Illustration: THE BROWNIAN MOVEMENT A diagram, constructed from actual observations, showing the erratic paths pursued by very fine particles suspended in a liquid, when bombarded by the molecules of the liquid. This movement is called the Brownian movement, and it furnishes a striking illustration of the truth of the theory that the molecules of a body are in a state of continual motion.]
The Energy of Atoms And this is only the beginning of the wonders that were done with "ordinary matter," quite apart from radium and its revelations, to which we will come presently. Most people have heard of "atomic energy," and the extraordinary things that might be accomplished if we could harness this energy and turn it to human use. A deeper and more wonderful source of this energy has been discovered in the last twenty years, but it is well to realise that the atoms themselves have stupendous energy. The atoms of matter are vibrating or gyrating with extraordinary vigour. The piece of cold iron you hold in your hand, the bit of brick you pick up, or the penny you take from your pocket is a colossal reservoir of energy, since it consists of trillions of moving atoms. To realise the total energy, of course, we should have to witness a transformation such as we do in atoms of radio-active elements, about which we shall have something to say presently. If we put a grain of indigo in a glass of water, or a grain of musk in a perfectly still room, we soon realise that molecules travel. Similarly, the fact that gases spread until they fill every "empty" available space shows definitely that they consist of small particles travelling at great speed. The physicist brings his refined methods to bear on these things, and he measures the energy and velocity of these infinitely minute molecules. He tells us that molecules of oxygen, at the temperature of melting ice, travel at the rate of about 500 yards a second--more than a quarter of a mile a second. Molecules of hydrogen travel at four times that speed, or three times the speed with which a bullet leaves a rifle. Each molecule of the air, which seems so still in the house on a summer's day, is really travelling faster than a rifle bullet does at the beginning of its journey. It collides with another molecule every twenty-thousandth of an inch of its journey. It is turned from its course 5,000,000,000 times in every second by collisions. If we could stop the molecules of hydrogen gas, and utilise their energy, as we utilise the energy of steam or the energy of the water at Niagara, we should find enough in every gramme of gas (about two-thousandths of a pound) to raise a third of a ton to a height of forty inches. I have used for comparison the speed of a rifle bullet, and in an earlier generation people would have thought it impossible even to estimate this. It is, of course, easy. We put two screens in the path of the bullet, one near the rifle and the other some distance away. We connect them electrically and use a fine time-recording machine, and the bullet itself registers the time it takes to travel from the first to the second screen. Now this is very simple and superficial work in comparison with the system of exact and minute measurements which the physicist and chemist use. In one of his interesting works Mr. Charles R. Gibson gives a photograph of two exactly equal pieces of paper in the opposite pans of a fine balance. A single word has been written in pencil on one of these papers, and that little scraping of lead has been enough to bring down the scale! The spectroscope will detect a quantity of matter four million times smaller even than this; and the electroscope is a million times still more sensitive than the spectroscope. We have a heat-measuring instrument, the bolometer, which makes the best thermometer seem Early Victorian. It records the millionth of a degree of temperature. It is such instruments, multiplied by the score, which enable us to do the fine work recorded in these pages. [Illustration: _Reproduced from "The Forces of Nature" (Messrs. Macmillan)._ A SOAP BUBBLE The iridescent colours sometimes seen on a soap bubble, as in the illustration, may also be seen in very fine sections of crystals, in glass blown into extremely fine bulbs, on the wings of dragon-flies and the surface of oily water. The different colours correspond to different thicknesses of the surface. Part of the light which strikes these thin coatings is reflected from the upper surface, but another part of the light penetrates the transparent coating and is reflected from the lower surface. It is the mixture of these two reflected rays, their "interference" as it is called, which produces the colours observed. The "black spots" on a soap bubble are the places where the soapy film is thinnest. At the black spots the thickness of the bubble is about the three-millionth part of an inch. If the whole bubble were as thin as this it would be completely invisible.]
Sec. 3 THE DISCOVERY OF X-RAYS AND RADIUM The Discovery of Sir Wm. Crookes But these wonders of the atom are only a prelude to the more romantic and far-reaching discoveries of the new physics--the wonders of the electron. Another and the most important phase of our exploration of the material universe opened with the discovery of radium in 1898. In the discovery of radio-active elements, a new property of matter was discovered. What followed on the discovery of radium and of the X-rays we shall see. As Sir Ernest Rutherford, one of our greatest authorities, recently said, the new physics has dissipated the last doubt about the reality of atoms and molecules. The closer examination of matter which we have been able to make shows positively that it is composed of atoms. But we must not take the word now in its original Greek meaning (an "indivisible" thing). The atoms are not indivisible. They can be broken up. They are composed of still smaller particles. The discovery that the atom was composed of smaller particles was the welcome realisation of a dream that had haunted the imagination of the nineteenth century. Chemists said that there were about eighty different kinds of atoms--different kinds of matter--but no one was satisfied with the multiplicity. Science is always aiming at simplicity and unity. It may be that science has now taken a long step in the direction of explaining the fundamental unity of all the matter. The chemist was unable to break up these "elements" into something simpler, so he called their atoms "indivisible" in that sense. But one man of science after another expressed the hope that we would yet discover some fundamental matter of which the various atoms were composed--_one primordial substance from which all the varying forms of matter have been evolved or built up_. Prout suggested this at the very beginning of the century, when atoms were rediscovered by Dalton. Father Secchi, the famous Jesuit astronomer said that all the atoms were probably evolved from ether; and this was a very favoured speculation. Sir William Crookes talked of "prothyl" as the fundamental substance. Others thought hydrogen was the stuff out of which all the other atoms were composed. The work which finally resulted in the discovery of radium began with some beautiful experiments of Professor (later Sir William) Crookes in the eighties. It had been noticed in 1869 that a strange colouring was caused when an electric charge was sent through a vacuum tube--the walls of the glass tube began to glow with a greenish phosphorescence. A vacuum tube is one from which nearly all the air has been pumped, although we can never completely empty the tube. Crookes used such ingenious methods that he reduced the gas in his tubes until it was twenty million times thinner than the atmosphere. He then sent an electric discharge through, and got very remarkable results. The negative pole of the electric current (the "cathode") _gave off rays which faintly lit the molecules of the thin gas in the tube_, and caused a pretty fluorescence on the glass walls of the tube. What were these Rays? Crookes at first thought they corresponded to a "new or fourth state of matter." Hitherto we had only been familiar with matter in the three conditions of solid, liquid, and gaseous. Now Crookes really had the great secret under his eyes. But about twenty years elapsed before the true nature of these rays was finally and independently established by various experiments. The experiments proved "that the rays consisted of a stream of negatively charged particles travelling with enormous velocities from 10,000 to 100,000 miles a second. In addition, it was found that the mass of each particle was exceedingly small, about 1/1800 of the mass of a hydrogen atom, the lightest atom known to science." _These particles or electrons, as they are now called, were being liberated from the atom._ The atoms of matter were breaking down in Crookes tubes. At that time, however, it was premature to think of such a thing, and Crookes preferred to say that the particles of the gas were electrified and hurled against the walls of the tube. He said that it was ordinary matter in a new state--"radiant matter." Another distinguished man of science, Lenard, found that, when he fitted a little plate of aluminum in the glass wall of the tube, the mysterious rays passed through this as if it were a window. They must be waves in the ether, he said. [Illustration: _From "Scientific Ideas of To-day_." DETECTING A SMALL QUANTITY OF MATTER In the left-hand photograph the two pieces of paper exactly balance. The balance used is very sensitive, and when the single word "atoms" has been written with a lead pencil upon one of the papers the additional weight is sufficient to depress one of the pans as shown in the second photograph. The spectroscope will detect less than one-millionth of the matter contained in the word pencilled above.] [Illustration: _Reproduced by permission of X-Rays Ltd._ THIS X-RAY PHOTOGRAPH IS THAT OF A HAND OF A SOLDIER WOUNDED IN THE GREAT WAR Note the pieces of shrapnel which are revealed.] [Illustration: _Photo: National Physical Laboratory._ AN X-RAY PHOTOGRAPH OF A GOLF BALL, REVEALING AN IMPERFECT CORE] [Illustration: _Reproduced by permission of X-Rays Ltd._ A WONDERFUL X-RAY PHOTOGRAPH Note the fine details revealed, down to the metal tags of the bootlace and the nails in the heel of the boot.]
Sec. 4 The Discovery of X-rays So the story went on from year to year. We shall see in a moment to what it led. Meanwhile the next great step was when, in 1895, Roentgen discovered the X-rays, which are now known to everybody. He was following up the work of Lenard, and he one day covered a "Crookes tube" with some black stuff. To his astonishment a prepared chemical screen which was near the tube began to glow. _The rays had gone through the black stuff; and on further experiment he found that they would go through stone, living flesh, and all sorts of "opaque" substances._ In a short time the world was astonished to learn that we could photograph the skeleton in a living man's body, locate a penny in the interior of a child that had swallowed one, or take an impression of a coin through a slab of stone. And what are these X-rays? They are not a form of matter; they are not material particles. X-rays were found to be a new variety of _light_ with a remarkable power of penetration. We have seen what the spectroscope reveals about the varying nature of light wave-lengths. Light-waves are set up by vibrations in ether,[2] and, as we shall see, these ether disturbances are all of the same kind; they only differ as regards wave-lengths. The X-rays which Roentgen discovered, then, are light, but a variety of light previously unknown to us; they are ether waves of very short length. X-rays have proved of great value in many directions, as all the world knows, but that we need not discuss at this point. Let us see what followed Roentgen's discovery. [2] We refer throughout to the "ether" because, although modern theories dispense largely with this conception, the theories of physics are so inextricably interwoven with it that it is necessary, in an elementary exposition, to assume its existence. The modern view will be explained later in the article on Einstein's Theory. While the world wondered at these marvels, the men of science were eagerly following up the new clue to the mystery of matter which was exercising the mind of Crookes and other investigators. In 1896 Becquerel brought us to the threshold of the great discovery. Certain substances are phosphorescent--they become luminous after they have been exposed to sunlight for some time, and Becquerel was trying to find if any of these substances give rise to X-rays. One day he chose a salt of the metal uranium. He was going to see if, after exposing it to sunlight, he could photograph a cross with it through an opaque substance. He wrapped it up and laid it aside, to wait for the sun, but he found the uranium salt did not wait for the sun. Some strong radiation from it went through the opaque covering and made an impression of the cross upon the plate underneath. Light or darkness was immaterial. The mysterious rays streamed night and day from the salt. This was something new. Here was a substance which appeared to be producing X-rays; the rays emitted by uranium would penetrate the same opaque substances as the X-rays discovered by Roentgen.
Discovery of Radium Now, at the same time as many other investigators, Professor Curie and his Polish wife took up the search. They decided to find out whether the emission came from the uranium itself or _from something associated with it_, and for this purpose they made a chemical analysis of great quantities of minerals. They found a certain kind of pitchblende which was very active, and they analysed tons of it, concentrating always on the radiant element in it. After a time, as they successively worked out the non-radiant matter, the stuff began to glow. In the end they extracted from eight tons of pitchblende about half a teaspoonful of something _that was a million times more radiant than uranium_. There was only one name for it--Radium. That was the starting-point of the new development of physics and chemistry. From every laboratory in the world came a cry for radium salts (as pure radium was too precious), and hundreds of brilliant workers fastened on the new element. The inquiry was broadened, and, as year followed year, one substance after another was found to possess the power of emitting rays, that is, to be radio-active. We know to-day that nearly every form of matter can be stimulated to radio-activity; which, as we shall see, means that _its atoms break up into smaller and wonderfully energetic particles which we call "electrons."_ This discovery of electrons has brought about a complete change in our ideas in many directions. So, instead of atoms being indivisible, they are actually dividing themselves, spontaneously, and giving off throughout the universe tiny fragments of their substance. We shall explain presently what was later discovered about the electron; meanwhile we can say that every glowing metal is pouring out a stream of these electrons. Every arc-lamp is discharging them. Every clap of thunder means a shower of them. Every star is flooding space with them. We are witnessing the spontaneous breaking up of atoms, atoms which had been thought to be indivisible. The sun not only pours out streams of electrons from its own atoms, but the ultra-violet light which it sends to the earth is one of the most powerful agencies for releasing electrons from the surface-atoms of matter on the earth. It is fortunate for us that our atmosphere absorbs most of this ultra-violet or invisible light of the sun--a kind of light which will be explained presently. It has been suggested that, if we received the full flood of it from the sun, our metals would disintegrate under its influence and this "steel civilisation" of ours would be impossible! But we are here anticipating, we are going beyond radium to the wonderful discoveries which were made by the chemists and physicists of the world who concentrated upon it. The work of Professor and Mme. Curie was merely the final clue to guide the great search. How it was followed up, how we penetrated into the very heart of the minute atom and discovered new and portentous mines of energy, and how we were able to understand, not only matter, but electricity and light, will be told in the next chapter.
THE DISCOVERY OF THE ELECTRON AND HOW IT EFFECTED A REVOLUTION IN IDEAS What the discovery of radium implied was only gradually realised. Radium captivated the imagination of the world; it was a boon to medicine, but to the man of science it was at first a most puzzling and most attractive phenomenon. It was felt that some great secret of nature was dimly unveiled in its wonderful manifestations, and there now concentrated upon it as gifted a body of men--conspicuous amongst them Sir J. J. Thomson, Sir Ernest Rutherford, Sir W. Ramsay, and Professor Soddy--as any age could boast, with an apparatus of research as far beyond that of any other age as the _Aquitania_ is beyond a Roman galley. Within five years the secret was fairly mastered. Not only were all kinds of matter reduced to a common basis, but the forces of the universe were brought into a unity and understood as they had never been understood before. [Illustration: ELECTRIC DISCHARGE IN A VACUUM TUBE The two ends, marked + and -, of a tube from which nearly all air has been exhausted are connected to electric terminals, thus producing an electric discharge in the vacuum tube. This discharge travels straight along the tube, as in the upper diagram. When a magnetic field is applied, however, the rays are deflected, as shown in the lower diagram. The similarity of the behaviour of the electric discharge with the radium rays (see diagram of deflection of radium rays, _post_) shows that the two phenomena may be identified. It was by this means that the characteristics of electrons were first discovered.] [Illustration: THE RELATIVE SIZES OF ATOMS AND ELECTRONS An atom is far too small to be seen. In a bubble of hydrogen gas no larger than the letter "O" there are billions of atoms, whilst an electron is more than a thousand times smaller than the smallest atom. How their size is ascertained is described in the text. In this diagram a bubble of gas is magnified to the size of the world. Adopting this scale, _each atom_ in the bubble would then be as large as a tennis ball.] [Illustration: IF AN ATOM WERE MAGNIFIED TO THE SIZE OF ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, EACH ELECTRON IN THE ATOM (AS REPRESENTED BY THE CATHEDRAL) WOULD THEN BE ABOUT THE SIZE OF A SMALL BULLET] [Illustration: ELECTRONS STREAMING FROM THE SUN TO THE EARTH There are strong reasons for supposing that sun-spots are huge electronic cyclones. The sun is constantly pouring out vast streams of electrons into space. Many of these streams encounter the earth, giving rise to various electrical phenomena.]
Sec. 5 The Discovery of the Electron Physicists did not take long to discover that the radiation from radium was very like the radiation in a "Crookes tube." It was quickly recognised, moreover, that both in the tube and in radium (and other metals) the atoms of matter were somehow breaking down. However, the first step was to recognise that there were three distinct and different rays that were given off by such metals as radium and uranium. Sir Ernest Rutherford christened them, after the first three letters of the Greek alphabet, the Alpha, the Beta, and Gamma rays. We are concerned chiefly with the second group and purpose here to deal with that group only.[3] [3] The "Alpha rays" were presently recognised as atoms of helium gas, shot out at the rate of 12,000 miles a second. The "Gamma rays" are _waves_, like the X-rays, not material particles. They appear to be a type of X-rays. They possess the remarkable power of penetrating opaque substances; they will pass through a foot of solid iron, for example. The "Beta rays," as they were at first called, have proved to be one of the most interesting discoveries that science ever made. They proved what Crookes had surmised about the radiations he discovered in his vacuum tube. But it was _not_ a fourth state of matter that had been found, but a new _property_ of matter, a property common to all atoms of matter. The Beta rays were later christened Electrons. They are particles of disembodied electricity, here spontaneously liberated from the atoms of matter: only when the electron was isolated from the atom was it recognised for the first time as a separate entity. Electrons, therefore, are a constituent of the atoms of matter, and we have discovered that they can be released from the atom by a variety of agencies. Electrons are to be found everywhere, forming part of every atom. "An electron," Sir William Bragg says, "can only maintain a separate existence if it is travelling at an immense rate, from one three-hundredth of the velocity of light upwards, that is to say, at least 600 _miles a second, or thereabouts_. Otherwise the electron sticks to the first atom it meets." These amazing particles may travel with the enormous velocity of from 10,000 to more than 100,000 miles a second. It was first learned that they are of an electrical nature, because they are bent out of their normal path if a magnet is brought near them. And this fact led to a further discovery: to one of those sensational estimates which the general public is apt to believe to be founded on the most abstruse speculations. The physicist set up a little chemical screen for the "Beta rays" to hit, and he so arranged his tube that only a narrow sheaf of the rays poured on to the screen. He then drew this sheaf of rays out of its course with a magnet, and he accurately measured the shift of the luminous spot on the screen where the rays impinged on it. But when he knows the exact intensity of his magnetic field--which he can control as he likes--and the amount of deviation it causes, and the mass of the moving particles, he can tell the speed of the moving particles which he thus diverts. These particles were being hurled out of the atoms of radium, or from the negative pole in a vacuum tube, at a speed which, in good conditions, reached nearly the velocity of light, i.e. nearly 186,000 miles a second. Their speed has, of course, been confirmed by numbers of experiments; and another series of experiments enabled physicists to determine the size of the particles. Only one of these need be described, to give the reader an idea how men of science arrived at their more startling results. Fog, as most people know, is thick in our great cities because the water-vapour gathers on the particles of dust and smoke that are in the atmosphere. This fact was used as the basis of some beautiful experiments. Artificial fogs were created in little glass tubes, by introducing dust, in various proportions, for supersaturated vapour to gather on. In the end it was possible to cause tiny drops of rain, each with a particle of dust at its core, to fall upon a silver mirror and be counted. It was a method of counting the quite invisible particles of dust in the tube; and the method was now successfully applied to the new rays. Yet another method was to direct a slender stream of the particles upon a chemical screen. The screen glowed under the cannonade of particles, and a powerful lens resolved the glow into distinct sparks, which could be counted. In short, a series of the most remarkable and beautiful experiments, checked in all the great laboratories of the world, settled the nature of these so-called rays. They were streams of particles more than a thousand times smaller than the smallest known atom. The mass of each particle is, according to the latest and finest measurements 1/1845 of that of an atom of hydrogen. The physicist has not been able to find any character except electricity in them, and the name "electrons" has been generally adopted.
The Key to many Mysteries The Electron is an atom, of disembodied electricity; it occupies an exceedingly small volume, and its "mass" is entirely electrical. These electrons are the key to half the mysteries of matter. Electrons in rapid motion, as we shall see, explain what we mean by an "electric current," not so long ago regarded as one of the most mysterious manifestations in nature. "What a wonder, then, have we here!" says Professor R. K. Duncan. "An innocent-looking little pinch of salt and yet possessed of special properties utterly beyond even the fanciful imaginings of men of past time; for nowhere do we find in the records of thought even the hint of the possibility of things which we now regard as established fact. This pinch of salt projects from its surface bodies [i.e. electrons] possessing the inconceivable velocity of over 100,000 miles a second, a velocity sufficient to carry them, if unimpeded, five times around the earth in a second, and possessing with this velocity, masses a thousand times smaller than the smallest atom known to science. Furthermore, they are charged with negative electricity; they pass straight through bodies considered opaque with a sublime indifference to the properties of the body, with the exception of its mere density; they cause bodies which they strike to shine out in the dark; they affect a photographic plate; they render the air a conductor of electricity; they cause clouds in moist air; they cause chemical action and have a peculiar physiological action. Who, to-day, shall predict the ultimate service to humanity of the beta-rays from radium!"
Sec. 6 THE ELECTRON THEORY, OR THE NEW VIEW OF MATTER The Structure of the Atom There is general agreement amongst all chemists, physicists, and mathematicians upon the conclusions which we have so far given. We know that the atoms of matter are constantly--either spontaneously or under stimulation--giving off electrons, or breaking up into electrons; and they therefore contain electrons. Thus we have now complete proof of the independent existence of atoms and also of electrons. When, however, the man of science tries to tell us _how_ electrons compose atoms, he passes from facts to speculation, and very difficult speculation. Take the letter "o" as it is printed on this page. In a little bubble of hydrogen gas no larger than that letter there are _trillions_ of atoms; and they are not packed together, but are circulating as freely as dancers in a ball-room. We are asking the physicist to take one of these minute atoms and tell us how the still smaller electrons are arranged in it. Naturally he can only make mental pictures, guesses or hypotheses, which he tries to fit to the facts, and discards when they will _not_ fit. At present, after nearly twenty years of critical discussion, there are two chief theories of the structure of the atom. At first Sir J. J. Thomson imagined the electrons circulating in shells (like the layers of an onion) round the nucleus of the atom. This did not suit, and Sir E. Rutherford and others worked out a theory that the electrons circulated round a nucleus rather like the planets of our solar system revolving round the central sun. Is there a nucleus, then, round which the electrons revolve? The electron, as we saw, is a disembodied atom of electricity; we should say, of "negative" electricity. Let us picture these electrons all moving round in orbits with great velocity. Now it is suggested that there is a nucleus of "positive" electricity attracting or pulling the revolving electrons to it, and so forming an equilibrium, otherwise the electrons would fly off in all directions. This nucleus has been recently named the proton. We have thus two electricities in the atom: the positive = the nucleus; the negative = the electron. Of recent years Dr. Langmuir has put out a theory that the electrons do not _revolve round_ the nucleus, but remain in a state of violent agitation of some sort at fixed distances from the nucleus. [Illustration: PROFESSOR SIR J. J. THOMSON Experimental discoverer of the electronic constitution of matter, in the Cavendish Physical Laboratory, Cambridge. A great investigator, noted for the imaginative range of his hypotheses and his fertility in experimental devices.] [Illustration: _From the Smithsonian Report_, 1915. ELECTRONS PRODUCED BY PASSAGE OF X-RAYS THROUGH AIR A photograph clearly showing that electrons are definite entities. As electrons leave atoms they may traverse matter or pass through the air in a straight path The illustration shows the tortuous path of electrons resulting from collision with atoms.] [Illustration: MAGNETIC DEFLECTION OF RADIUM RAYS The radium rays are made to strike a screen, producing visible spots of light. When a magnetic field is applied the rays are seen to be deflected, as in the diagram. This can only happen if the rays carry an electric charge, and it was by experiments of this kind that we obtained our knowledge respecting the electric charges carried by radium rays.] [Illustration: _Reproduced by permission of "Scientific American."_ PROFESSOR R. A. MILLIKAN'S APPARATUS FOR COUNTING ELECTRONS] But we will confine ourselves here to the facts, and leave the contending theories to scientific men. It is now pretty generally accepted that an atom of matter consists of a number of electrons, or charges of negative electricity, held together by a charge of positive electricity. It is not disputed that these electrons are in a state of violent motion or strain, and that therefore a vast energy is locked up in the atoms of matter. To that we will return later. Here, rather, we will notice another remarkable discovery which helps us to understand the nature of matter. A brilliant young man of science who was killed in the war, Mr. Moseley, some years ago showed that, when the atoms of different substances are arranged in order of their weight, _they are also arranged in the order of increasing complexity of structure_. That is to say, the heavier the atom, the more electrons it contains. There is a gradual building up of atoms containing more and more electrons from the lightest atom to the heaviest. Here it is enough to say that as he took element after element, from the lightest (hydrogen) to the heaviest (uranium) he found a strangely regular relation between them. If hydrogen were represented by the figure one, helium by two, lithium three, and so on up to uranium, then uranium should have the figure ninety-two. This makes it probable that there are in nature ninety-two elements--we have found eighty-seven--and that the number Mr. Moseley found is the number of electrons in the atom of each element; that is to say, the number is arranged in order of the atomic numbers of the various elements.
Sec. 7 The New View of Matter Up to the point we have reached, then, we see what the new view of Matter is. Every atom of matter, of whatever kind throughout the whole universe, is built up of electrons in conjunction with a nucleus. From the smallest atom of all--the atom of hydrogen--which consists of one electron, rotating round a positively charged nucleus, to a heavy complicated atom, such as the atom of gold, constituted of many electrons and a complex nucleus, _we have only to do with positive and negative units of electricity_. The electron and its nucleus are particles of electricity. All Matter, therefore, is nothing but a manifestation of electricity. The atoms of matter, as we saw, combine and form molecules. Atoms and molecules are the bricks out of which nature has built up everything; ourselves, the earth, the stars, the whole universe. But more than bricks are required to build a house. There are other fundamental existences, such as the various forms of energy, which give rise to several complex problems. And we have also to remember, that there are more than eighty distinct elements, each with its own definite type of atom. We shall deal with energy later. Meanwhile it remains to be said that, although we have discovered a great deal about the electron and the constitution of matter, and that while the physicists of our own day seem to see a possibility of explaining positive and negative electricity, the nature of them both is unknown. There exists the theory that the particles of positive and negative electricity, which make up the atoms of matter, are points or centres of disturbances of some kind in a universal ether, and that all the various forms of energy are, in some fundamental way, aspects of the same primary entity which constitutes matter itself. But the discovery of the property of radio-activity has raised many other interesting questions, besides that which we have just dealt with. In radio-active elements, such as uranium for example, the element is breaking down; in what we call radio-activity we have a manifestation of the spontaneous change of elements. What is really taking place is a transmutation of one element into another, from a heavier to a lighter. The element uranium spontaneously becomes radium, and radium passes through a number of other stages until it, in turn, becomes lead. Each descending element is of lighter atomic weight than its predecessor. The changing process, of course, is a very slow one. It may be that all matter is radio-active, or can be made so. This raises the question whether all the matter in the universe may not undergo disintegration. There is, however, another side of the question, which the discovery of radio-activity has brought to light, and which has effected a revolution in our views. We have seen that in radio-active substances the elements are breaking down. Is there a process of building up at work? If the more complicated atoms are breaking down into simpler forms, may there not be a converse process--a building up from simpler elements to more complicated elements? It is probably the case that both processes are at work. There are some eighty-odd chemical elements on the earth to-day: are they all the outcome of an inorganic evolution, element giving rise to element, going back and back to some primeval stuff from which they were all originally derived infinitely long ago? Is there an evolution in the inorganic world which may be going on, parallel to that of the evolution of living things; or is organic evolution a continuation of inorganic evolution? We have seen what evidence there is of this inorganic evolution in the case of the stars. We cannot go deeply into the matter here, nor has the time come for any direct statement that can be based on the findings of modern investigation. Taking it altogether the evidence is steadily accumulating, and there are authorities who maintain that already the evidence of inorganic evolution is convincing enough. The heavier atoms would appear to behave as though they were evolved from the lighter. The more complex forms, it is supposed, have _evolved_ from the simpler forms. Moseley's discovery, to which reference has been made, points to the conclusion that the elements are built up one from another.
Sec. 8 Other New Views We may here refer to another new conception to which the discovery of radio-activity has given rise. Lord Kelvin, who estimated the age of the earth at twenty million years, reached this estimate by considering the earth as a body which is gradually cooling down, "losing its primitive heat, like a loaf taken from the oven, at a rate which could be calculated, and that the heat radiated by the sun was due to contraction." Uranium and radio-activity were not known to Kelvin, and their discovery has upset both his arguments. Radio-active substances, which are perpetually giving out heat, introduce an entirely new factor. We cannot now assume that the earth is necessarily cooling down; it may even, for all we know, be getting hotter. At the 1921 meeting of the British Association, Professor Rayleigh stated that further knowledge had extended the probable period during which there had been life on this globe to about one thousand million years, and the total age of the earth to some small multiple of that. The earth, he considers, is not cooling, but "contains an internal source of heat from the disintegration of uranium in the outer crust." On the whole the estimate obtained would seem to be in agreement with the geological estimates. The question, of course, cannot, in the present state of our knowledge, be settled within fixed limits that meet with general agreement. [Illustration: MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE Radium, as explained in the text, emits rays--the "Alpha," the "Beta" (electrons), and "Gamma" rays. The above illustration indicates the method by which these invisible rays are made visible, and enables the nature of the rays to be investigated. To the right of the diagram is the instrument used, the Spinthariscope, making the impact of radium rays visible on a screen. The radium rays shoot out in all directions; those that fall on the screen make it glow with points of light. These points of light are observed by the magnifying lens. A. Magnifying lens. B. A zinc sulphite screen. C. A needle on whose point is placed a speck of radium. The lower picture shows the screen and needle magnified.] [Illustration: THE THEORY OF ELECTRONS An atom of matter is composed of electrons. We picture an atom as a sort of miniature solar system, the electrons (particles of negative electricity) rotating round a central nucleus of positive electricity, as described in the text. In the above pictorial representation of an atom the whirling electrons are indicated in the outer ring. Electrons move with incredible speed as they pass from one atom to another.] [Illustration: ARRANGEMENTS OF ATOMS IN A DIAMOND The above is a model (seen from two points of view) of the arrangement of the atoms in a diamond. The arrangement is found by studying the X-ray spectra of the diamond.] As we have said, there are other fundamental existences which give rise to more complex problems. The three great fundamental entities in the physical universe are matter, ether, and energy; so far as we know, outside these there is nothing. We have dealt with matter, there remain ether and energy. We shall see that just as no particle of matter, however small, may be created or destroyed, and just as there is no such thing as empty space--ether pervades everything--so there is no such thing as _rest_. Every particle that goes to make up our solid earth is in a state of perpetual unremitting vibration; energy "is the universal commodity on which all life depends." Separate and distinct as these three fundamental entities--matter, ether, and energy--may appear, it may be that, after all, they are only different and mysterious phases of an essential "oneness" of the universe.
Sec. 9 The Future Let us, in concluding this chapter, give just one illustration of the way in which all this new knowledge may prove to be as valuable practically as it is wonderful intellectually. We saw that electrons are shot out of atoms at a speed that may approach 160,000 miles a second. Sir Oliver Lodge has written recently that a seventieth of a grain of radium discharges, at a speed a thousand times that of a rifle bullet, thirty million electrons a second. Professor Le Bon has calculated that it would take 1,340,000 barrels of powder to give a bullet the speed of one of these electrons. He shows that the smallest French copper coin--smaller than a farthing--contains an energy equal to eighty million horsepower. A few pounds of matter contain more energy than we could extract from millions of tons of coal. Even in the atoms of hydrogen at a temperature which we could produce in an electric furnace the electrons spin round at a rate of nearly a hundred trillion revolutions a second! Every man asks at once: "Will science ever tap this energy?" If it does, no more smoke, no mining, no transit, no bulky fuel. The energy of an atom is of course only liberated when an atom passes from one state to another. The stored up energy is fortunately fast bound by the electrons being held together as has been described. If it were not so "the earth would explode and become a gaseous nebula"! It is believed that some day we shall be able to release, harness, and utilise atomic energy. "I am of opinion," says Sir William Bragg, "that atom energy will supply our future need. A thousand years may pass before we can harness the atom, or to-morrow might see us with the reins in our hands. That is the peculiarity of Physics--research and 'accidental' discovery go hand in hand." Half a brick contains as much energy as a small coal-field. The difficulties are tremendous, but, as Sir Oliver Lodge reminds us, there was just as much scepticism at one time about the utilisation of steam or electricity. "Is it to be supposed," he asks, "that there can be no fresh invention, that all the discoveries have been made?" More than one man of science encourages us to hope. Here are some remarkable words written by Professor Soddy, one of the highest authorities on radio-active matter, in our chief scientific weekly (_Nature_, November 6, 1919): The prospects of the successful accomplishment of artificial transmutation brighten almost daily. The ancients seem to have had something more than an inkling that the accomplishment of transmutation would confer upon men powers hitherto the prerogative of the gods. But now we know definitely that the material aspect of transmutation would be of small importance in comparison with the control over the inexhaustible stores of internal atomic energy to which its successful accomplishment would inevitably lead. It has become a problem, no longer redolent of the evil associations of the age of alchemy, but one big with the promise of a veritable physical renaissance of the whole world. If that "promise" is ever realised, the economic and social face of the world will be transformed. Before passing on to the consideration of ether, light, and energy, let us see what new light the discovery of the electron has thrown on the nature and manipulation of electricity.
WHAT IS ELECTRICITY? The Nature of Electricity There is at least one manifestation in nature, and so late as twenty years ago it seemed to be one of the most mysterious manifestations of all, which has been in great measure explained by the new discoveries. Already, at the beginning of this century, we spoke of our "age of electricity," yet there were few things in nature about which we knew less. The "electric current" rang our bells, drove our trains, lit our rooms, but none knew what the current was. There was a vague idea that it was a sort of fluid that flowed along copper wires as water flows in a pipe. We now suppose that it is _a rapid movement of electrons from atom to atom_ in the wire or wherever the current is. Let us try to grasp the principle of the new view of electricity and see how it applies to all the varied electrical phenomena in the world about us. As we saw, the nucleus of an atom of matter consists of positive electricity which holds together a number of electrons, or charges of negative electricity.[4] This certainly tells us to some extent what electricity is, and how it is related to matter, but it leaves us with the usual difficulty about fundamental realities. But we now know that electricity, like matter, is atomic in structure; a charge of electricity is made up of a number of small units or charges of a definite, constant amount. It has been suggested that the two kinds of electricity, i.e. positive and negative, are right-handed and left-handed vortices or whirlpools in ether, or rings in ether, but there are very serious difficulties, and we leave this to the future. [4] The words "positive" and "negative" electricity belong to the days when it was regarded as a fluid. A body overcharged with the fluid was called positive; an undercharged body was called negative. A positively-electrified body is now one whose atoms have lost some of their outlying electrons, so that the positive charge of electricity predominates. The negatively-electrified body is one with more than the normal number of electrons.
Sec. 10 What an Electric Current is The discovery of these two kinds of electricity has, however, enabled us to understand very fairly what goes on in electrical phenomena. The outlying electrons, as we saw, may pass from atom to atom, and this, on a large scale, is the meaning of the electric current. In other words, we believe an electric current to be a flow of electrons. Let us take, to begin with, a simple electrical "cell," in which a feeble current is generated: such a cell as there is in every house to serve its electric bells. In the original form this simple sort of "battery" consisted of a plate of zinc and a plate of copper immersed in a chemical. Long before anything was known about electrons it was known that, if you put zinc and copper together, you produce a mild current of electricity. We know now what this means. Zinc is a metal the atoms of which are particularly disposed to part with some of their outlying electrons. Why, we do not know; but the fact is the basis of these small batteries. Electrons from the atoms of zinc pass to the atoms of copper, and their passage is a "current." Each atom gives up an electron to its neighbour. It was further found long ago that if the zinc and copper were immersed in certain chemicals, which slowly dissolve the zinc, and the two metals were connected by a copper wire, the current was stronger. In modern language, there is a brisker flow of electrons. The reason is that the atoms of zinc which are stolen by the chemical leave their detachable electrons behind them, and the zinc has therefore more electrons to pass on to the copper. [Illustration: DISINTEGRATION OF ATOMS An atom of Uranium, by ejecting an Alpha particle, becomes Uranium X. This substance, by ejecting Beta and Gamma rays, becomes Radium. Radium passes through a number of further changes, as shown in the diagram, and finally becomes lead. Some radio-active substances disintegrate much faster than others. Thus Uranium changes very slowly, taking 5,000,000,000 years to reach the same stage of disintegration that Radium A reaches in 3 minutes. As the disintegration proceeds, the substances become of lighter and lighter atomic weights. Thus Uranium has an atomic weight of 238, whereas lead has an atomic weight of only 206. The breaking down of atoms is fully explained in the text.] [Illustration: _Reproduced by permission from "The Interpretation of Radium" (John Murray)._ SILK TASSEL ELECTRIFIED The separate threads of the tassel, being each electrified with the same kind of electricity, repel one another, and thus the tassel branches out as in the photograph.] [Illustration: SILK TASSEL DISCHARGED BY THE RAYS FROM RADIUM When the radium rays, carrying an opposite electric charge to that on the tassel, strikes the threads, the threads are neutralised, and hence fall together again.] [Illustration: A HUGE ELECTRIC SPARK This is an actual photograph of an electric spark. It is leaping a distance of about 10 feet, and is the discharge of a million volts. It is a graphic illustration of the tremendous energy of electrons.] [Illustration: _From "Scientific Ideas of To-day_." ELECTRICAL ATTRACTION BETWEEN COMMON OBJECTS Take an ordinary flower-vase well dried and energetically rub it with a silk handkerchief. The vase which thus becomes electrified will attract any light body, such as a feather, as shown in the above illustration.] Such cells are now made of zinc and carbon, immersed in sal-ammoniac, but the principle is the same. The flow of electricity is a flow of electrons; though we ought to repeat that they do not flow in a body, as molecules of water do. You may have seen boys place a row of bricks, each standing on one end, in such order that the first, if it is pushed, will knock over the second, the second the third, and so on to the last. There is a flow of _movement_ all along the line, but each brick moves only a short distance. So an electron merely passes to the next atom, which sends on an electron to a third atom, and so on. In this case, however, the movement from atom to atom is so rapid that the ripple of movement, if we may call it so, may pass along at an enormous speed. We have seen how swiftly electrons travel. But how is this turned into power enough even to ring a bell? The actual mechanical apparatus by which the energy of the electron current is turned into sound, or heat, or light will be described in a technical section later in this work. We are concerned here only with the principle, which is clear. While zinc is very apt to part with electrons, copper is just as obliging in facilitating their passage onward. Electrons will travel in this way in most metals, but copper is one of the best "conductors." So we lengthen the copper wire between the zinc and the carbon until it goes as far as the front door and the bell, which are included in the circuit. When you press the button at the door, two wires are brought together, and the current of electrons rushes round the circuit; and at the bell its energy is diverted into the mechanical apparatus which rings the bell. Copper is a good conductor--six times as good as iron--and is therefore so common in electrical industries. Some other substances are just as stubborn as copper is yielding, and we call them "insulators," because they resist the current instead of letting it flow. Their atoms do not easily part with electrons. Glass, vulcanite, and porcelain are very good insulators for this reason.
What the Dynamo does But even several cells together do not produce the currents needed in modern industry, and the flow is produced in a different manner. As the invisible electrons pass along a wire they produce what we call a magnetic field around the wire, they produce a disturbance in the surrounding ether. To be exact, it is through the ether surrounding the wire that the energy originated by the electrons is transmitted. To set electrons moving on a large scale we use a "dynamo." By means of the dynamo it is possible to transform mechanical energy into electrical energy. The modern dynamo, as Professor Soddy puts it, may be looked upon as an electron pump. We cannot go into the subject deeply here, we would only say that a large coil of copper wire is caused to turn round rapidly between the poles of a powerful magnet. That is the essential construction of the "dynamo," which is used for generating strong currents. We shall see in a moment how magnetism differs from electricity, and will say here only that round the poles of a large magnet there is a field of intense disturbance which will start a flow of electrons in any copper that is introduced into it. On account of the speed given to the coil of wire its atoms enter suddenly this magnetic field, and they give off crowds of electrons in a flash. It is found that a similar disturbance is caused, though the flow is in the _opposite_ direction, when the coil of wire leaves the magnetic field. And as the coil is revolving very rapidly we get a powerful current of electricity that runs in alternate directions--an "alternating" current. Electricians have apparatus for converting it into a continuous current where this is necessary. A current, therefore, means a steady flow of the electrons from atom to atom. Sometimes, however, a number of electrons rush violently and explosively from one body to another, as in the electric spark or the occasional flash from an electric tram or train. The grandest and most spectacular display of this phenomenon is the thunderstorm. As we saw earlier, a portentous furnace like the sun is constantly pouring floods of electrons from its atoms into space. The earth intercepts great numbers of these electrons. In the upper regions of the air the stream of solar electrons has the effect of separating positively-electrified atoms from negatively-electrified ones, and the water-vapour, which is constantly rising from the surface of the sea, gathers more freely round the positively-electrified atoms, and brings them down, as rain, to the earth. Thus the upper air loses a proportion of positive electricity, or becomes "negatively electrified." In the thunderstorm we get both kinds of clouds--some with large excesses of electrons, and some deficient in electrons--and the tension grows until at last it is relieved by a sudden and violent discharge of electrons from one cloud to another or to the earth--an electric spark on a prodigious scale.
Sec. 11 Magnetism We have seen that an electric current is really a flow of electrons. Now an electric current exhibits a magnetic effect. The surrounding space is endowed with energy which we call electro-magnetic energy. A piece of magnetised iron attracting other pieces of iron to it is the popular idea of a magnet. If we arrange a wire to pass vertically through a piece of cardboard and then sprinkle iron filings on the cardboard we shall find that, on passing an electric current through the wire, the iron filings arrange themselves in circles round it. The magnetic force, due to the electric current, seems to exist in circles round the wire, an ether disturbance being set up. Even a single electron, when in movement, creates a magnetic "field," as it is called, round its path. There is no movement of electrons without this attendant field of energy, and their motion is not stopped until that field of energy disappears from the ether. The modern theory of magnetism supposes that all magnetism is produced in this way. All magnetism is supposed to arise from the small whirling motions of the electrons contained in the ultimate atoms of matter. We cannot here go into the details of the theory nor explain why, for instance, iron behaves so differently from other substances, but it is sufficient to say that here, also, the electron theory provides the key. This theory is not yet definitely _proved_, but it furnishes a sufficient theoretical basis for future research. The earth itself is a gigantic magnet, a fact which makes the compass possible, and it is well known that the earth's magnetism is affected by those great outbreaks on the sun called sun-spots. Now it has been recently shown that a sun-spot is a vast whirlpool of electrons and that it exerts a strong magnetic action. There is doubtless a connection between these outbreaks of electronic activity and the consequent changes in the earth's magnetism. The precise mechanism of the connection, however, is still a matter that is being investigated.
ETHER AND WAVES Ether and Waves The whole material universe is supposed to be embedded in a vast medium called the ether. It is true that the notion of the ether has been abandoned by some modern physicists, but, whether or not it is ultimately dispensed with, the conception of the ether has entered so deeply into the scientific mind that the science of physics cannot be understood unless we know something about the properties attributed to the ether. The ether was invented to explain the phenomena of light, and to account for the flow of energy across empty space. Light takes time to travel. We see the sun at any moment by the light that left it 8 minutes before. It has taken that 8 minutes for the light from the sun to travel that 93,000,000 miles odd which separates it from our earth. Besides the fact that light takes time to travel, it can be shown that light travels in the form of waves. We know that sound travels in waves; sound consists of waves in the air, or water or wood or whatever medium we hear it through. If an electric bell be put in a glass jar and the air be pumped out of the jar, the sound of the bell becomes feebler and feebler until, when enough air has been taken out, we do not hear the bell at all. Sound cannot travel in a vacuum. We continue to _see_ the bell, however, so that evidently light can travel in a vacuum. The invisible medium through which the waves of light travel is the ether, and this ether permeates all space _and all matter_. Between us and the stars stretch vast regions empty of all matter. But we see the stars; their light reaches us, even though it may take centuries to do so. We conceive, then, that it is the universal ether which conveys that light. All the energy which has reached the earth from the sun and which, stored for ages in our coal-fields, is now used to propel our trains and steamships, to heat and light our cities, to perform all the multifarious tasks of modern life, was conveyed by the ether. Without that universal carrier of energy we should have nothing but a stagnant, lifeless world. [Illustration: _Photo: Leadbeater._ AN ELECTRIC SPARK An electric spark consists of a rush of electrons across the space between the two terminals. A state of tension is established in the ether by the electric charges, and when this tension passes a certain limit the discharge takes place.] [Illustration: _From "Scientific Ideas of To-day."_ AN ETHER DISTURBANCE AROUND AN ELECTRON CURRENT In the left-hand photograph an electric current is passing through the coil, thus producing a magnetic field and transforming the poker into a magnet. The poker is then able to support a pair of scissors. As soon as the electric current is broken off, as in the second photograph, the ether disturbance ceases. The poker loses its magnetism, and the scissors fall.] We have said that light consists of waves. The ether may be considered as resembling, in some respects, a jelly. It can transmit vibrations. The waves of light are really excessively small ripples, measuring from crest to crest. The distance from crest to crest of the ripples in a pond is sometimes no more than an inch or two. This distance is enormously great compared to the longest of the wave-lengths that constitute light. We say the longest, for the waves of light differ in length; the colour depends upon the length of the light. Red light has the longest waves and violet the shortest. The longest waves, the waves of deep-red light, are seven two hundred and fifty thousandths of an inch in length (7/250,000 inch). This is nearly twice the length of deep-violet light-waves, which are 1/67,000 inch. But light-waves, the waves that affect the eye, are not the only waves carried by the ether. Waves too short to affect the eye can affect the photographic plate, and we can discover in this way the existence of waves only half the length of the deep-violet waves. Still shorter waves can be discovered, until we come to those excessively minute rays, the X-rays.
Below the Limits of Visibility But we can extend our investigations in the other direction; we find that the ether carries many waves longer than light-waves. Special photographic emulsions can reveal the existence of waves five times longer than violet-light waves. Extending below the limits of visibility are waves we detect as heat-waves. Radiant heat, like the heat from a fire, is also a form of wave-motion in the ether, but the waves our senses recognise as heat are longer than light-waves. There are longer waves still, but our senses do not recognise them. But we can detect them by our instruments. These are the waves used in wireless telegraphy, and their length may be, in some cases, measured in miles. These waves are the so-called electro-magnetic waves. Light, radiant heat, and electro-magnetic waves are all of the same nature; they differ only as regards their wave-lengths.
LIGHT--VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE If Light, then, consists of waves transmitted through the ether, what gives rise to the waves? Whatever sets up such wonderfully rapid series of waves must be something with an enormous vibration. We come back to the electron: all atoms of matter, as we have seen, are made up of electrons revolving in a regular orbit round a nucleus. These electrons may be affected by out-side influences, they may be agitated and their speed or vibration increased.
Electrons and Light The particles even of a piece of cold iron are in a state of vibration. No nerves of ours are able to feel and register the waves they emit, but your cold poker is really radiating, or sending out a series of wave-movements, on every side. After what we saw about the nature of matter, this will surprise none. Put your poker in the fire for a time. The particles of the glowing coal, which are violently agitated, communicate some of their energy to the particles of iron in the poker. They move to and fro more rapidly, and the waves which they create are now able to affect your nerves and cause a sensation of heat. Put the poker again in the fire, until its temperature rises to 500 deg. C. It begins to glow with a dull red. Its particles are now moving very violently, and the waves they send out are so short and rapid that they can be picked up by the eye--we have _visible_ light. They would still not affect a photographic plate. Heat the iron further, and the crowds of electrons now send out waves of various lengths which blend into white light. What is happening is the agitated electrons flying round in their orbits at a speed of trillions of times a second. Make the iron "blue hot," and it pours out, in addition to light, the _invisible_ waves which alter the film on the photographic plate. And beyond these there is a long range of still shorter waves, culminating in the X-rays, which will pass between the atoms of flesh or stone. Nearly two hundred and fifty years ago it was proved that light travelled at least 600,000 times faster than sound. Jupiter, as we saw, has moons, which circle round it. They pass behind the body of the planet, and reappear at the other side. But it was noticed that, when Jupiter is at its greatest distance from us, the reappearance of the moon from behind it is 16 minutes and 36 seconds later than when the planet is nearest to us. Plainly this was because light took so long to cover the additional distance. The distance was then imperfectly known, and the speed of light was underrated. We now know the distance, and we easily get the velocity of light. No doubt it seems far more wonderful to discover this within the walls of a laboratory, but it was done as long ago as 1850. A cogged wheel is so mounted that a ray of light passes between two of the teeth and is reflected back from a mirror. Now, slight as is the fraction of a second which light takes to travel that distance, it is possible to give such speed to the wheel that the next tooth catches the ray of light on its return and cuts it off. The speed is increased still further until the ray of light returns to the eye of the observer through the notch _next_ to the one by which it had passed to the mirror! The speed of the wheel was known, and it was thus possible again to gather the velocity of light. If the shortest waves are 1/67,000 of an inch in length, and light travels at 186,000 miles a second, any person can work out that about 800 trillion waves enter the eye in a second when we see "violet."
Sorting out Light-waves The waves sent out on every side by the energetic electrons become faintly visible to us when they reach about 1/35,000 of an inch. As they become shorter and more rapid, as the electrons increase their speed, we get, in succession, the colours red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Each distinct sensation of colour means a wave of different length. When they are all mingled together, as in the light of the sun, we get white light. When this white light passes through glass, the speed of the waves is lessened; and, if the ray of light falls obliquely on a triangular piece of glass, the waves of different lengths part company as they travel through it, and the light is spread out in a band of rainbow-colour. The waves are sorted out according to their lengths in the "obstacle race" through the glass. Anyone may see this for himself by holding up a wedge-shaped piece of crystal between the sunlight and the eye; the prism separates the sunlight into its constituent colours, and these various colours will be seen quite readily. Or the thing may be realised in another way. If the seven colours are painted on a wheel as shown opposite page 280 (in the proportion shown), and the wheel rapidly revolved on a pivot, the wheel will appear a dull white, the several colours will not be seen. But _omit_ one of the colours, then the wheel, when revolved, will not appear white, but will give the impression of one colour, corresponding to what the union of six colours gives. Another experiment will show that some bodies held up between the eye and a white light will not permit all the rays to pass through, but will intercept some; a body that intercepts all the seven rays except red will give the impression of red, or if all the rays except violet, then violet will be the colour seen. [Illustration: _Photo: H. J. Shepstone._ LIGHTNING In a thunderstorm we have the most spectacular display in lightning of a violent and explosive rush of electrons (electricity) from one body to another, from cloud to cloud, or to the earth. In this wonderful photograph of an electrical storm note the long branched and undulating flashes of lightning. Each flash lasts no longer than the one hundred-thousandth part of a second of time.] [Illustration: LIGHT WAVES Light consists of waves transmitted through the ether. Waves of light differ in length. The colour of the light depends on the wave-length. Deep-red waves (the longest) are 7/250000 inch and deep-violet waves 1/67000 inch. The diagram shows two wave-motions of different wave-lengths. From crest to crest, or from trough to trough, is the length of the wave.] [Illustration: THE MAGNETIC CIRCUIT OF AN ELECTRIC CURRENT The electric current passing in the direction of the arrow round the electric circuit generates in the surrounding space circular magnetic circuits as shown in the diagram. It is this property which lies at the base of the electro-magnet and of the electric dynamo.] [Illustration: THE MAGNET The illustration shows the lines of force between two magnets. The lines of force proceed from the north pole of one magnet to the south pole of the other. They also proceed from the north to the south poles of the same magnet. These facts are shown clearly in the diagram. The north pole of a magnet is that end of it which turns to the north when the magnet is freely suspended.]
The Fate of the World Professor Soddy has given an interesting picture of what might happen when the sun's light and heat is no longer what it is. The human eye "has adapted itself through the ages to the peculiarities of the sun's light, so as to make the most of that wave-length of which there is most.... Let us indulge for a moment in these gloomy prognostications, as to the consequences to this earth of the cooling of the sun with the lapse of ages, which used to be in vogue, but which radio-activity has so rudely shaken. Picture the fate of the world when the sun has become a dull red-hot ball, or even when it has cooled so far that it would no longer emit light to us. That does not all mean that the world would be in inky darkness, and that the sun would not emit light to the people then inhabiting this world, if any had survived and could keep themselves from freezing. To such, if the eye continued to adapt itself to the changing conditions, our blues and violets would be ultra-violet and invisible, but our dark heat would be light and hot bodies would be luminous to them which would be dark to us."
Sec. 12 What the Blue "Sky" means We saw in a previous chapter how the spectroscope splits up light-waves into their colours. But nature is constantly splitting the light into its different-lengthed waves, its colours. The rainbow, where dense moisture in the air acts as a spectroscope, is the most familiar example. A piece of mother-of-pearl, or even a film of oil on the street or on water, has the same effect, owing to the fine inequalities in its surface. The atmosphere all day long is sorting out the waves. The blue "sky" overhead means that the fine particles in the upper atmosphere catch the shorter waves, the blue waves, and scatter them. We can make a tubeful of blue sky in the laboratory at any time. The beautiful pink-flush on the Alps at sunrise, the red glory that lingers in the west at sunset, mean that, as the sun's rays must struggle through denser masses of air when it is low on the horizon, the long red waves are sifted out from the other shafts. Then there is the varied face of nature which, by absorbing some waves and reflecting others, weaves its own beautiful robe of colour. Here and there is a black patch, which _absorbs_ all the light. White surfaces _reflect_ the whole of it. What is reflected depends on the period of vibration of the electrons in the particular kind of matter. Generally, as the electrons receive the flood of trillions of waves, they absorb either the long or the medium or the short, and they give us the wonderful colour-scheme of nature. In some cases the electrons continue to radiate long after the sunlight has ceased to fall upon them. We get from them "black" or invisible light, and we can take photographs by it. Other bodies, like glass, vibrate in unison with the period of the light-waves and let them stream through.
Light without Heat There are substances--"phosphorescent" things we call them--which give out a mysterious cold light of their own. It is one of the problems of science, and one of profound practical interest. If we could produce light without heat our "gas bill" would shrink amazingly. So much energy is wasted in the production of heat-waves and ultra-violet waves which we do not want, that 90 per cent. or more of the power used in illumination is wasted. Would that the glow-worm, or even the dead herring, would yield us its secret! Phosphorus is the one thing we know as yet that suits the purpose, and--it smells! Indeed, our artificial light is not only extravagant in cost, but often poor in colour. The unwary person often buys a garment by artificial light, and is disgusted next morning to find in it a colour which is not wanted. The colour disclosed by the sun was not in the waves of the artificial light. [Illustration: ROTATING DISC OF SIR ISAAC NEWTON FOR MIXING COLOURS The Spectroscope sorts out the above seven colours from sunlight (which is compounded of these seven colours). If painted in proper proportions on a wheel, as shown in the coloured illustration, and the wheel be turned rapidly on a pivot through its centre, only a dull white will be perceived. If one colour be omitted, the result will be one colour--the result of the union of the remaining six.] Beyond the waves of violet light are the still shorter and more rapid waves--the "ultra-violet" waves--which are precious to the photographer. As every amateur knows, his plate may safely be exposed to light that comes through a red or an orange screen. Such a screen means "no thoroughfare" for the blue and "beyond-blue" waves, and it is these which arrange the little grains of silver on the plate. It is the same waves which supply the energy to the little green grains of matter (chlorophyll) in the plant, preparing our food and timber for us, as will be seen later. The tree struggles upward and spreads out its leaves fanwise to the blue sky to receive them. In our coal-measures, the mighty dead forests of long ago, are vast stores of sunlight which we are prodigally using up. The X-rays are the extreme end, the highest octave, of the series of waves. Their power of penetration implies that they are excessively minute, but even these have not held their secret from the modern physicist. From a series of beautiful experiments, in which they were made to pass amongst the atoms of a crystal, we learned their length. It is about the ten-millionth of a millimetre, and a millimetre is about the 1/25 of an inch! One of the most recent discoveries, made during a recent eclipse of the sun, is that light is subject to gravitation. A ray of light from a star is bent out of its straight path when it passes near the mass of the sun. Professor Eddington tells us that we have as much right to speak of a pound of light as of a pound of sugar. Professor Eddington even calculates that the earth receives 160 tons of light from the sun every year!
ENERGY: HOW ALL LIFE DEPENDS ON IT As we have seen in an earlier chapter, one of the fundamental entities of the universe is matter. A second, not less important, is called energy. Energy is indispensable if the world is to continue to exist, since all phenomena, including life, depend on it. Just as it is humanly impossible to create or to destroy a particle of matter, so is it impossible to create or to destroy energy. This statement will be more readily understood when we have considered what energy is. Energy, like matter, is indestructible, and just as matter exists in various forms so does energy. And we may add, just as we are ignorant of what the negative and positive particles of electricity which constitute matter really are, so we are ignorant of the true nature of energy. At the same time, energy is not so completely mysterious as it once was. It is another of nature's mysteries which the advance of modern science has in some measure unveiled. It was only during the nineteenth century that energy came to be known as something as distinct and permanent as matter itself.
Forms of Energy The existence of various forms of energy had been known, of course, for ages; there was the energy of a falling stone, the energy produced by burning wood or coal or any other substance, but the essential _identity_ of all these forms of energy had not been suspected. The conception of energy as something which, like matter, was constant in amount, which could not be created nor destroyed, was one of the great scientific acquisitions of the past century. [Illustration: WAVE SHAPES Wave-motions are often complex. The above illustration shows some fairly complicated wave shapes. All such wave-motions can be produced by superposing a number of simple wave forms.] [Illustration: THE POWER OF A MAGNET The illustration is that of a "Phoenix" electric magnet lifting scrap from railway trucks. The magnet is 52 inches in diameter and lifts a weight of 26 tons. The same type of magnet, 62 inches in diameter, lifts a weight of 40 tons.] [Illustration: _Photo: The Locomotive Publishing Co., Ltd._ THE SPEED OF LIGHT A train travelling at the rate of sixty miles per hour would take rather more than seventeen and a quarter days to go round the earth at the equator, i.e. a distance of 25,000 miles. Light, which travels at the rate of 186,000 miles per second, would take between one-seventh and one-eighth of a second to go the same distance.] [Illustration: ROTATING DISC OF SIR ISAAC NEWTON FOR MIXING COLOURS The Spectroscope sorts out the above seven colours from sunlight (which is compounded of these seven colours). If painted in proper proportions on a wheel, as shown in the coloured illustration, and the wheel turned rapidly on a pivot through its centre, only a dull white will be perceived. If one colour be omitted, the result will be one colour--the result of the union of the remaining six.] It is not possible to enter deeply into this subject here. It is sufficient if we briefly outline its salient aspects. Energy is recognised in two forms, kinetic and potential. The form of energy which is most apparent to us is the _energy of motion_; for example, a rolling stone, running water, a falling body, and so on. We call the energy of motion _kinetic energy_. Potential energy is the energy a body has in virtue of its position--it is its capacity, in other words, to acquire kinetic energy, as in the case of a stone resting on the edge of a cliff. Energy may assume different forms; one kind of energy may be converted directly or indirectly into some other form. The energy of burning coal, for example, is converted into heat, and from heat energy we have mechanical energy, such as that manifested by the steam-engine. In this way we can transfer energy from one body to another. There is the energy of the great waterfalls of Niagara, for instance, which are used to supply the energy of huge electric power stations.
What Heat is An important fact about energy is, that all energy _tends to take the form of heat energy_. The impact of a falling stone generates heat; a waterfall is hotter at the bottom than at the top--the falling particles of water, on striking the ground, generate heat; and most chemical changes are attended by heat changes. Energy may remain latent indefinitely in a lump of wood, but in combustion it is liberated, and we have heat as a result. The atom of radium or of any other radio-active substance, as it disintegrates, generates heat. "Every hour radium generates sufficient heat to raise the temperature of its own weight of water, from the freezing point to the boiling point." And what is heat? _Heat is molecular motion._ The molecules of every substance, as we have seen on a previous page, are in a state of continual motion, and the more vigorous the motion the hotter the body. As wood or coal burns, the invisible molecules of these substances are violently agitated, and give rise to ether waves which our senses interpret as light and heat. In this constant movement of the molecules, then, we have a manifestation of the energy of motion and of heat. That energy which disappears in one form reappears in another has been found to be universally true. It was Joule who, by churning water, first showed that a measurable quantity of mechanical energy could be transformed into a measurable quantity of heat energy. By causing an apparatus to stir water vigorously, that apparatus being driven by falling weights or a rotating flywheel or by any other mechanical means, the water became heated. A certain amount of mechanical energy had been used up and a certain amount of heat had appeared. The relation between these two things was found to be invariable. Every physical change in nature involves a transformation of energy, but the total quantity of energy in the universe remains unaltered. This is the great doctrine of the Conservation of Energy.
Sec. 13 Substitutes for Coal Consider the source of nearly all the energy which is used in modern civilisation--coal. The great forests of the Carboniferous epoch now exists as beds of coal. By the burning of coal--a chemical transformation--the heat energy is produced on which at present our whole civilisation depends. Whence is the energy locked up in the coal derived? From the sun. For millions of years the energy of the sun's rays had gone to form the vast vegetation of the Carboniferous era and had been transformed, by various subtle processes, into the potential energy that slumbers in those immense fossilized forests. The exhaustion of our coal deposits would mean, so far as our knowledge extends at present, the end of the world's civilisation. There are other known sources of energy, it is true. There is the energy of falling water; the great falls of Niagara are used to supply the energy of huge electric power stations. Perhaps, also, something could be done to utilise the energy of the tides--another instance of the energy of moving water. And attempts have been made to utilise directly the energy of the sun's rays. But all these sources of energy are small compared with the energy of coal. A suggestion was made at a recent British Association meeting that deep borings might be sunk in order to utilise the internal heat of the earth, but this is not, perhaps, a very practical proposal. By far the most effective substitutes for coal would be found in the interior energy of the atom, a source of energy which, as we have seen, is practically illimitable. If the immense electrical energy in the interior of the atom can ever be liberated and controlled, then our steadily decreasing coal supply will no longer be the bugbear it now is to all thoughtful men. The stored-up energy of the great coal-fields can be used up, but we cannot replace it or create fresh supplies. As we have seen, energy cannot be destroyed, but it can become _unavailable_. Let us consider what this important fact means.
Sec. 14 Dissipation of Energy Energy may become dissipated. Where does it go? since if it is indestructible it must still exist. It is easier to ask the question than to give a final answer, and it is not possible in this OUTLINE, where an advanced knowledge of physics is not assumed on the part of the reader, to go fully into the somewhat difficult theories put forward by physicists and chemists. We may raise the temperature, say, of iron, until it is white-hot. If we stop the process the temperature of the iron will gradually settle down to the temperature of surrounding bodies. As it does so, where does its previous energy go? In some measure it may pass to other bodies in contact with the piece of iron, but ultimately the heat becomes radiated away in space where we cannot follow it. It has been added to the vast reservoir of _unavailable_ heat energy of uniform temperature. It is sufficient here to say that if all bodies had a uniform temperature we should experience no such thing as heat, because heat only travels from one body to another, having the effect of cooling the one and warming the other. In time the two bodies acquire the same temperature. The sum-total of the heat in any body is measured in terms of the kinetic energy of its moving molecules. There must come a time, so far as we can see at present, when, even if all the heat energy of the universe is not radiated away into empty infinite space, yet a uniform temperature will prevail. If one body is hotter than another it radiates heat to that body until both are at the same temperature. Each body may still possess a considerable quantity of heat energy, which it has absorbed, but that energy, so far as reactions between those two bodies are concerned, _is now unavailable_. The same principle applies whatever number of bodies we consider. Before heat energy can be utilised we must have bodies with different temperature. If the whole universe were at some uniform temperature, then, although it might possess an enormous amount of heat energy, this energy would be unavailable.
What a Uniform Temperature would mean And what does this imply? It implies a great deal: for if all the energy in the world became unavailable, the universe, as it now is, would cease to be. It is possible that, by the constant interchange of heat radiations, the whole universe is tending to some uniform temperature, in which case, although all molecular motion would not have ceased, it would have become unavailable. In this sense it may be said that the universe is running down. [Illustration: NIAGARA FALLS The energy of this falling water is prodigious. It is used to generate thousands of horse-power in great electrical installations. The power is used to drive electric trams in cities 150 to 250 miles away.] [Illustration: _Photo: Stephen Cribb._ TRANSFORMATION OF ENERGY An illustration of Energy. The chemical energy brought into existence by firing the explosive manifesting itself as mechanical energy, sufficient to impart violent motion to tons of water.] [Illustration: _Photo: Underwood & Underwood._ "BOILING" A KETTLE ON ICE When a kettle containing liquid air is placed on ice it "boils" because the ice is intensely hot _when compared with the very low temperature of the liquid air_.] If all the molecules of a substance were brought to a standstill, that substance would be at the absolute zero of temperature. There could be nothing colder. The temperature at which all molecular motions would cease is known: it is -273 deg. C. No body could possibly attain a lower temperature than this: a lower temperature could not exist. Unless there exists in nature some process, of which we know nothing at present, whereby energy is renewed, our solar system must one day sink to this absolute zero of temperature. The sun, the earth, and every other body in the universe is steadily radiating heat, and this radiation cannot go on for ever, because heat continually tends to diffuse and to equalise temperatures. But we can see, theoretically, that there is a way of evading this law. If the chaotic molecular motions which constitute heat could be _regulated_, then the heat energy of a body could be utilised directly. Some authorities think that some of the processes which go on in the living body do not involve any waste energy, that the chemical energy of food is transformed directly into work without any of it being dissipated as useless heat energy. It may be, therefore, that man will finally discover some way of escape from the natural law that, while energy cannot be destroyed, it has a tendency to become unavailable. The primary reservoir of energy is the atom; it is the energy of the atom, the atom of elements in the sun, the stars, the earth, from which nature draws for all her supply of energy. Shall we ever discover how we can replenish the dwindling resources of energy, or find out how we can call into being the at present unavailable energy which is stored up in uniform temperature? It looks as if our successors would witness an interesting race, between the progress of science on the one hand and the depletion of natural resources upon the other. The natural rate of flow of energy from its primary atomic reservoirs to the sea of waste heat energy of uniform temperature, allows life to proceed at a complete pace sternly regulated by the inexorable laws of supply and demand, which the biologists have recognised in their field as the struggle for existence.[5] [5] _Matter and Energy_, by Professor Soddy. It is certain that energy is an actual entity just as much as matter, and that it cannot be created or destroyed. Matter and ether are receptacles or vehicles of energy. As we have said, what these entities really are in themselves we do not know. It may be that all forms of energy are in some fundamental way aspects of the same primary entity which constitutes matter: how all matter is constituted of particles of electricity we have already seen. The question to which we await an answer is: What is electricity?
Sec. 15 MATTER, ETHER, AND EINSTEIN The supreme synthesis, the crown of all this progressive conquest of nature, would be to discover that the particles of positive and negative electricity, which make up the atoms of matter, are points or centres of disturbances of some kind in a universal ether, and that all our "energies" (light, magnetism, gravitation, etc.) are waves or strains of some kind set up in the ether by these clusters of electrons. It is a fascinating, tantalising dream. Larmor suggested in 1900 that the electron is a tiny whirlpool, or "vortex," in ether; and, as such a vortex may turn in either of two opposite ways, we seem to see a possibility of explaining positive and negative electricity. But the difficulties have proved very serious, and the nature of the electron is unknown. A recent view is that it is "a ring of negative electricity rotating about its axis at a high speed," though that does not carry us very far. The unit of positive electricity is even less known. We must be content to know the general lines on which thought is moving toward the final unification. We say "unification," but it would be a grave error to think that ether is the only possible basis for such unity, or to make it an essential part of one's philosophy of the universe. Ether was never more than an imagined entity to which we ascribed the most extraordinary properties, and which seemed then to promise considerable aid. It was conceived as an elastic solid of very great density, stretching from end to end of the universe, transmitting waves from star to star at the rate of 186,000 miles a second; yet it was believed that the most solid matter passed through it as if it did not exist. Some years ago a delicate experiment was tried for the purpose of detecting the ether. Since the earth, in travelling round the sun, must move through the ether if the ether exists, there ought to be a stream of ether flowing through every laboratory; just as the motion of a ship through a still atmosphere will make "a wind." In 1887 Michelson and Morley tried to detect this. Theoretically, a ray of light in the direction of the stream ought to travel at a different rate from a ray of light against the stream or across it. They found no difference, and scores of other experiments have failed. This does not prove that there is no ether, as there is reason to suppose that our instruments would appear to shrink in precisely the same proportion as the alteration of the light; but the fact remains that we have no proof of the existence of ether. J. H. Jeans says that "nature acts as if no such thing existed." Even the phenomena of light and magnetism, he says, do not imply ether; and he thinks that the hypothesis may be abandoned. The primary reason, of course, for giving up the notion of the ether is that, as Einstein has shown, there is no way of detecting its existence. If there is an ether, then, since the earth is moving through it, there should be some way of detecting this motion. The experiment has been tried, as we have said, but, although the method used was very sensitive, no motion was discovered. It is Einstein who, by revolutionising our conceptions of space and time, showed that no such motion ever could be discovered, whatever means were employed, and that the usual notion of the ether must be abandoned. We shall explain this theory more fully in a later section.
INFLUENCE OF THE TIDES: ORIGIN OF THE MOON: THE EARTH SLOWING DOWN Sec. 16 Until comparatively recent times, until, in fact, the full dawn of modern science, the tides ranked amongst the greatest of nature's mysteries. And, indeed, what agency could be invoked to explain this mysteriously regular flux and reflux of the waters of the ocean? It is not surprising that that steady, rhythmical rise and fall suggested to some imaginative minds the breathing of a mighty animal. And even when man first became aware of the fact that this regular movement was somehow associated with the moon, was he much nearer an explanation? What bond could exist between the movements of that distant world and the diurnal variation of the waters of the earth? It is reported that an ancient astronomer, despairing of ever resolving the mystery, drowned himself in the sea.
The Earth Pulled by the Moon But it was part of the merit of Newton's mighty theory of gravitation that it furnished an explanation even of this age-old mystery. We can see, in broad outlines at any rate, that the theory of universal attraction can be applied to this case. For the moon, Newton taught us, pulls every particle of matter throughout the earth. If we imagine that part of the earth's surface which comprises the Pacific Ocean, for instance, to be turned towards the moon, we see that the moon's pull, _acting on the loose and mobile water_, would tend to heap it up into a sort of mound. The whole earth is pulled by the moon, but the water is more free to obey this pull than is the solid earth, although small tides are also caused in the earth's solid crust. It can be shown also that a corresponding hump would tend to be produced on the other side of the earth, owing, in this case, to the tendency of the water, being more loosely connected, to lag behind the solid earth. If the earth's surface were entirely fluid the rotation of the earth would give the impression that these two humps were continually travelling round the world, once every day. At any given part of the earth's surface, therefore, there would be two humps daily, i.e. two periods of high water. Such is the simplest possible outline of the gravitational theory of the tides. [Illustration: THE CAUSE OF TIDES The tides of the sea are due to the pull of the moon, and, in lesser degree, of the sun. The whole earth is pulled by the moon, but the loose and mobile water is more free to obey this pull than is the solid earth, although small tides are also caused in the earth's solid crust. The effect which the tides have on slowing down the rotation of the earth is explained in the text.] [Illustration: _Photo: G. Brocklehurst._ THE AEGIR ON THE TRENT An exceptionally smooth formation due to perfect weather conditions. The wall-like formation of these tidal waves (see next page also) will be noticed. The reason for this is that the downward current in the river heads the sea-water back, and thus helps to exaggerate the advancing slope of the wave. The exceptional spring tides are caused by the combined operation of the moon and the sun, as is explained in the text.] [Illustration: _Photo: G. Brocklehurst._ A BIG SPRING TIDE, THE AEGIR ON THE TRENT] The actually observed phenomena are vastly more complicated, and the complete theory bears very little resemblance to the simple form we have just outlined. Everyone who lives in the neighbourhood of a port knows, for instance, that high water seldom coincides with the time when the moon crosses the meridian. It may be several hours early or late. High water at London Bridge, for instance, occurs about one and a half hours after the moon has passed the meridian, while at Dublin high water occurs about one and a half hours before the moon crosses the meridian. The actually observed phenomena, then, are far from simple; they have, nevertheless, been very completely worked out, and the times of high water for every port in the world can now be prophesied for a considerable time ahead.
The Action of Sun and Moon It would be beyond our scope to attempt to explain the complete theory, but we may mention one obvious factor which must be taken into account. Since the moon, by its gravitational attraction, produces tides, we should expect that the sun, whose gravitational attraction is so much stronger, should also produce tides and, we would suppose at first sight, more powerful tides than the moon. But while it is true that the sun produces tides, it is not true that they are more powerful than those produced by the moon. The sun's tide-producing power is, as a matter of fact, less than half that of the moon. The reason of this is that _distance_ plays an enormous role in the production of tides. The mass of the sun is 26,000,000 times that of the moon; on the other hand it is 386 times as far off as the moon. This greater distance more than counterbalances its greater mass, and the result, as we have said, is that the moon is more than twice as powerful. Sometimes the sun and moon act together, and we have what are called spring tides; sometimes they act against one another, and we have neap tides. These effects are further complicated by a number of other factors, and the tides, at various places, vary enormously. Thus at St. Helena the sea rises and falls about three feet, whereas in the Bay of Fundy it rises and falls more than fifty feet. But here, again, the reasons are complicated.
Sec. 17 Origin of the Moon But there is another aspect of the tides which is of vastly greater interest and importance than the theory we have just been discussing. In the hands of Sir George H. Darwin, the son of Charles Darwin, the tides had been made to throw light on the evolution of our solar system. In particular, they have illustrated the origin and development of the system formed by our earth and moon. It is quite certain that, long ages ago, the earth was rotating immensely faster than it is now, and that the moon was so near as to be actually in contact with the earth. In that remote age the moon was just on the point of separating from the earth, of being thrown off by the earth. Earth and moon were once one body, but the high rate of rotation caused this body to split up into two pieces; one piece became the earth we now know, and the other became the moon. Such is the conclusion to which we are led by an examination of the tides. In the first place let us consider the energy produced by the tides. We see evidences of this energy all round the word's coastlines. Estuaries are scooped out, great rocks are gradually reduced to rubble, innumerable tons of matter are continually being set in movement. Whence is this energy derived? Energy, like matter, cannot be created from nothing; what, then, is the source which makes this colossal expenditure possible.
The Earth Slowing down The answer is simple, but startling. _The source of tidal energy is the rotation of the earth._ The massive bulk of the earth, turning every twenty-four hours on its axis, is like a gigantic flywheel. In virtue of its rotation it possesses an enormous store of energy. But even the heaviest and swiftest flywheel, if it is doing work, or even if it is only working against the friction of its bearings, cannot dispense energy for ever. It must, gradually, slow down. There is no escape from this reasoning. It is the rotation of the earth which supplies the energy of the tides, and, as a consequence, the tides must be slowing down the earth. The tides act as a kind of brake on the earth's rotation. These masses of water, _held back by the moon_, exert a kind of dragging effect on the rotating earth. Doubtless this effect, measured by our ordinary standards, is very small; it is, however, continuous, and in the course of the millions of years dealt with in astronomy, this small but constant effect may produce very considerable results. But there is another effect which can be shown to be a necessary mathematical consequence of tidal action. It is the moon's action on the earth which produces the tides, but they also react on the moon. The tides are slowing down the earth, and they are also driving the moon farther and farther away. This result, strange as it may seem, does not permit of doubt, for it is the result of an indubitable dynamical principle, which cannot be made clear without a mathematical discussion. Some interesting consequences follow. Since the earth is slowing down, it follows that it was once rotating faster. There was a period, a long time ago, when the day comprised only twenty hours. Going farther back still we come to a day of ten hours, until, inconceivable ages ago, the earth must have been rotating on its axis in a period of from three to four hours. At this point let us stop and inquire what was happening to the moon. We have seen that at present the moon is getting farther and farther away. It follows, therefore, that when the day was shorter the moon was nearer. As we go farther back in time we find the moon nearer and nearer to an earth rotating faster and faster. When we reach the period we have already mentioned, the period when the earth completed a revolution in three or four hours, we find that the moon was so near as to be almost grazing the earth. This fact is very remarkable. Everybody knows that there is a _critical velocity_ for a rotating flywheel, a velocity beyond which the flywheel would fly into pieces because the centrifugal force developed is so great as to overcome the cohesion of the molecules of the flywheel. We have already likened our earth to a flywheel, and we have traced its history back to the point where it was rotating with immense velocity. We have also seen that, at that moment, the moon was barely separated from the earth. The conclusion is irresistible. In an age more remote the earth _did_ fly in pieces, and one of those pieces is the moon. Such, in brief outline, is the tidal theory of the origin of the earth-moon system.
The Day Becoming Longer At the beginning, when the moon split off from the earth, it obviously must have shared the earth's rotation. It flew round the earth in the same time that the earth rotated, that is to say, the month and the day were of equal length. As the moon began to get farther from the earth, the month, because the moon took longer to rotate round the earth, began to get correspondingly longer. The day also became longer, because the earth was slowing down, taking longer to rotate on its axis, but the month increased at a greater rate than the day. Presently the month became equal to two days, then to three, and so on. It has been calculated that this process went on until there were twenty-nine days in the month. After that the number of days in the month began to decrease until it reached its present value or magnitude, and will continue to decrease until once more the month and the day are equal. In that age the earth will be rotating very slowly. The braking action of the tides will cause the earth always to keep the same face to the moon; it will rotate on its axis in the same time that the moon turns round the earth. If nothing but the earth and moon were involved this state of affairs would be final. But there is also the effect of the solar tides to be considered. The moon makes the day equal to the month, but the sun has a tendency, by still further slowing down the earth's rotation on its axis, to make the day equal to the year. It would do this, of course, by making the earth take as long to turn on its axis as to go round the sun. It cannot succeed in this, owing to the action of the moon, but it can succeed in making the day rather longer than the month. Surprising as it may seem, we already have an illustration of this possibility in the satellites of Mars. The Martian day is about one half-hour longer than ours, but when the two minute satellites of Mars were discovered it was noticed that the inner one of the two revolved round Mars in about seven hours forty minutes. In one Martian day, therefore, one of the moons of Mars makes more than three complete revolutions round that planet, so that, to an inhabitant of Mars, there would be more than three months in a day.
BIBLIOGRAPHY ARRHENIUS, SVANTE, _Worlds in the Making_. CLERK-MAXWELL, JAMES, _Matter and Motion_. DANIELL, ALFRED, _A Text-Book of the Principles of Physics_. DARWIN, SIR G. H., _The Tides_. HOLMAN, _Matter, Energy, Force and Work_. KAPP, GISBERT, _Electricity_. KELVIN, LORD, _Popular Lectures and Addresses_. Vol. i. _Constitution of Matter._ LOCKYER, SIR NORMAN, _Inorganic Evolution_. LODGE, SIR OLIVER, _Electrons_ and _The Ether of Space_. PERRIN, JEAN, _Brownian Movement and Molecular Reality_. SODDY, FREDERICK, _Matter and Energy_ and _The Interpretation of Radium_. THOMPSON, SILVANUS P., _Light, Visible and Invisible_. THOMSON, SIR J. J., _The Corpuscular Theory of Matter_. ←Part VII Return to the top of the page. page discussion edit history Log in / create account navigation Main Page Community portal Central discussion Recent changes Random page Random author Help Donate search
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The terms chosen for the "age" described below are both literal and metaphorical. They describe the technology that dominated the period of time in question but are also representative of a large number of other technologies introduced during the same period. Also of note is the fact that the period of diffusion of a technology can begin modestly and can extend well beyond the "age" of its introduction. To maintain continuity, the treatment of its diffusion is dealt with in the context of its dominant "age". For example the "Steam Age" here is defined as the period from 1840 to 1880. However steam powered boats were introduced in 1809, the CPR was completed in 1885 and railway construction in Canada continued well into the twentieth century. To preserve continuity, the development of steam, in the early and later years, is therefore considered within the "Steam Age". Technology can be applied in many fields. Those chosen for treatment here include, in rough order, transportation, communication, energy, materials, industry, public works, public services (health care), domestic/consumer and defence technologies. [edit]The Stone Age: Fire (14,000 BC – 1600) The diffusion of technology in what is now Canada began with the arrival of the first humans about 14,000 BC. These people brought with them stone and bone tools. These took the form of arrowheads, axes, blades, scrappers, needles, harpoon heads and fishhooks used mostly to kill animals and fish for food and skins. They also brought fire which they used for heating their dwellings and for cooking which was done onyou beep! open fires. There were no clay pots or ovens. In the Arctic the Innu used stick frames covered with animal skins for shelter during the summer months while during the harsh winter they built houses made of snow or igloos. On the plains native peoples used the wellfasdfasdfasfas known teepee. This consisted of a number of poles arranged to form a conical structure which was in turn covered with animal skins. In central Canada the long house was popular. This large structure was built from interwoven branches and could house 70 to 80 people. Several of these structures would be built together to form a village which was often surrounded by a palisade of logs stuck vertically into the ground as protection from hostile tribes. On the west coast native peoples constructed dwellings made from heavy timber. These structures were built near the wateradgasdgasdgsdgasdgsadgasdgsdgf's edge and were often decorated with elaborate and elegant carved images. Transportation techniques were simple. The aboriginal peoples did not have the wheel, horses or the sail. The paddle powered canoe was the most common means of transport and was especially practical during the summer, considering the large number of lakes and rivers that characterized the topography. The duggout was favoured in the waters off the west coast. Summer travel also saw use of the travois, a simple type of sled that was pulled over the ground by a dog and used to transport a light load. In the winter the snow shoe made walking in the deep snow practical. Winter transport in the Arctic made use of the dog team and in warmer summer months the use of the kayak was common. Clothing was made of animal skins which were cut with stone and bone tools and sewn with bone needles and animal sinews. Native peoples did not have textiles. For the most part native peoples were hunters and gatherers, chasing large animals, and fishing for a source of protein. Plants and fruits that grew naturally were also an important food source. A common, easily stored and readily transportable food was pemmican, dried powerdered meat mixed with fat, berries and "vegetables". In central Canada there was limited agriculture which allowed the storage of some food during times of privation. Of note was the fact that they did not have the plow or draught animals. The first peoples had techniques for dealing with disease. Medicines included those made from high bush cranberries, oil of wintergreen and bloodroot, among others. A type of tea made from the bark of the spruce or hemlock could prevent or cure scurvy. The first peoples did not have writing or any way of communicating in symbolic form or storing information. Their extensive knowledge of the natural world and information relating to their customs and traditions was passed orally. Weapons of war were made by hand from wood and stone. The long range weapon of these times was the bow and arrow with an effective range of 100+ metres. Close in fighting was conducted with a range of simple armaments including: stone tipped spears, stone axes (tomahawk), stone blades used as knives and stone and wooden clubs of various types. Because there was no knowledge of metal working with the exception of some small items of jewelry made from copper, such weapons as swords and metal knives were not part of this early arsenal. [edit]The Age of Sail: Ships, symbolic language, and the wheel (1600 – 1830) The arrival of white explorers and colonists in the 1500s introduced those technologies popular in Europe at the time, such as iron making, the wheel, writing, paper, printing, books, newspapers, long range navigation, large ship construction, stone and brick and mortar construction, surgery, firearms, new crops, livestock, the knife fork and spoon, china plates and cups, iron pots, cotton and linen cloth, horses and livestock. The use of wind and water as sources of power were major developments in the technological history of the new colonies. Ships with large masts and huge canvas sails maintained the link between the colonies and the imperial centres, Paris, France until 1763 and London, England until the arrival of steam power in 1850. Wind power was used to a lesser extent to turn the sails of the windmill, which did not come into widespread use. However water power was used extensively to power grist mill in both New France and later, Quebec and Upper Canada and Lower Canada. Animal power in the form of the horse or ox, was used to work the fields. Fire from a wood or oil fuel source was not new but the use of stone fireplaces and ovens along with metal pots and pans dramatically changed the nature of cooking. The new arrivals also brought new eating habits. Meat from animals such as cows, sheep, chickens and pigs was common as were new types of fruits and vegetables. These items were eaten fresh but could be stored for later consumption if salted, pickled or frozen. Grain was ground to flour at the local grist mill and baked in the home oven with yeast to make bread. Hopps, grain and fruit were fermented to make beer, hard alcohol and wine. Meals were served on pewter or china plates and eaten with a metal knife, fork and spoon. The places were set on a simple wooden table with wooden chairs often made by the man of the house. Inland travel by the coureurs de bois was by way of an Indian invention, the canoe. Within settlements transport was often simply a matter of walking around town. The horse, introduced by the new arrivals also provided a new and convenient mode of transport. The wooden cart, wagon and carriage, made possible by the introduction of the wheel in combination with the horse, dramatically improved the transport of people and goods. The first graded road in Canada was built by Samuel de Champlain in 1606 and linked the settlement at Port Royal to Digby Cape, 16 kilometers away. By 1734 Quebec City and Montreal were connected by a road, Le chemin du roi, along the north shore of the St Lawrence. The 267 distance could be traversed with great difficulty and discomfort by horse drawn carriage in four to five days. The period also saw the construction a number of important canals including: the Rideau Canal, Ottawa - Kingston, 1820, the Lachine Canal, Montreal, 1825, the Ottawa River Canals at Grenville and Carillon, Quebec, 1834 and the Chambly Canal, Chambly, Quebec, 1843. The introduction of written language to the new world was of paramount importance. The 26 letter, Roman based alphabet that formed the basis for French and English words was arguably much more flexible that the pictographs that characterized eastern languages. The pen along with ink and paper made written communication possible and allowed private individuals, businessmen, the clergy and government officials to produce the documents essential for social, commercial, religious and political intercourse. This created a need for mail service. Messages were originally carried bwtween settlements on the St. Lawrence by canoe. After 1734 the road between Montreal and Quebec was used by a special courier to carry official dispatches. In 1755 a post office was opened in Halifax by Benjamin Franklin, the Post Master of the British colonies, as part of a trans-Atlantic mail service that he established between Falmouth, England and New York. In 1763 Franklin opened other post offices in Quebec City, Trois Rivieres and Montreal with a link from the latter city to New York and the trans-Atlantic service. The War of American Independence seriously disrupted mail service in Canada but by 1783 peace had been restored and Hugh Finlay was appointed Post Master for the northern colonies in 1784. That same year Finlay hired Pierre Durand to survey an all-Canadian mail route to Halifax. The path chosen took 15 weeks for a round trip! Although the written word was a vital part of communications, French colonial policy opposed the establishment of newspapers in New France. Canada's first paper, the Halifax Gazette produced on a simple printing press, began publication in 1752 under the watchful eye of John Bushell. In 1764, the Quebec Gazette was established in Quebec City by William Brown and Thomas Gilmore. The Montreal Gazette was founded in that city in 1785 by Fleury Mesplet. Other newspapers followed including the Upper Canada Gazette at Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake)in 1793, the first newspaper in what is now Ontario, the Québec City Mercury, 1805, the Montréal Herald, 1811, Le Canadien 1806, La Minerve, 1826, and the Colonial Advocate and Novascotian both in 1824. These publications were simple affairs, type set by hand, consisting of only a few pages, produced in limited quanties on simple presses and of limited distribution. Between the 1530s and 1626 Basque whalers frequented the waters of Newfoundland and the north shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence from the Strait of Bell Isle to the mouth of the Sagenuay River. They constructed stone ovens ashore for fires to melt whale fat. However as whales became scarce, the cod fishery off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland became hotly contested by the British and French, in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The British used small boats close to shore from which they caught the cod with hook and line. They practiced the "dry fishery" technique which involved shore based settlements for the drying of cod on flakes or racks placed in the open air for their subsequent transport back to Europe. The French on the other hand practiced the "green fishery" which involved processing the catch with salt aboard ship. At the same time fleet of schooners fishing for cod, halibut, haddock, and mackerel became prominent off the Atlantic coast. The use of the long line and purse seine net increased the size of the catch. It is ironic that a phenomenon as fickle as fashion would be responsible for the economic development and exploration of half a continent but such was the case with the fur trade in North America between 1650 and 1850. The subject of bitter rivalry between the British and French Empires and inter-corporate rivalry among a number of business organizations, notably the Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Company, the technology of the trade was the picture of simplicity. Traders, be they French or British would set out in birch bark canoes, loaded with trade goods (knives, ax heads, cloth blankets, alcohol, firearms and other items) and travel west along Canada's numerous rivers, streams and lakes in search of Indians and exchange these items for beaver skins. The skins came from animals trapped by the native peoples and worn as clothing during the long cold Canadian winter. The skins were worn with the fur side next to the skin and by the spring the long hairs would be worn away leaving the short hairs which were used to make felt. The skins were them transported by the traders in their canoes back to trading posts in Montreal or on Hudson Bay and transported by sailing ship to England or France. There they were processed by a technique involving mercury, and the felt that resulted from the treatment was used to make beaver hats, and coincidentally gave rise to an associated phenomenon, the mad hatter. A combination of declining beaver stocks and a change in fashion that saw a decline in the popularity of the beaver hat put an end to the trade. Agriculture was an essential colonial activity. The settlers who founded Port Royal in Acadia in 1605 drained coastal marshes with a system of dikes and grew vegetables, flax and wheat and raised livestock. After 1713 the British promoted the Maritimes as a source of hemp for the rope for the Royal Navy, with moderate success. Mixed farming, the growing of wheat and the raising of livestock would characterize the nature of maritime agriculture well into the mid-nineteenth century. In 1617, Louis Hebert in Quebec began to raise cattle and grow peas, grain and corn on a very small plot. In the 1640s charter companies promoted agriculture and settlers cleared forested land with the use of oxen, horses and asses. In 1663 Louis XIV, through his colonial administrators Colbert and Jean Talon took steps to promote the cultivation of hops and hemp and the raising of livestock. By 1721 the harvest of the farmers of New France consisted predominantly of wheat and the census of horses, pigs, cattle and sheep registered 30,0000 animals. In the latter part of the century the British promoted the cultivation of potatoes. The arrival of the Loyalists in Upper Canada in the late eighteenth century resulted in the cultivation of hemp but agriculture was dominated by the wheat culture well into the mid-nineteenth century. The Europeans brought with them metal and textiles and a knowledge of the means to make them. Les Forges de St. Maurice which began producing iron in 1738 at facilities near Trois Rivieres and the Marmora Ironworks established in 1822 near Peterborough were the first iron works in Canada. Both ceased operations in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Early sixteenth century female settlers along the St Lawrence and in Acadia were almost all were familiar with the techniques of spinning yarn and weaving cloth for everyday clothes and bedding and the home production of textiles eventually became an important cottage industry. The spinning wheel and loom were features of many colonial homes and weaving techniques included the "à la planche" and "boutonné" methods. Loyalist women settling in Upper and Lower Canada, grew flax and raised sheep for wool to make clothing, blankets and linen. The Jacquard loom, introduced in the 1830s, featured a complex system of punch cards to control the pattern and was the first programmable machine in Canada. With the arrival of industrial textile mills in Montreal and Toronto in the late nineteenth century, the economic advantage of home weaving faded. Money, then as now was of vital interest to individuals and to the functioning of the economy. The first coin produced for use in New France was the "Gloria Regni" a silver piece, struck in Paris in 1670. The first paper money in New France consisted of playing cards signed by the governor and issued in 1685 to help deal with the chronic shortage of coins. After 1760 the British introduced the sterling which officially stood as Canada's currency for almost a century. However the monetary system in reality was a chaotic affair and the British coins and paper circulated along with, Spanish dollars, Nova Scotia provincial money, US dollars and gold coins and British paper "army bills" used buy supplies in the War of 1812. In 1858 the government of the Province of Canada begn keeping its accounts in Canadian dollars and to circulate its own paper currency alongside the paper dollars circulated by the Bank of Montreal and other banks. Medical treatment at this time reflected techniques available in France and was provided by a barber-surgeon. The first in New France was Robert Giffard who arrived in Quebec City in 1627 and "practiced" at Hotel-Dieu, Canada's first hospital, a very modest four-room structure, founded by the church. The panacea was bleeding, which involved the use of a knife to cut open a blood vessel and drain way a quantity of the patients blood. There was some surgery but it was undertaken with primitive instruments and without anesthetic or any familiarity with the concept of infection and both the procedure and results were usually quite gruesome. Another figure of repute, Michel Sarrazin, a noted botanist as well as doctor arrived from France in the latter half of the sevententh century and served as the surgeon-major of the French troops in New France. He too practiced at Hotel-Dieu and while there treated hundreds of patients infected during a typhus epidemic. Eyeglasses for the correction of vision became available at this time. The mercury thermometer, invented in 1714, became a useful diagnostic tool for doctors as did the stethescope invented in 1816. Because doctors were few and far between people with medical problems often had to treat themselves. They used Indian medicines or home remedies based on the internal and external application of various herbal and animal products. Advances in surgery came in the early 1800s with the innovative work of Dr. Christopher Widmer who practiced at York Hospital (later known as Toronto General Hospital) and R.W. Beaumont made a name as a noted inventor of surgical instruments. The early part of the nineteenth century also witnessed the first halting steps with respect to the use of inoculation, in Nova Scotia, in this case against smallpox. However it would take another one hundred years for the practice to become widespread. General hospitals were established in Montreal in 1819 and York (Toronto, Ontario) in 1829. The first domestic homes in Canada were constructed at Port Royal on the Annapolis River in what is now Nova Scotia in 1605. The colonists built simple wooden frame homes with peaked roofs around a central courtyard. This established a house building tradition that lasts to this day, for by far the most common domestic structure in Canada for the last 400 years has been the wood frame peak roofed house. Most domestic homes both urban and rural in New France from about 1650 to 1750 were simple wooden structures. Wood was inexpensive, readily available and easily worked by most residents. Rooms were small, usually limited to a living/dining/ kitchen space and perhaps a bedroom. Roofs were usually peaked to deflect the rain and very heavy snow. After fires in Quebec City in 1682 and Montreal in 1721 building codes emphasized the importance of stone construction but these requirements were mostly ignored except by the most affluent. The most popular type of domestic dwelling in Loyalist Upper Canada in the late 1700s was the log house or the wood frame house or less commomly the stone house. When homes were heated it was by a fire place burning wood or a cast iron wood stove, which was also used for cooking and they were lit by candle light or whale oil lamp. Kerosene lamps became popular in the 1840s when Gesner of Halifax developed an effective way to manufacture that product. Water for drinking and washing was carried to the home from an outside source and the chamber pot or outdoor prive served as a toilet. Musical instruments did much to enliven the colonial life. In the well known documents The Jesuit Relations, there is reference to the playing of the fiddle in 1645 and the organ in 1661. Quebec City boasted of Canada's first piano in 1784. The Europeans introduced extremely important innovations relating to warfare, gunpowder, the cannon and the musket. The cannon was used to arm a number of important military structures including: the Citadel of Quebec, Quebec City, Quebec, 1745, the Fortress of Louisburg, Louisburg, Nova Scotia, 1745 and Fort Henry, Kingston, Ontario, 1812. They were also the primary weapon aboard the warships of the era. French regular soldiers stationed in New France and British regulars stationed in British North America after 1763 were equipped with a musket and bayonet. Ironically in the Battle of Quebec, one of the great battles of history, the French General Montcalm ordered his troops out of the ultra-modern stone-walled Citadel, with its heavy defensive cannon and onto the adjacent Plains of Abraham where they were felled by a single volley of musket fire from the British line. Both the British/Canadian/Indian troops and American troops were equipped with cannons and muskets when invading American armies attacked Canada in 1775 and again during the period from 1812 to 1814 with the intent of annexation. In both cases the invaders were defeated. [edit]The Steam Age: Trains, telegraphs, water, and oil (1830 – 1880) The pace of diffusion quickened in the 1800s with the introduction of such technologies as steam power and the telegraph. Indeed it was the introduction of steam power that allowed politicians in Ottawa to entertain the idea of creating a transcontinental state. In addition to steam power, municipal water systems and sewer systems were introduced in the latter part of the century. The field of medecine saw the introduction of anesthetic and antiseptics. It was via the paddle powered steam boat that steam power was first introduced to Canada. The Accommodation, a side-wheeler built entirely in Montreal by the Eagle Foundry and launched in 1809, was the first steamer to ply Canadian waters, making its maiden voyage from Montréal to Québec that same year in 36-hours. Other paddle-wheel steamboats included: the Frontenac, Lake Ontario, 1816, the General Stacey Smyth, Saint John River, 1816, the Union, lower Ottawa River, 1819, the Royal William, Québec to Halifax, 1831 and the Beaver, BC coast,1836. Transatlantic steam service was introduced by the Montreal Ocean Steamship Company founded Sir Hugh Allan in Montreal in 1854. The first steam powered railway service in Canada was offered by the Champlain and St. Lawrence Railroad, Quebec, in 1836. Other railway systems soon followed including: the Albion Mines Railway, Nova, Scotia, 1839, the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad, 1853, the Great Western Railway, Montreal to Windsor, 1854, the Grand Trunk Railway, Montreal to Sarnia, 1860, the Intercolonial Railway, 1876, the Chignecto Marine Transport Railway, Tignish, Nova Scotia, 1888, the Edmonton, Yukon & Pacific Railway, 1891 and the Newfoundland Railway, St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, 1893, the White Pass and Yukon Railway, Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, 1900, the Kettle Valley Railway, British Columbia, 1916 and Canadian National Railways, 1917. One of the great engineering works of the world, the Canadian Pacific Railway and its associated Canadian Pacific trans-Canada telegraph system, was completed in 1885. Between 1881 and 1961 CPR would operate 3,267 steam locomotives. Canada's initial telegraph service introduced in 1846, was offered by the Toronto, Hamilton and Niagara Electro-Magnetic Telegraph Co. Others soon followed including: the telegraph system of The Montreal Telegraph Company, 1847 and the telegraph system of the Dominion Telegraph Company, 1868. The newspaper benefitted from the introduction of the telegraph and the rotary press. This latter device, invented in the US, was first used in Canada by George Brown in Toronto starting in 1844 to print copies of the Globe. This process permitted the printing of thousands of copies of each daily paper rather than the mere hundreds of copies possible with previous technologies. The lumber industry grew to become one of Canada's most important economic engines during this period. A market for Canadian wood developed in Britain where access to traditional sources of lumber for the construction of ships for the Royal Navy, as well as industrial structures, was blocked by Napoleon in 1806. As a result Britain turned to her colonies in North America to supply masts for her ships as well as sawn lumber and square timber. Other wood products included barrel staves, shingles, box shooks and spoolwood for textile factories. Growth during this period was staggering. In 1805, 9000 loads of lumber arrived in Britain from Canada. In 1807, the total shipped rose to 27,000 loads, in 1809, 90,000 and by 1846, 750,000 loads. Water was nesessary for the transport of lumber to saw mill and ports as well as providing the power for the saw mills themselves and as a result the industry developed along the rivers of New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario, including the Mirimachi, St. John, Ottawa and Gatineau. The logging itself was a winter activity and began with the first snowfall when roads and camps were built in the forest. Trees were cut with steel axes until about 1870 when the two-man crosscut saw was introduced. The felled trees had their branches removed and were hauled over the snow roads by teams of oxen or horses to the nearest frozen stream or river. In the spring melt they would be carried by the rushing water downstream to the mills. Often the logs "jammed" and on the way the lumberjacks would undertake the very dangerous lob of breaking the "jam". Where there were rapids or obstacles, special timber "slides" were constructed to aid transport. Large numbers of logs were often assembled into rafts to aid their movement or into very large booms which drifted down river to mills and market. A number of large firms appeared as a result of this activity including, Cunard and Pollok, Gilmour and Co. in New Brusswick, William Price in Chicoutimi, Quebec and J.R.Booth in Ottawa. It is important to note that the introduction of the railway at mid-century served to decrease the importance of water transport for the industry. The industry in western Canada and in particular British Columbia did not develop as quickly as in the east but with the exhaustion of the eastern forests and the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, it eventually overtook the scale of activity in eastern Canada. Different conditions there required different logging techniques. Because the trees were much larger and heavier, three times as many horses or oxen were required to haul them. The more moderate climate meant that the winter snow roads could not be used and instead necessitated the use of log skid roads. Trees were so tall that springboards were wedged into notches cut into the trunk to serve as work platforms for two loggers using heavy double bit steel axes. Human and animal muscle, powered the industry until 1897 when the steam-powered "donkey engine" was introduced in B.C. from the US. This stationary machine drove a winch connected to a rope or wire which was used to haul logs up to 150 metres across the forest floor. A series of such engines placed at intervals could be used to haul large numbers of logs, long distances in relatively short periods of time. The "high lead system" in which a wire or lead suspended in trees was used to haul logs, was also introduced about this time. A naissant manufacturing capability began to develop during this period. Canada's first paper mill was built in St. Andrews, Quebec in 1805 by two new Englanders and produced paper for sale in Montreal and Quebec City. By 1869 Alexander Burtin was operating Canada's first groundwood paper mill in Valleyfield, Quebec. It was equipped with two wood grinders imported from Germany and produced primarily newsprint. North America's first chemical wood-pulp mill was constructed in Windsor mills, Quebec in 1864 by Angus and Logan. C.B.Wright & Sons began to make "hydraulic cement" in Hull, Quebec in 1830. Leather tanning gained prominence and James Davis among others made a mark in this field in Toronto beginning in 1832. Canada became the world's largest exporter of potash in the 1830s and 1840s. In 1840 Darling & Brady began to manufacture soap in Montreal. E.B.Eddy began to produce matches in Hull, Quebec in 1851. Explosives were manufactured by an increasing number of companies including the Gore Powder Works at Cumminsville, Canada West, 1852, the Canada Powder Company, 1855, the Acadia Powder Company 1862, and the Hamiltom Powder Company established that same year. In 1879 that company built Canada's first high explosives manufacturing plant in Beloeil, Quebec. Rubber footwear was produced by the Canadian Rubber Company in Montreal starting in 1854. The first salt well was drilled at Goderich, Canada West in 1866. Phosphate fertilizer was first made in Brockville, Ontario in 1869. Glass manufacturing took hold at this time. Glass was manufactured at Mallorytown, Upper Canada beginning in 1825. Window glass was produced at the Canada Glass Works in St. Jean, Canada East (Quebec)from 1845 to 1851 and the Ottawa Glass Works at Como in Ottawa, Canada West (Ontario) from 1847 to 1857. Glass was blown to form tubes which were cut lengthwise, unrolled and flattened. Glass bottles were produced starting in 1851 by the Ottawa factory and Foster Brothers Glass Works, in St. Jean starting in 1855. Other manufacturers included: the Canada Glass Works, Hudson, Qué, 1864-1872 and the Hamilton Glass Company, Hamilton, Ont, 1865-96, which produced "green" glass and the St. Lawrence Glass Company, Montréal, 1867-73 and Burlington Glass Company of Hamilton, Ont, 1874-98 which produced "flint" or clear glass. Industrial textile production also took its first steps during these years. In 1826, Mahlon Willett established a woollen cloth manufacturing factory in L'Acadie, Lower Canada and by 1844 the Sherbrooke Cotton Factory in Sherbrooke was producing cotton cloth. This establishment also had powered knitting machines and may therefore have been Canada's first knitting mill before burning down in 1854. There were cloth manufacturing mills in operation at Ancaster, Ontario by 1859, as well as Merritton, Ontario (the Lybster Mills, 1860). In Montreal a cotton mill operated on the banks of the Lachine Canal at the St-Gabriel Lock from 1853 until at least 1871 and Belding Paul & Co., operated Canada's first silk cloth manufacturing factory in that city starting in 1876. The mass production of clothing began at this time. Livingstone and Johnston, later W.R. Johnston & Company, founded in Toronto in 1868, was the first in Canada to cut cloth and and sew together the component pieces with the help of the newly introduced sewing machine, as part of a continuous operation. The growing agricultural activity in southern Ontario and Quebec provided the basis for farm mechanization and the manufacturing industry to meet the demand for agricultural machinery. The area around Hamilton had become attractive for iron and steel industries based on railway construction and the source of this raw material made the same area attractive to aspiring farm implement manufacturers. By about 1850 there were factories producing plows, mowers, reapers, seed drills, cutting boxes, fanning mills threshing machines and steam engines, established by entrepreneurs including the well known Massey family, Harris, Wisner, Cockshutt, Sawyer, Patterson, Verity and Willkinson. Although the industry was located mostly around Hamilton there were other smaller manufacturers in other locations including, Frost and Wood of Smith Falls, Ontario, Herring of Napanee, Ontario Ontario, Harris and Allen of Saint John and the Connell Brothers of Woodstock, both in New Brunswick and Mathew Moody and Sons of Terrebonne and Doré et Fils of La Prairie both in Quebec. Meat processing had been a local undertaking since the beginning of the colony with the farmer and local butcher providing nearby customers with product. Health concerns were evident from the start and regulations for the butchering and sale of meat were promulgated in New France in 1706 and in Lower Canada in 1805. Activity grew to reach an industrial scale by the middle of the nineteenth century. Laing Packing and Provisions was founded in Montreal in 1852, F.W. Fearman began processing operations in Hamilton, Ontario and in Toronto William E. Davies established Canada's first large scale hog slaughter house in Toronto in 1874. Drilling for oil was first undertaken in Canada in 1851 in Enniskillen Township in Lambton County by the International Mining and Manufacturing Company of Woodstock, Ontario. There was fierce competition for oil drilling, refining and distribution in southern Ontario until 1880 when 16 oil refineries merged to form Imperial Oil. This company was in turn acquired in 1898 by John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust. Oil discovery and development in the west dates from the early twentieth century with Imperial becoming a major player by 1914, at Turner Valley, Alberta and in 1920 at Norman Wells, NWT. British based corporations such as Royal Dutch Shell and Anglo-Persian Oil (British Petroleum) also became involved in oil exploration in the west at this time. The refining of oil required sulfuric acid and two entrepreneurs, T.H. Smallman and W. Bowman, established the Canadian Chemical Company in London, Ontario in 1867 to manufacture this product for the region's oil industry. This marked the beginning of the mass production of heavy industrial chemicals in Canada. The founding of the Canadian Manufacturers Association in 1871 was symptomatic of the growth of this sector of the economy with its related technologies. The retail industry also experienced considerable innovation during these years at the hands of Timothy Eaton of Toronto. He offered for sale large numbers of "consumer" goods such as clothes, shoes and household items under the roof of one large store and sold then at fixed prices eliminating the concept of barter. This had become possible because of the recent stabalisation of the Canadian currency through the creation of the Canadian dollar. In 1884 he created the iconic Eaton's catalogue which formed the basis for his catalogue sales operation which allowed rural dwellers to order and receive by mail or train the products that were available to those who had access to his growing chain of giant urban department stores. Coal gas public street lighting systems were introduced in Montreal in 1838 in Toronto in 1841 and in Halifax in 1850. Horse drawn street rail coaches for public transport were introduced in large Canadian cities about his time. Water distribution systems also became a feature of many Canadian cities during this period and their installation represented the most significant development in public health in Canada's history. Gravity feed systems were in operation in Saint John, New Brunswick in 1838 and Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1848. Steam powered pumping stations were in service in Toronto in 1841, Kingston, Ontario in 1850 and Hamilton, Ontario in 1859. Most large cities had steam powered municipal systems by the 1870s. Sewer systems necessarily followed and with them the flush toilet in the 1880s made popular by Crapper in Great Britain at that time. There were dramatic developments in the field of medicine during these years. In 1834, a British surgeon with the Royal Navy suggested a link between sanitation and disease. This lead to the establishment of departments of public health across the country by the end of the century and provided an impetus to municipalities to supply clean water to their citizens as noted above. The use of the hypodermic syringe, invented in 1853 was quickly adopted by Canadian doctors. Two other medical innovations also appeared at this time, anesthetic and antiseptic. The use of ether and chlorophorm as anesthetics became common in England and the US after 1846. In Canada, Dr. David Parker of Halifax is credited as the first to use anesthesia during surgery. Antiseptic was being used in the operating rooms of the Montreal and Toronto General hospitals by 1869. Notable works of civil engineering realized during this period included: the Reversing Falls Bridges, St. John, New Brunswick, 1853 and 1885, The Halifax Citadel, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1856, Victoria Bridge, Montreal, Quebec, 1859, Canada's first tunnel, the Brockville Railway Tunnel, Brockville, Ontario, 1869, the Kettle Creek Bridge, St. Thomas, Ontario, 1871 and the Grand Rapids Tramway, Grand Rapids, Manitoba, 1877. The grand hotel made its first appearance during these years with the opening of the Clifton Hotel in Niagara Falls, Upper Canada in 1833. Other hotels of note included: St. Lawrence Hall, Montreal, 1851, the Queen's Hotel, Toronto, 1862 and the Tadoussac Hotel, Tadoussac, Quebec, 1865. The Militia Act of 1855 passed by the Parliament of the United Provinces of Canada established the basis for the Canadian military. The act established seven batteries of artillery which grew to 10 field batteries and 30 batteries of garrison artillery by 1870. Weapons used by these units included the 7-pounder smooth bore muzzle loading and the 9-pounder Rifled Muzzle-Loading (RML) guns. [edit]The Electric Age: Light, street railways, telephones, skyscrapers and central heating (1880 – 1920) No event in the history of Canada has had a greater continuous, positive, daily impact on the daily lives of every man, woman and child than the introduction of electricity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Public electric lighting received its first Canadian demonstration in Manitoba at the Davis House hotel on Main Street, Winnipeg, March 12, 1873. In 1880, the Manitoba Electric and Gas Light Company was incorporated to provide public lighting and power and in 1893 the Winnipeg Electric Street Railway Company was established. A number of corporations offered commercially available power to Manitobans until Manitoba Hydro was formed in 1961. Halifax had electric lights installed by the Halifax Electric Light Company Limited in 1881. The Nova Scotia Power Commission was in turn established in 1919. After a number of corporate transactions the Nova Scotia Power Corporation was established in 1974. The year 1883 saw the introduction of electric street lighting in Victoria, the first city in British Columbia to get public electric power. Vancouver got electricity in 1887. New companies joined the electric business in the twentieth century and after a number of corporate mergers and nationalizations, BC-Hydro, was formed 1962. In 1884, the Royal Electric Company began offering commercial power to Montreal. After a chaotic half century the electric companies in that province were acquired by the Quebec Hydro Electric Commission (Hydro-Québec) between 1944 and 1963. Also in 1884, Saint John, New Brunswick was the first city in that province to have commercially available power delivered by the Saint John Electric Light Company. Other companies entered the field and in 1917 merged to form the New Brunswick Power Company. In 1948 the assets of this company were purchased by the New Brunswick Electric Power Commission. The Toronto Power House and the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario began offering electricity to that city and the province respectively in 1906. The Commission became Ontario Hydro in 1974. Edmonton's first power company was established in 1891 and placed street lights along the city's main street, Jasper Avenue. The power company was purchased by the Town of Edmonton in 1902 and to this day remains a municipal government enterprise known as EPCOR. Electricity in Saskatchewan was provided by Saskatchewan Power Commission established in 1929. It became the Saskatchewan Power Corporation in 1949 while abbreviated name SaskPower was officially adopted in 1987. The telephone began to make its mark in Canada, modestly at first. The telephone system of the Bell Telephone Company of Canada was established in 1881. Telephone penetration rates had reached 1.2% of the population by 1901, 3.9% by 1910 and 7.6% by 1915. The telephone system of Maritime Telephone and Telegraph, Halifax was established in 1910. The Trans-Canada Telephone System providing Canadians with the first all-Canadian transcontinental telephone connection was established in 1932. The bicycle made its appearance at this time. The "boneshaker", with the pedals connected directly to the front wheel appeared in the Maritimes in 1866 followed by the penny-farthing bicycle after 1876. The machine evolved and was improved with the adition of pneumatic tires, a central crank for the pedals and a coasting back wheel with brake. The increasing popularity of bicycles lead to the formation of a national bicycle club, the Canadian Wheelsman's in London, Ontario in 1879. In 1899 five important Canadian bicycle manufacturere, Gendron, Goold, Massey-Harris, H.A. Lozier and Welland Vale, combined to form the Canadian Cycle and Motor Company with 1700 employees and an annual production of 40,000 bicycles. In 1891, the newly formed Canadian Pacific Steamship Lines began offering trans-Pacific steamship service from Vancouver with three large steel-hulled ships, the "Empress", liners, India, China and Japan. From 1903, additional Empress liners were being used for service across the Atlantic. One of these, the Empress of Ireland, sunk after a collision in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1914 with the loss of 1000 lives. A fleet of smaller "Princess" steam ships were used for coastal service and the Great Lakes. Of note is the fact that Canadian Pacific, with its combination of steam ships and steam locomotives built a transportation empire that spanned more that half the globe. Few other companies anywhere in the world at that time could boast of such an accomplishment. Canada Steamship Lines, founded in 1913, as the result of the amalgamation of other companies, has offered cargo shipping services on the Great Lakes since that time. The first airplane flight in Canada took place on 23 February, 1909 when pilot J.A.D. McCurdy became airborn in the AEA Silver Dart and flew almost a kilometer over the frozen Bras d'Or Lake in Nova Scotia. Canada's first aerodrome (airport) was located at Long Branch Toronto and operations there began modestly in 1915. It was here that the Curtiss Aircraft company manufactured the Curtis JN-3 Jenny for the Royal Flying Corps Canada. Air stations were also built at Halifax and Sydney, Nova Scotia in 1918 for anti-submarine operations. Mining also became significant industry during this period. The invention of the electric dymano, electroplating and steel in the 1870s created a strong demand for copper and nickel. Hard rock mining became a practical consideration because of the concurrent development of the hard rock drill and dynamite. A copper mine was established in Orford County Quebec in 1877, by the Orford Company while the Canadian Copper Company was founded in 1886 to exploit copper deposits at Sudbury made accessible by the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The ore from that mine was found to contain nickel as well as copper and a technique known as the Orford process using nitrate cake (acid sodium sulphate ) was developed to separate the metals. The International Nickel Company (Inco) was established in 1902 through the fusion of the two companies. A refinery using the Orford process was built in Port Colborne, Ontario in 1918 and then moved to Copper Cliff, Ontario where it was replaced by th matte flotation process in 1948. Hard rock gold mining became practical in 1887, with the development of the potassium cyanidation process which was used to separate the gold from the ore, by the Scott MacArthur. This technique was first used in Canada at the Mikado Mine in the Lake-of-the-Woods Region again made acdcessible by the CPR. The CPR also provided access the B.C. interior where lead, copper, silver and gold ores had been discovered in the Rossland area in 1891. The ores were transported to Trail, B.C. where they were roasted. After CPR built the Crowsnest Pass it purchased the Trail roasting facility and in 1899 built a blast furnace to smelt lead ore. In 1902 the first electrolytic lead refining plant using the Betts Cell Process began operation in Trail. The Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada Ltd. was founded as a CPR subsidiary and began to develop the Sullivan Mine with its lead, zinc and silver ores, in Kimberley in 1909. The pulp and paper industry also developed during these years. The sulphite pulp process developed in the US in 1866 became the basis for the Canadian industry. The first sulphite pulp mill in Canada, the Halifax Wood Fibre Company, was established in Sheet Harbour, Nova Scotia in 1885. Others followed including plants in Cornwall, Ontario, 1888, Hull, Quebec, 1889, Chatham, Quebec, 1889, the biggest, the Riordon Company in Merritton, Ontario in 1890 and in Hawkesbury, Ontario, 1898. The closely related sulphite pulp process was introduced in Canada in 1907 when the Brompton Pulp & Paper Company began operation in East Angus, Quebec. This process dominates the industry to this day. The pulp slurry was fed in a continuous process into a paper making machine that flattened, pressed and dried it into newsprint on huge rolls many metres wide and containing thousands of meters of paper. New printing technologies and the availability of this new material, newsprint, had a dramatic effect on the newspaper industry. By the 1880s the rotary press had evolved into a high speed machine and with the use of streotyping allowed the production of large numbers daily papers. In 1876 daily newspaper circulation in Canada's nine major urban centres stood at 113,000 copies. By 1883 it had more than doubled. The introduction of typecasting machines such as the linotype in the 1890s lead to an expansion in size of the indiviual paper from eight to 12 pages to 32 or 48 pages. This was also made possible by the availability of cheap newsprint manufactured in huge continuous rolls that could be fitted directly into the high speed presses. The distillation of products from wood characterized the transition from the use of natural chemical products to that of fully synthetic products. The Rathburn Company of Toronto began to produce distillates including, wood alcohol and calcium acetate, used to make acetic acid or acteone, in 1897. The Standard Chemical Company of Toronto established in 1897, initiated the production of acetic acid in 1899 and formaldehyde, from the oxidation of wood alcohol, in 1909. This later product was an essential element in the production of the fully synthetic, phenol-formaldehyde plastic. The wheat economy developed on the prairies during these years. Agriculture in that region had begun around the Red River Colony in 1812, based on French Canadian survey techniques for land division and Scottish farming practices. The "infield" consisting of long narrow strips of land rising from the Red River Valley gave way to the "outfield" of pasture lands. Confederation spurred interest in western agriculture with the government of Canada subsequently purchasing Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Company in 1870 and supressing Metis resistance to eastern intervention with armed force that included the use of the gatling gun in 1885. Conditions were best suited for the growing of wheat but a naturally dry climate and a short growing season as well as low grain prices made the 1890s difficult. However the difficulties were overcome. Reduced rail transportation costs which helped ease the burden of getting wheat to market and a rise in wheat prices served to encourage the development of the industry. The introduction in 1907 of the Canadian developed genetically modified Marquis wheat with its hardy growing characteristics helped overcome arduous climatic conditions. Immigration stimulated by the policies of Federal Minister Clifford Sifton provided labour for increased production. The introduction of steam and gas tractors and the threshing machine also caused a dramatic increase in crop yield. Between 1901 and 1931 land under cultivation on the prairies grew from 1.5 to 16.4 hectares. In the 1870s and 1880s ranching gained prominance as well in southern Sasketchewan and Alberta where dry and even drought like conditions were eventually overcome with irrigation after the introduction of irrigation in 1894. The growth of western agriculture stimulated the growth of the eastern farm implement industry. Companies such as Bell, Waterloo, Lobsinger, Hergott and Sawyer-Massey were soon shipping their large metal threshing machines and other types of equipment, via the CPR to western farms. Arguably the most notable of these corporations was Massey-Harris Co. Ltd. of Toronto, created in 1891 through the merger of Massey Manufacturing Co. (1847) and A. Harris, Son & Co Ltd. (1857) which became the largest manufacturer of farm machinery in the British Empire. Innovation was the key to the company's success, highlighted by best selling machines like the Toronto Light Binder at the turn of the century and the Wallis Tractor in 1927. Railway construction in the latter nineteenth century created a huge demand for steel. The Bessemer furnace at the Algom steel mill in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario went into operation in 1902. The Montreal Rolling Mills Co, The Hamilton Steel and Iron Co, the Canada Screw Company, the Canada Bolt and Nut Company, and the Dominion Wire Manufacturing Company were consolidated in 1910 to form the The Steel Company of Canada headquartered in Toronto. With mills located in Hamilton and other cities it was the largest producer of steel in Canada for most of the century. Its competitor, the Dominion Steel Castings Company Limited founded in 1912, renamed the Dominion Foundries and Steel Company in 1917 and Dofasco in 1980, had its Hamilton facilities located next to those of Stelco. Portland cement was imported from England to Canada in barrels during the nineteenth century complimenting the modest production of hydraulic cement that began in in Hull, Quebec in 1830. By 1889 there were noted increases in the output of cement in Hull and other cement factories were built in Montreal, Napanee and Shallow Lake Ontario and in Vancouver in 1893. The very popular and practical tin can was introduced during this period. In the 1880s George Dunning built Canada's first canning factory in Prince Edward County, Ontario, for the canning of fruits and vegetables. By 1900 there were eight such factories in Canada, four of which were in that same county and within a few years canning factories were found all across the country. In the fourties, high-temperature canning, which sterilized the contents of the can and permitted long-term storage, was introduced. Business and public administration was improved and simplified with the introduction of the typewriter which acquired a familiar standaridized form by about 1910. Features included the "qwerty" keyboad, the typebar, ribbon, cylinder and carriage return lever. Popular models in Canada were manufactured by the U.S. Remington and Underwood companies among others. The introduction of the mechanical desk top calculator complimented that of the typewriter. Most machines used in Canada we manufactured in the U.S. by companies such as Friden, Monroe, and SCM/Marchant. The techniques of film making were introduced to Canada in 1897. In that year Manitoban James Freer made a series of films about farm life in western Canada. In 1889-1899 the Canadian Pacific Railway sponsored a successful tour by Freer to present these films in Britain to encourage immigration from that country for the development of the prairies and therefore boost the business of the railway. This inspired the railway to finance the production of additional films and hire a British firm, which created a Canadian arm, the Bioscope Company of Canada and produced 35 films about Canadian life. In 1910 the CPR engaged the Edison Company from the US to produce a further series of 10 films about the prairies. A number of Canadian firms became involved in feature film making with little success. These included: The Canadian Bioscope Company, Halifax, Nova Scotia, which produced Evangeline, Canada's first feature in 1913, the British American Film Company, Montreal, which produced Battle of the Long Sault, 1913, the Conness Till Company, Toronto, 1914-1915 and the All Red Feature Company, Windsor, Ontario, producing The War Pigeon, 1914. In Montreal in 1900, Emile Berliner, inventor of the gramophone sound recording technique, established the Berliner Gramaphone Company and began to manufacture the first phonograph records in Canada. First produced were seven inch single sided discs, followed by 10 inch in 1901, 12 inch in 1903 and the two sided disc in 1908. These discs were played on a gramophone, also manufactured by Berliner, which produced sound through purely mechanical means. The introduction of the medical x-ray during this period dramatically improved medical diagnostics. Discovered by Roentgen in Germany in 1895, x-ray units were in operation at the Toronto and Montreal General Hospitals by the turn of the century. The sphygmomanometer or blood pressure meter, that familiar device employing a cuff placed around the patients arm, found its way into the office of most Canadian doctors in the early twentieth century. The spread of bovine tuberculosis a crippling childhood disease, was curbed through the introduction of pasturized milk in Montreal and Toronto at the turn of the century. This practice was soon followed by the dairy industry across Canada. Bayer began marketing the wonder drug of the age, Aspirin, in 1899. It was an instant success and quickly became popular in Canada. Originally sold as a powder, the tablet was introduced in 1914. A very important step in the mass production of medical products was taken that same year when Dr. John Fitzgerald founded an institution that would be named the Connaught Laboraties in 1917, at the University of Toronto. Initially the laboratories produced vaccines and antiooxins for smallpox, tetanus, diphtheria and rabies. In 1922 after the Nobel Prize winning work on Dr. Banting and Dr. Best the facility began to manufacture insulin. Notable works of civil engineering realized during these years included: the Lakehead Terminal Grain Elevators, 1882, the Naden First Graving Dock, Esquimalt, British Columbia, 1887, the St. Clair Railway Tunnel, Sarnia, Ontario, 1890 and the Alexandra Bridge, Ottawa, Ontario - Hull, Quebec, 1900. The new century witnessed the completion of: the Lethbridge Viaduct, Lethbridge, Alberta, 1909, the Spiral Tunnels, Hector to Field BC, 1909, the St. Andrew's Lock and Dam, Lockport, Manitoba, 1910, the Brooks Aqueduct, Brooks, Albert, 1914, the Quebec Bridge, Ste-Foy, Quebec, 1916, the Connaught Tunnel, Rogers Pass, BC, 1916, the Ogden Point Breakwater and Docks, Victoria, British Columbia, 1917, the Prince Edward Viaduct, Toronto, Ontario, 1919, the Shoal Lake Aqueduct, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 1919 and the Trent-Severn Waterway, Ontario, 1920.Baseball in Canada received its first permanent home with the construction in 1877 of Tecumseh Park, built in London, Ontario for the London Tecumsehs baseball team. Other fields followed including Sunlight Park, in Toronto, 1886, Atwater Park, Montreal, in 1890 and Hanlan's Point Ball Field, 1897, in Toronto home of the Maple Leafs. It was the age of the skyscraper. The first in Canada was the eight floor New York Life Insurance Co Building in Montréal, 1887-89, although it did not have a steel frame. The first self-supporting steel framed skyscraper in Canada was the Robert Simpson Department Store at the corner of Yonge and Queen in Toronto with its six floors and electric elevators, built in 1895. The race to build the tallest structure in the British Empire set off a competition among cities across Canada. Successive record holders included: the Traders Bank of Canada, 15 floors, Yonge St, Toronto, 1905, the Dominion Building, 13 floors, Vancouver, 1910, World (Sun) Tower, 17 floors, Vancouver, 1912, the Canadian Pacific Building, 16 floors, Toronto, 1913, the Royal Bank, 20 floors, Toronto, 1915, the Royal Bank, Montreal, 1928, the Royal York Hotel, Toronto, 1929 and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Toronto, in 1931. A number of grand hotels also opened during these years including: the Banff Springs Hotel, Banff, Alberta, 1888, the Algonquin, St. Andrews, New Brunswick, 1889, the Chateau Frontenac, Quebec, City, 1893, the Queen's, Montreal, 1893, the "new" Chateau Lake Louise, Lake Louise, Alberta, 1894, the Manoir Richelieu, Point-au-Pic, Quebec, 1899, the Royal Muskoka Hotel, Muskoka, Ontario, 1901, the King Edward Hotel, Toronto, 1903, the Royal Alexandra Hotel, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 1906, the Empress Hotel, Victoria, British Columbia, 1908, the Ritz-Carleton, Montreal, 1912, the Chateau Laurier, Ottawa, Ontario, 1912, the Fort Garry Hotel, Winnipg, 1913, the Palliser Hotel, Calgary, Alberta, 1914 and the Hotel MacDonald, Edmonton, 1915. The construction of skyscrapers, grand hotels and other large buildings lead to the development of central heating, an essential feature in Canada's cold climate. Up to that time large buildings and homes were heated with fireplaces and iron stoves that used wood or coal as fuel. The construction of large multi-story buildings made this impractical. Fireplaces and stoves on the lower floors would have long flues and would not draw properly. On the upper floors it would be necessary to transport fuel and to remove ashes up and down many flights of stairs or with an elevator. Central heating solved these problems. In 1832 Angier March Perkins a British inventor developed a steam heating system for domestic use. This inspired the use of closed circuit hot water systems for large buildings. A metal furnace in the basement using wood or coal was used to heat water in a tank which was in turn was circulated by an electric pump through a system of iron pipes throughout the building to radiators in rooms where it lost its heat to the ambient air. The cooler water then returned to the water heater with the help of gravity where it was reheated and recirculated. Large systems could be used to heat several buildings in a city block. In the twentieth century such systems were used to provide heat to small communities such as university campuses, northern industrial towns or military bases. Smaller systems were used in private homes. Another technique, the “convection method” was introduced to domestic dwellings at this time. A metal furnace in the basement, using wood or coal as fuel, would heat air in a plenum which would rise by convection through a series of metal ducts into the rooms of the house above. When the air cooled it would fall to the floor and return to the plenum through another series of metal return ducts. In later years an electric fan was used to “force” the hot air from the plenum through the ducts. Suburbia made its first appearance on the edge of the commercial/industrial core of most large cities. The growing popularity of the automobile and the extension of electric street railways radiating from the city centre provided transport for a newly affluent middle class. Houses which were often based on common designs of the bungalow type and were sited away from the street with a front and back yard and usually a back ally which served as a service route for coal, ice, milk and bread delivery. Houses were often made of brick and built with a full basement which provided space for a coal fired furnace for central heating. Plaster walls and hardwood floors were standard. They were equipped with all the modern conveniences including electricity, an electric or gas stove, an ice box, which was eventually replaced by an electric refrigerator, running water, a flush toilet and a sewer pipe running underground to the street. In 1885 the newly introduced gatling gun was first used by Canadian troops during the Riel Rebellion. The 12-pounder field gun was used by Canadian soldiers in the Boer War. The 13 and 18 pound muzzle loading gun with modern recoil and sighting systems were acquired at the turn of the century. A notable acquisition was the first breech loading gun, in Canadian use, the 13-pounder quick-firing (Q.F.) and 18-pounder Q.F. firing shrapnel and high explosive rounds, in 1905. The Royal Canadian Navy founded in 1910, took possession of two tired steel-hulled former Royal Navy cruisers, the Rainbow, in 1910, stationed Esquimalt on the west coast and the Niobe at Halifax on the east coast. The turn of the century saw the introduction of other technologies such as central heating, the cinema, recorded sound, concrete and steel construction, the assembly line, skyscrapers, elevators, escalators and military aircraft. A reflection of this intense engineering activity is seen in the founding of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering in 1887. [edit]Killing Machines I: Artillery and machine guns (1914 – 1918) In Europe the most deadly weapon by far was the artillery piece. The Canadian Army acquired hundreds of guns during the war and used them with deadly effect on the German army. Guns included : the 13-pounder with the RCHA, the “turned up” anti-aircraft 13-pounder mounted on a truck, the 18-pounder and 4.5-inch howitzer in the field artillery, the 60-pounder, 6-inch, 8-inch and 9.2-inch heavy guns in garrison, 12-inch howitzers and 15-inch howitzers and 6-inch Newton mortars and 9.45-inch mortars. Of note is the fact that these weapons were moved about the battlefield with teams of horses. The infantry took the machine gun into battle for the first time and was equipped with the Colt machine gun, the Vickers machine gun and the Lewis machine gun. The infantry also used the .303 rifle, including the much despised Canadian Ross Mark III from 1913 to 1916 and the British Lee Enfield (SMLE) Mark III, from 1916. The Royal Canadian Navy was a coastal defence organization during the First World War, equipped with a rag-tag collection of small ships that patrolled the east coast for German submarines. Built in shipyards in Ontario and Quebec notable classes of vessel included: the TR 1 to 60 series of large minesweeping trawlers based on the Royal Navy Castle Class, the C.D. 1 to 100 series of wooden-hulled drifters used for minesweeping and patrol duties and 12 Battle Class trawlers armed with a single small deck gun in the bow. Canadians flew in large numbers with the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Air Force during the war, but Canada did not provide any combat aircraft of note in that conflict. The Royal Flying Corps Canada in 1917 established a number of bases at and around Camp Borden in southern Ontario to train pilots for the front in Europe. To meet the need for aircraft Curtiss of Toronto supplied hundreds of Curtiss Jenny training planes using assembly line techniques, making it the first mass produced aircraft in Canada. The wrist watch was introduced during the war as a tool to help the precise timing of attacks. It was used by Canadian gunners, infantry and airmen. After the war, returning soldiers now civilians, continued to use their watches as part of their daily routine and it became popular with other civilian men and women. Canada produced vast quantities of explosives in the form of Cordite, nitrocellulose and trinitrotoluene (TNT) during the Great War. Cordite was manufactured at Beloeil and Nobel, Quebec, by Canadian Explosives Limited and at Nobel by British Cordite Limited. Nitrocellulose was produced by a number of companies including, Aetna Chemical Company of Drummondville, Quebec, British Chemical Company at Trenton, Ontario and O'Brien Munitions Limited of Renfrew, Ontario. TNT was produced in Desoronto starting in 1915. [edit]The Automobile Age: Cars, planes and radios (1920 – 1950) The post-WWI era saw the introduction of a plethora of technologies including: the car, paved roads, refrigeration, the telephone, radio, air service, air navigation, hard runways, the medical X-ray and wonder drugs and powered farming, mining and forestry equipment. The Ford Motor Company of Canada, founded in Windsor, Ontario in 1904, was the first major company to introduce the automobile to Canada. It manufactured cars in that city and was the first company to use the assembly line manufacturing technique in Canada. In 1918 the McLaughlin Motor Company, Ltd. of Oshawa, Ontario and the Chevrolet Motor Company of Canada Ltd. merged to form General Motors of Canada and became a subsidiary of the US-owned General Motors Corporation. The company manufactured Buicks, Oldsmobiles and Oaklands on its assembly line in Oshawa. Chrysler Canada, established in Windsor began vehicle assembly in that city in 1936. The car was a hit with Canadians. In 1904 there were 535 cars in Ontario, by 1913 there were 50,000 in Canada, by 1916, 123,000, by 1922, 513,000 and by 1930, 1,076,000. As the car gained in popularity local automobile clubs were founded. In 1913 nine of these clubs from across the country got together to form the Canadian Automobile Association. Cars required gasoline and the first service station in Canada was built in Vancouver on Smythe Street in 1907. Most early stations were informal curb-side affairs and it was not until the twenties that the filling station as we know it began to appear with Imperial Oil building architect designed stations for its customers. By 1928 Imperial had evolved three standard filling station designs for different locations, business district, urban residential and small town/leased property. The popularity of the car also had a dramatic impact on urban infrastructure and roads in particular. The dirt, gravel, tar and occasionally cobblestone that characterized most city roads was inadequate for the automobile and towns and cities across Canada began paving projects creating roads of asphalt and concrete that were more suitable. The traffic light was also introduced to help regulate the congestion that began to arise in the twenties especially in larger cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. The car began to compete with the street railway in the thirties and forties and many cities reduced or abandonned streetcar service. New suburbs were built without streetcar lines and urban deisel powered buses were used to provide public transport. Only a handful of cities continued to maintain streetcar service into the fifties and beyond, most notable Toronto which to this day has a very elaborate public streetcar network. The auto-craze gave rise to a booming do-it-yourself car maintenance and repair movement with businesses specializing in car parts and tools becoming popular. One of the notable firms in this field, the familiar, Canadian Tire, began operations in Toronto in 1922 and has become one of Canada's largest retailers. In the twenties and thirties the Canadian north was developed with the help of hundreds of small float equipped "bush planes" used to fly men and supplies to mining, forestry, trapping and fishing camps. The first commercial air passenger flight in Canada was made in 1920, when two bush pilots flew a fur a buyer from Winnipeg to The Pas, Manitoba. National passenger air service was introduced by Trans-Canada Airlines beginning in 1937 and Canadian Pacific Airlines starting in 1942. Of note was the attempt by Britain to establish an airship service between that country and Canada and test flight by the British built dirigible the R-100 was made in July 1930. After a successful crossing of the Atlantic the giant craft moored at a mast especially constructed for that purpose at St.Hubert near Montreal. The ship flew on to Toronto before finally returning to Britain. However technical problems with the craft prevented further flights and the idea of a Trans-Atlantic lighter-than-air passenger service was abandoned. To facilitate the development of a national aviation service the Government of Canada created a kind of national highway in the sky called the Trans-Canada Airway consisting of airports, radio and weather services and lighting for night flying at various locations across Canada. Construction started in 1929 but was slowed by the depression. The western leg from Vancouver to Winnipeg was completed in 1938. The section from Winnipeg to Toronto and Montreal was inaugurated in 1939 and the extensions to Moncton, Halifax and St. John's completed in 1940, 1941 and 1942 rspectively. In Montreal, XWA (now CFCF) became the first commercial AM radio broadcaster in the world. The following year CKAC became the first French language AM radio broadcaster in Canada. State operated national radio broadcasting chains were established beginning in the late twenties including: the CNR National Radio Network, 1927, the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission Radio Network, 1932 and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio Network, 1936. Private independent AM broadcast operations sprouted like mushrooms in cities large and small across Canada during the thirties and forties. Canadian Marconi and Northern Electric manufactured radios for home use, the first mass produced electronic equipment in Canada. With the rail building era coming to an end, the rise of the automotive industry in southern Ontario provided the Hamilton steel mills of the Steel Company of Canada and the Dominion Foundries and Steel Company with a new market. Dofasco introduced the Basic Oxygen Process for steel-making at its mills in Hamilton in 1954. In the latter part of the century, Algoma built coke oven batteries and blast furnaces, the open hearth and Bessemer steel-making processes were phased out and plant for the basic oxygen steel-making process was installed. Another metal, aluminum also became popular during these years. In 1902, attracted by the availability of cheap hydro power, the Aluminum Company of America established a Canadian subsidiary, the Northern Aluminum Company at Shawinigan Falls, Quebec to produce that metal using the electrolysis technique. Corporate changes lead to the creation of the Aluminum Company of Canada (Alcan)in 1925 and in 1926 the company constructed a giant aluminum smelter at a place it named Arvida, Quebec, that location again being chosen because of the availability of cheap hydro electricity as well as the proximity of a deep-water port at Bagotville for large ships carrying bauxite or aluminum ore. World War II acceleratd the demand for aluminum the principle material in aircraft production and the Arvida facility wasw greatly expanded. In 1958 another huge smelter was built at Kitimat, British Columbia. The growth in popularity of the car also created a need for rubber for automobile tires. Accelerated by the emergency of World War II a substantial synthetic rubber production industry was established at Sarnia, Ontario in the early forties. The refining of crude oil provided the raw resources for the manufacture of synthetic rubber and the oil refineries in Sarnia provided a ready source of raw materials. In particular, the Suspensiod crackers operated there by Imperial Oil produced large quantities of hydrocarbon gases. These were used by a new Crown enterprise, Polymer Corporation Ltd. created in 1942, and associated private companies, St. Clair Processing Corporation Ltd., Dow Chemical of Canada Ltd., and Canadian Synthetic Rubber Ltd., itself a subsidiary of four Canadian rubber companies, Dominion, Firestone, goodyear and Goodrich, to produce both GR-S and butyl type synthetic rubber. Initially production was destined for war time use on military vehicles but in post-war years output was quickly redirected to civilian automobile production. Plastics were also introduced during these years. In Toronto, Plastics Ltd., began to produce Bakelite soon after its invention in 1909. Another firm, Canadian Electro Products of Shawinigan, Quebec invented polyvinyl acetate which was used in copolymer resins and water based paints. The wartime production of nitrocellulose naturally lead to the manufacture at Shawinigan in 1932, of transparent cellulose film used for packaging. The closely related synthetic textile industry appeared in the years just after the First War. The production of artificial silk, more properly known as viscose rayon, made from bleached wood pulp, began in Cornwall, Ontario in 1925, in a factory built by Courtaulds (Canada). A year later Celanese Canada began making acetate yarn in a new plant in Drummondville, Quebec. DuPont Canada was the first to manufacture nylon yarn in Canada at its factory in Kingston, Ontario in 1942. This secret material was initially used for parachutes but following the war was used to make nylon stockings. The industrial production of bread became notable during these years. At the beginning of the twentieth century it is estimated that only about 8% of Canadian wives bought bread commercially. However the industrial production of bread grew impressively and by the 1960’s, 95% of homemakers purchased bread commercially. One bakery of note The Canada Bread Company Limited was founded in 1911 as the result of the amalgamation of five smaller companies. Industrial bakeries such as this were characterized by large machines for the mixing of dough and the use of slow moving conveyor belts that transported thousands of metal pans of this dough through giant ovens where they were baked. Large automated packaging machines wrapped the finished loaves at great speed. Improvements in transportation and packaging technology throughout the decades allowed a shrinking number of bakeries to serve every larger markets. In 1939 there were about 3200 commercial bakeries across the country but by 1973 the figure stood at 1700, while in 1981 there were 1400. Meat packing grew to become Canada's most important food processing industry during this period. In Calgary, Alberta, in 1890, Pat Burns established P. Burns and Company which became the largest meat processor in western Canada. In Toronto in 1896 the innovative Harris Abbatoir was established to export chilled sides of beef to the British market. The industry grew rapidly during the war supplying meat to Canadian and British troops overseas. However it underwent a period of consolidation in the twenties. The loss of markets lead to the merger of two major players, William Davies and the Harris Abattoir to form Canada Packers in Toronto. By 1930, "The Big Three", meat packers in Canada were Canada Packers, Swift Canadian and P.Burns and Company in Calgary, Alberta. The increasing popularity of the electric refrigerator in Canadian restaurants and homes made in practical for manufacturers to make available various frozen foods. The first such offering, a frozen strawberry pack was produced in Montreal and Ottawa beginning in 1932 by Heeney Frosted Foods Ltd. The Canadian film industry experienced mixed success during the twenties and thirties. Film maker Ernest Shipman produced five features between 1920 and 1923 before meeting with financial failure. The successful Canadian owned Allen Theatre chain attained an important place in the exhibition market but was taken over by Famous Players Canadian Corporation in 1923. Associated Screen News in Montreal produced two notable newsreel series, Kinograms in the twenties and Canadian Cameo from 1932 to 1953. The thirties saw the regular production of short films by the newly created Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau. British law encouraging filmmaking in the Commonwealth lead Hollywood to circumvent the spirit of the concept by establishing film production companies to make American films in Calgary, Toronto, Montreal and Victoria. These companies produced a small number of features but closed operations when the British law was changed to exclude their films. in the late thirties Canadian Odeon opened a new cinema chain to compete with Famous Players. The making of documentary films grew tremendously during World War II with the creation of the National Film Board of Canada in 1939. By 1945 it was one of the major film production studios in the world with a staff of nearly 800 and over 500 films to its credit including the very popular, The World in Action and Canada Carries On, propaganda series with films released monthly. The grand hotel continued to make a mark with new structures including: the Bigwinn Inn, Muskoka, Ontario, 1920, the Jasper Park Lodge, Jasper, Alberta, 1922, the Hotel Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland, 1926, the Hotel Saskatchewan, Regina, Saskatchewan, 1927, the Prince of Wales Hotel, Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, 1927, the Lord Nelson Hotel, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1928, The Pines, Digby, Nova Scotia, 1929, the Royal York Hotel, Toronto, 1929, the Chateau Montebello, Montebello, Quebec, 1930, the Nova Scotian Hotel, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1930, the Charlottetown Hotel, Charlottetown, P.E.I. and the Bessborough Hotel, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, 1935. In 1875 in Montreal a McGill student, J. Creighton, established the basic rules for hockey as we know it today. The world's first facility dedicated to hockey, the Westmount Arena was built in Montreal in 1898 while the first industrial refrigeration equipment for making artificial ice in Canada was installed in 1911 by Frank and Lester Patrick for their new arenas in Vancouver and Victoria. With the development of wide span roof structures the construction of large indoor ice rink stadiums became possible. These two technologies were used to build the Montreal Forum, home of the legendary Montreal Canadiens hockey team, in Montreal in 1924 and Maple Leaf Gardens home of the Toronto Maple Leafs, in that city in 1931. Baseball's facilities were upgraded with construction of the new Maple Leaf Stadium on Lakeshore Drive in Toronto in 1926 and the De Lormier Downs Stadium (Hector Racine Stadium), in Montreal in 1927. Civic Stadium, now Ivor Wynne Stadium, was built in Hamilton, Ontario in 1930, to host the British Empire Games held there that year. Other notable engineering works of the period included: the R.C. Harris Filtration Plant, Toronto, Ontario, 1926, the Ocean Terminals, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1928, the Ambassador Bridge, Windsor-Detroit, 1929, the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel, 1930, the Broadway Bridge, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, 1932, the Lion's Gate Bridge, Vancouver, British Columbia, 1938, the Queen Elizabeth Way, Ontario, 1939 and the Alaska Highway, Dawson Creek, British Columbia, 1942. Medical treatment benefited from the introduction of the electrocardiograph, used to diagnose heart problems, in large hospitals in the late twenties. There were also important innovations with respect to the treatment of epilepsy during this period. In Montreal, Dr. Wilder Penfield, with a grant from the US Rockefeller Foundation founded the Montreal Neurological Institute at the Royal Victoria Hospital, in 1934 to study and treat epilepsy and other neurogical diseases. The military suffered a huge decline in the twenties and thirties. The Royal Canadian Air Force founded in 1924 was largely a bush and float plane operation. Only in the thirties did it acquire a modest combat capability with a handful of British Siskin fighters and a squadron of Hurricanes as the clouds of war grew menacing. The Royal Canadian Navy, perpetually starved for equipment acquired its first custom-built ships, the destroyers HMCS Saguenay and HMCS Skeena on May 22, 1931. In 1929 the army began to retire its horses and was issued four 6-wheeled Leyland tractors in 1929 to tow its 60-pound guns. Four 3-inch 20-cwt anti-aircraft guns were taken on strength in 1937. As a reflection of this intense and diverse engineering activity, the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers was established in 1936. This organization was renamed Engineers Canada in 2007. [edit]Killing Machines II: Bombers, tanks, corvettes, radar, and explosives (1939 – 1945) Under the emergency of World War II and almost from a standing start, the government of Canada acquired an impressive array of war machines and became a major combatant. Home defence came first. An integrated air-defence system, based on the one built by the RAF during the Battle of Britain was established. Radar chains were constructed on the east and west coasts to guide the squadrons of Hurricane fighters based there, to enemy targets. Fortunately none came! Within the context of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, dozens of airfields were built across Canada and thousands of training aircraft purchased to train aircrew for the commonwealth nations. Off the east coast the Royal Canadian Navy acquired hundreds of corvettes to hunt for and kill Nazi submarines. The RCAF joined the hunt with Hudson, Canso and later long range Liberator bombers. The merchant marine took possession of hundreds of cargo ships including the versatile Fleet and Fort series of vessels to deliver vital supplies to Britain. In Britain a squadron of RCAF Hurricane fighters participated in the Battle of Britain. RCAF squadrons equipped with Wellington, Halifax and later Lancaster bombers rained destruction on the Nazis throughout the war. The Canadian Army, RCAF and RCN were an essential part of the invasion at Normandy on D-Day. Royal Canadian Navy landing craft carried Canadian Army troops, tanks and artillery ashore while RCAF Typhoon fighter-bombers pounded the German 7th Army. RCAF Spitfires patrolled the skies for enemy fighters and RCAF heavy bombers were used for tactical bombing. Radar and explosives were an essential part of all this. The war created an urgent demand for medical drugs which were put to vital use in the treatment of wounded soldiers. Mallinckrodt Chemical Works Ltd. of Montreal began to produce sulfa drugs in 1939. The Connaught Laboratories and Ayerst, McKenna& Harrison of Toronto were innovators in the mass production of penicillin using the surface culture method starting in 1943. In Montreal Merck & Company as well as Ayerst, produced the drug using the deep fementation process. Connaught also produced dried blood plasma. The cinema and radio went to war as well. The National Film Board of Canada produced its, "Canada Carries On", series of propaganda films and the Government of Canada beamed French-language short-wave radio programmes across the Atlantic to the French in the hopes of inciting them to overthrow the Vichy regime. On the home front Canadian industry using the assembly line techniques pioneered by Ford Canada, General Motors of Canada, Chrysler Canada, Canadian Marconi, Northern Electric and others, produced thousands of aircraft, tanks, guns, vehicles, small arms, ships, radar and radio sets and huge quantities of shells, bullets and explosives. [edit]The Television Age: TV, nuclear weapons, atomic energy, and computers (1950 – 1980) The years following WWII introduced even more innovations including: television, the transistor radio, synthetic fabrics, plastic, computers, super highways, shopping centres, atomic energy, nuclear weapons, transcontinental energy pipelines, long range electric transmission, transcontinental microwave networks, fast food, chemical fertilizer, insecticides, the birth control pill, jet aircraft, cable TV, colour TV, the instant replay, the audio cartridge and audio cassette, satellite communications and continental air defense systems. Television was introduced to Canada by CBC, first in the French language by CBFT in Montreal on 6 September 1952 and two days later, in English, in Toronto by CBLT. By 1958 the CBC had established its transcontinental television network. The CTV network went on the air in 1961 and colour TV came to Canada in the late sixties. Cable TV, which began in the early sixties, as a way of bringing US border TV stations to Canadians living beyond the range of "rabbit ear" reception, rapidly gained popularity as the decade progressed. FM radio was phased in gradually during the sixties and seventies. In the early eigthties Canadian Satellite Communications (Cancom) assembled a package of Canadian and American television channels which it offered to remote communities throughout the northern regions of Canada. The signals were distributed by Anik satellite and made available to the local populace through cable. By the later part of the decade several hundred communities were using this service. The arrival of television created a demand for programming. Initially, many shows were produced live and broadcast directly from the camera in the studio. Film was also used. There were large numbers of Hollywood films available for broadcast and the broadcasters, CBC and CTV, also produced some of their programming on film for eventual broadcast. In the mid-sixties video technology became available and programmes were produced using this medium. Video also permitted the, "instant replay", which quickly became popular for the live broadcast of sporting events. It was first used on a regular basis in Canada for the broadcast on the very popular, "Hockey Night In Canada". The portable transistor radio also became fashionable in the early sixties, especially among teenagers who used it to listen to popular music on the local AM radio station. With the advent of the Cold War, Canada rearmed through the fifties taking steps to defend the homeland from the Soviet bomber threat and to contribute to the NATO defence of Europe. The RCAF acquired a series of successively more capable interceptors, the Vampire, the CF-100 Canuck and the CF-101 Voodoo for the air-defence of Canada. Huge air-defence warning systems, the Pinetree Radar Network, 1954, the Mid-Canada Line, 1957, the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line, 1957 were constructed across Canada's north. The Neptune and Argus long range aircraft entered service with the RCAF. The Royal Canadian Navy took possession of the Magnificent and the Bonaventure aircraft carriers for anti-submarine warfare off the east coast. Embarked aircraft included the Avenger and Tracker ASW machines and the Sea Fury and Banshee fighters. The Navy also acquired modern ASW destroyers and with the innovative Bear Trap landing system pioneered the use of the embarked ASW Sea King helicopter. Three diesel powered Oberon class attack submarines was also acquired. In Europe the RCAF was equipped with several hundred Sabre and subsequently CF-104 fighters based in France and Germany. Army Aviation received a boost at home with the acquisition of the Chinook helicopter and the CF-5 ground support fighter. Canada's Army permanently based in Germany took possession of the Centurion tank, the 155 mm self-propelled howitzer and M-113 armoured personnel carrier. After considerable political turmoil Canada acquired nuclear weapons from the Americans under a "dual key" arrangement on 1 January 1963. Genie air-to-air rockets armed with atomic warheads were based at RCAF Stations, Comox, British Columbia, Batotville, Quebec and Chatham, New Brunswick as the primary weapon for the newly acquired CF-101 interceptor. The nuclear armed BOMARC (Boeing Michigan Air Research Corporation) anti-aircraft missile was based at RCAF Stations, North Bay, Ontario and Lamacaza, Quebec. In Germany, as part of Canada's NATO commitment, nuclear free fall bombs were acquired for the RCAF CF-104 strike fighter and the Canadian Army in Germany took possession of a battery the Honest John surface-to-surface battlefield rockets armed with nuclear warheads. By 1984 all these atomic weapons had been returned to the US. It is ironic that for all its peace-loving rhetoric Canada took possession of nuclear weapons before making atomic generated electricity available to the public. A demonstration power reactor, the NPD was built at Rolphston, Ontario in 1962, however it was not until 1971 that electricity first became commercially available from the CANDU equipped Pickering Atomic Electric Power Plant in Pickering, Ontario and the mammoth Bruce Atomic Electric Plant, near Kinkardine, Ontario in 1978. These were followed by the Gentilly Atomic Electric Plant, Trois Rivieres, Quebec and the Point Lepreau Atomic Electric Plant, Point Lepreau, New Brunswick both in 1982. Computers were introduced in a variety of areas at this time. The National Research Council of Canada experimented with fire-control computers towards the end of the war. In the fifties the Pinetree, Mid-Canada and DEW Line air-defense radar chains built aross Canada relied heavily on computers. Certainly the largest and most powerful computer in Canada at the time was installed in 1957 in the underground complex at RCAF Station North Bay as the "brain" of the DEW Line System. AVRO Canada in Toronto worked unsuccessfully to develop the fire-control computer for the Velvet Glove air-to-air missile for the ill-fated AVRO Arrow interceptor. Other military users included the Royal Canadian Navy with its DATARS system for the command and control of warships. The NRC used large computers in the late fifties for the hydrographic modeling of the Saint Lawrence Seaway then under construction. One of the first commercial users of computers was Air Canada which introduced a computer based reservation system in the early 1960s. The large Canadian banks, Toronto Domminion Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Bank of Nova Scotia introduced large head-office computers for the keeping of records relating to customer accounts in the late sixties. When they introduced the credit card about the same time these records were kept on large central computers as well. It was this experience with large computer systems linking hundreds of branch offices across the country that enabled the banks to introduce the ATM and the debit card, across Canada in the 1980s. Computers were also introduced to control complex industrial processes. Interprovincial Pipe Line Limited of Edmonton was one of the first Canadian companies to employ computers as a means of controlling the flow of gas in its very large pipeline system. Atomic Energy of Canada Limited used computers to control atomic fission in its power reactors. The field of transportation saw the completion of a number of significant works including: the Toronto Subway, 1954, the Trans-Canada Gas Pipeline, 1959, the St Lawrence Seaway, 1959, Trans-Canada Highway, completed in 1962, the Montreal Subway, 1966, GO Transit, Toronto area, 1967 and Highway 401, Ontario, completed in 1968. Air Canada and Canadian Pacific Airlines introduced jet passenger service with the DC-8, DC9, B727 and B-737. The B-747 was introduced by these companies in the early seventies. In the sixties and early seventies De Havilland Aircraft of Canada in Toronto developed the DHC-7 and DHC-8 STOL aircraft. These were used to provide passenger service to small city centre airports in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. A number of international carriers also acquired these aircraft to provide similar services elsewhere in the world. Of note was the transit of the Northwest Passage in 1954 by HMCS Labrador, Canada's first purpose built icebreaker, which was acquired that same year, in service with the Royal Canadian Navy. Of particular significance was the conversion from steam to deisel by Canada's two great railways. Beginning in the mid fifties the CPR and Canadian National Railways began replacing their steam locomotives with deisel locomotives. By 1960 the conversion was mostly complete. The modern era of oil production in Canada began in 1947 when Imperial made its major discovery at Leduc, Alberta. The industry has grown tremendously since then, mainly to meet the demand for gasoline created by the popularity of the car and for home heating oil. Major oil refineries have been built in Vancouver, British Columbia, Edmonton, Alberta, Sarnia, Ontario, Montreal, Quebec and Saint John, New Brunswick. Energy projects included: the Lakeview Generating Station, Mississauga, Ontario, 1962, the W.A.C.Bennett Dam, British Columbia, 1967, the Gardiner Dam, Saskatchewan, 1968, the Churchill Falls Hydro Dam, Labrador, 1971, the Nanticoke Generating Station (largest coal fired plant in North America), Nanticoke, Ontario, 1978 and La Grande 2 Hydro Dam, Quebec, 1979. The energy crisis of 1973 had domestic repercussions with many consumers taking steps to reduce energy costs through the installation of improved home insulation and wood burning stoves. The forestry industry underwent a notable process of mechanization in the post-war years. The most visible change was the introduction of the chain saw. When originally developed for modern use in the twenties, this heavy gasoline engine driven machine required two men for its operation. However improvements in engine technology eventually made the saw small and light enough to be operated easily by one person. In 1944 one of the first industrial users, Bloedel Stewart and Welch Ltd. in British Columbia had 112 chain saws in operation but their use accounted for only a small part of total forestry tree cutting. In 1950 less that one percent of pulpwood in Canada was cut with chain saws, however by 1955 this figure had grown to more that 50%. Other machines were also introduced during this period. The first feller-bunchers were used by the Quebec North Shore Paper Company in 1957. Hydraulic tree shears were first used in 1966 by the Abitibi Pulp and Paper Company Limited. Snowmobiles and tracked machines replaced animals for the hauling of logs. In 1948 several Bombardier machines were employed to this end by the Ste. Anne Power Company Limited in Quebec. In 1959 Timberland Machines of Woodstock, Ontario developed the Timberbuncher a self- propelled machine which could move through the forest, cut a whole tree at its base (a process known as full tree harvesting) and using a hydraulic arm, place it into a pile for hauling. Machines that stripped the branches from felled trees a process known as delimbing were also introduced at this time. With the help of these technologies the Canadian pulp and paper industry grew to become one of the major suppliers of newsprint in the world through the operations of companies such as Macmillan Bloedel Ltd, Repap Enterprises Inc., Kruger Inc., Great Lakes Forest Products Ltd, British Columbia Forest Products Ltd., Consolidated-Bathurst Inc., Canadian Forest Products Ltd., CIP Inc., Domtar Pulp & Paper Products Group and Abitibi Consolidated. Business administration underwent technological change. The ball point pen was marketed in the US in October in 1945 and in Canada shortly thereafter. The IBM Selectric typewriter, introduced in 1961 quickly became popular with businesses in Canada as did the Xerox photocopier in the sixties. The car, cheap gasoline and post war affluence created boom conditions for the expansion of suburbia. Several standard designs for the single family home on a standard lot were reproduced cookie-cutter style row-upon-row in cities across Canada as subdivision after subdivision sprang up radiating from the central core. The designs were thoroughly modern, reflecting the optimism of the era, usually with a peaked roof, asphalt shingles and a brick or wood siding exterior and included a living room, kitchen and occasionally dining room and two, three or four bedrooms and a full basement made of poured concrete or cinder block. Floors were usually made of varnished hardwood planks and the walls and ceilings of gyprock. Copper piping brought running water from the serviced street and copper wiring electricity from the rear lot line. Clay tile pipe carried the sewage from the flush, sit toilet to the main sewer line running under the street. There was usually a driveway beside the house for the family car, and less frequently a carport or garage. Most homes were equipped with a telephone often with a "party" line but these became rare by the sixties. A television set was also common in almost all homes by the end of the fifties and the record player gave way to the hi-fi stereo. Almost all kitchens were equipped with electric refrigerators and electric or less commonly gas, stoves. Where there was gas it was usually piped to the home through a main line running under the street. There were a variety of electrical "labour saving" devices including electrical mixers can openers and carving knives. Central heating was a standard feature and coal, delivered to the home by a diesel powered truck, was the dominant fuel source in the early post-war years. However as the fifties progressed coal gave way to oil and gas heating. Home furnishings were almost all mass-produced and made from wood, fabric and various types of stuffing for cushions. In the kitchen metal chrome tube chairs and formica topped tables were popular. The small front and back yard were maintained with the help of a gasoline powered lawn mower and the hedge and bushes were trimmed with electric clippers. In the early sixties the high-rise appartment building bagan to make its appearance in large cities. The self-supporting steel structures were usually seven stories or more in height and large buildings contained hundreds of dwelling units. Initially they were especially visible along Highway 401 in Toronto, Metropolitan Boulevard in Montreal and the north shore of English Bay in Vancouver. Detergent, a replacement for soap, introduced in the post war years, was used to keep clothes and dishes clean through the action of its active ingredient, tetrapropylene, a derivative of petroleum. The booming growth of the suburbs lead to the appearance of the shopping centre, a low rise steel frame, commercial structure housing a number of retail outlets and surrounded by acres of asphalt parking lot for large numbers of cars. The first in Canada included: the Norgate Shopping Centre, Saint-Laurent, Québec, 1949, the Dorval Shopping Centre, Dorval, Québec, 1950, the Park Royal Shopping Centre, West Vancouver, British Columbia, 1950, the Sunnybrook Plaza, Toronto, 1951 and York Mills, Toronto, 1952. The hospitality industry was similarly effected and fast food drive-in restaurants began to appear. In 1951 the first St. Hubert BBQ restaurant opened its doors on St-Hubert street in Montreal. A&W opened its first Canadian operation in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1957. In 1959 Harvey's opened its first eatery on Yonge Street in Richmond Hill. Hamilton, Ontario saw the opening of the first Tim Horton's restaurant in 1964. The first McDonald's restaurant outside the United States was opened in Richmond, British Columbia in 1967 and the well known Pizza Delight was founded in Shediac, New Brunswick, in 1968. There was important progress in medical technology during this period. In 1945 Dr. Stuart Stanbury established a National Blood Transfusion Programme for the Canadian Red Cross Society, thus making available to those in need, a dependable source of blood for medical purposes. The associated test for blood typing was introduced at the same time. Blood tests would become increasingly sophisticated in the coming years. The electroencephalograph, used for the diagnosis of neurological disorders was introduced in major Canadian medical institutions in the late forties. Antibiotics such as penicillin were quickly made available to the general public in the post-war years, as were vaccines produced by the Connaught Laboratories. Of particular note was the role played by that company in the mass production of the polio vaccine used for the mass inoculation of young primary school children throughout Canada in the early fifties. There was also progress with respect to the treatment of heart disease. The pacemaker invented with significant Canadian participation was used to treat patients with arrhythmia. For more serious problems open heart surgery became an option for patients and permitted the repair of faulty heart valves, the clearing of blocked coronary arteries and the resolution of other problems. Neurosurgery was introduced in a substantive way in the sixties. Cancer patients were provided with a new option, radiation therapy, through what was popularly known as the "Cobalt Bomb", again developed with important Canadian input. Chemotherapy also became an option. In 1960 the use of a subcutaneous arteriovenous shunt along with the artificial kidney machine allowed hemodialysis for patients with chronic renal failure. Developments in orthodontics made the straightening of the teeth of children with "braces" commonplace. Children were also often on the receiving end of the tonsillectomy a fashionable surgical procedure during these years. The surgical replacement of body parts also became possible and was used to treat ailing kidneys and joints such as knees and hips. The heart transplant was practiced in some instances after the seventies but has remained a rare procedure because of the difficulty in finding donor hearts and the uncertain outcome. Pharmaceuticals attained a high profile. The availability of the birth control pill in 1960 made it possible for women to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy. Stress could be treated with tranquilizers, such as valium, introduced in 1963. The use of vitamins also became widespread and supplements were added to staple foods such as milk and bread and were taken in pill form. Cinema attendance boomed after the war and with it innovations in cinema design. The first double screen cinema, The Elgin, opened its doors in Ottawa in 1946 and the drive-in cinema became popular after the war. However the long cold Canadian winters discouraged the widespread diffusion of this type of film exhibition. The dramatic Imax large scale cinema format was invented as the result of developments in cinematic technology during Expo'67 in Montreal. The world's first permanent Imax cinema, Cinesphere was built at Ontario Place in Toronto in 1971. Others were built in Vancouver for Expo'86 and at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau , Quebec, in 1989. By 1995 there were 129 Imax cinemas entertaining audiences around the world. The audio cartridge and audio cassette became popular in the early seventies with the cassette eventually winning the battle of the formats. This compact medium lead to the appearance of high quality in-car sound systems. This was also an era of gigantism and there were both successes and failures. Northwest of Montreal thousands of acres of fertile farmland were expropriated to build the huge new Mirabel International Airport. The facility was to be linked to the heart of Montreal with a fast train. The train was never built and both passengers and air carriers stayed away in droves. The site eventually became a quiet industrial airport, home to the production facilities for Bombardier regional jets. On the other hand the James Bay Hydro Project undertaken in Quebec at the same time was a booming success. Several large dams on the La Grande River with their associated long distance transmission lines provide Hydro-Québec with an important source of electricity. The Anik series of communications satellites initially built by Hughes Aircraft and operated by Telesat Canada starting in 1972 formed the basis of the world's first domestic satellite communications service. Place Ville Marie (Royal Bank), Montreal, 1962, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce Tower Montréal, 1962, the Edifice Trust Royal (C.I.L. House), Montréal, 1962, the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower, Toronto, 1967, The Simpson Tower, Toronto, 1968, the Hôtel Château Champlain, Montréal, 1967, the Royal Trust Tower, Toronto, 1969, Royal Centre, Vancouver, 1972, Inco Superstack, Sudbury, Ontario, 1972, First Canadian Place, Toronto, 1975, Harbour Centre, Vancouver, 1976, the Complexe Desjardins, la Tour du Sud, Montréal, 1976, the Scotia Tower, Calgary, 1976, the Scotia Tower, Vancouver, 1977, Royal Bank Plaza, South Tower, Toronto, 1977 and the First Bank Tower, Toronto, 1979, represented significant civil engineering and architectural achievements during this period. Notable large sports facilities included, Empire Stadium, Vancouver, 1954, McMahon Stadium, Calgary, Alberta, 1960, the Montreal Automobile Stadium (Autostad) 1966, the Olympic Stadium, Montreal, 1976 and Commonwealth Stadium (Edmonton), 1978. However the stand-out architectural and civil engineering achievement of this period was certainly the construction of the CN Tower, the world's tallest free standing structure in Toronto in 1975. [edit]The PC Age: The Microchip and Mobile Communications (1980 – 2000) Microelectronics became a part of everyday life during this period. The personal computer became a feature of most homes and the microchip found its way into a bewildering variety of products from cars to washing machines. In 1977 the first commercially produced personal computers were invented in the US, the the Apple II, the PET 2001 and the TRS-80. They were quickly made available in Canada. In 1980 IBM introduced the IBM PC in response to the Apple II and in 1983 Microsoft began to sell its operating system, through IBM where it was referred to as PC-DOS and as a stand alone product known as MS-DOS. This created two rivals for personal computer operating systems, Apple and Microsoft which undures to this day. A large variety of special use software “applications” have been developed for use with these operating systems. There has also been a multiplicity of hardware manufacturers which have produced a wide variety of personal computers and the heart of these machines the central processing unit has increased in speed and capacity by leaps and bounds. There were 1,560,000 personal computers in Canada by 1987 of which 650,000 were in homes, 610,000 in businesses and 310,000 in educational institutions. Canadian producers of micro-computers included Sidus Systems, 3D Microcomputers and Seanix Technology. In 1987 there considerable numbers of larger computers in Canada including 25,000 mainframe and mini-computers in Canada but the most powerful of all is the supercomputer. Canada's weather service has been a noted user of large computers and has pioneered the Canadian use of supercomputers. Machines used have included: the Bendix G20, 1962, an IBM 360-95 scientific mainframe computer, 1967, its first super computer a CDC 7600 from Control Data Corporation, 1973, a Cray 1S supercomputer, 1983, a NEC supercomputer, 1993 and an IBM supercomputer in 2003. At the time of its installation this latter machine was the most powerful computer in Canada. The laptop computer also appeared during these years and achieved notable popularity in Canada beginning in the nineties. In 1981 the first commercially available portable computer the Osborne 1 became available. Other models followed including the Kaypro II in 1982, the popular Compaq Portable and Tandy Corporation TRS-80 Model 100 both in 1983, the IBM PC Convertible, 1986, the Macintosh Portable, 1989 and Power Book, 1991 and the IBM Power PC in 1994. The latter models in particular were popular with both professionals and consumers. The use of computer controlled robots in manufacturing (computer-aided manufacturing) was pioneered in Canada by the auto manufacturers who introduced these machines to improve the efficiency of their assembly lines. These were found in new auto manufacturing plants were built, by Honda Canada in Alliston, Ontario and Toyota Canada in Cambridge (, Ontario (1988). Bombardier's invention of a new class of aircraft, the regional jet or RJ, allowed airlines to introduce jet passenger service to smaller centres. The design of this machine was facilitated through the use of comupter aided design (computer-aided design) software. During the eighties the bar code became a familiar feature on consumer products ranging from food to clothes as did the bar code scanner at the retail check-out counter. These two technologies greatly improved the effectiveness of the check-out procedure and improved inventory management as well through the associated computer accounting of stock. This was one of the factors leading to the technique of just-in-time inventory managment for retail, commercial and industrial undertakings. Canada's major telephone companies introduced digital technology and fibre optics during this period paving the way for more advanced business and customer telecommunications services. In the nineties, Microcell, Cantel, Bell and Rogers begn to offer cell phone service. Smaller vehicles became popular in response to the oil crisis of 1973. The 18 wheel transport truck which became popular after WW II became the dominant vehicle on the heavily used Highway 401 (Ontario). Containerization, which had made headway in ocean shipping with the construction of terminals in Halifax, Montreal and Vancouver also lead to the eventual elimination of the railway box car and began to make inroads in the trucking industry. Light rail systems were built in Edmonton, Alberta in 1978, Calgary, Alberta, in 1981, Toronto, Ontario, in 1985 and Vancouver, British Columbia in 1986. Notable energy works included, the ill-fated east coast Ocean Ranger drilling platform, the Nova Scotia Power Corporation tidal generating station, Annapolis, 1984, the Hibernia oil platform off the east coast of Newfoundland, the Terra Nova Platform in the same area and the Sable Offshore Energy Project off the coast of Nova Scotia and the Darlington Atomic Electric Plant, Darlington, Ontario, 1990. Large civil engineering and architectural works of note included: BC Place, Vancouver, 1983, Petro-Canada Centre, West Tower, Calgary, 1984, the West Edmonton Mall, Edmonton, Alberta, 1986, Scotia Plaza, Toronto 1988, the Canterra Tower, Calgary, 1988, the Sky Dome, Toronto, 1989, Bankers Hall, Calgary, 1989, BCE Place–Canada Trust Tower, Toronto, 1990, the Bay Wellington Tower, Toronto, 1990, Tour du 1000 de la Gauchetière, Montréal, 1991, Tour IBM-Marathon, Montréal, 1992, GM Place, Vancouver, 1995 and the Confederation Bridge, NB-PEI, 1997. New arenas for Canada's National Hockey League teams were built, including GM Place, Vancouver, home of the Vancouver Canucks in 1995, the Corel Centre in Ottawa, home of the Ottawa Senators and Molson Centre in Montréal, new home of the Montreal Canadiens, both in 1996. Medical treatment advanced during these years. The use of lasers and computers became important parts of medical treatment. Computers were essential in the development of new medical imaging devices such as the CAT scan and the MRI. Minimally invasive surgery, also known as laparoscopic surgery reduced surgical damage to patients. Lasers were used with catheters for clearing blocked arteries and catheters with small cameras provided images of conditions inside the body. Coronary bypass surgery became commonplace. Laser eye surgery became popular in the nineties and was used to improve visual acuity for the near-sighted. New chemical chemotherapy combinations helped prolong the lives of cancer patients. These years also saw the appearance of techniques for the long term application of medication through the use of a skin patch or implants. Male erectile difficulties could be treated with the use of Viagara and other medications. There were innovations in home design and construction during this period. Houses generally became bigger. New materials such as vinyl siding became common and often replaced the use of more expensive brick for home exteriors. The car port and garage became widespread features and the latter was ofter located close to the curb creating a rather crowded streetscape. The kitchen saw the introduction of the home dishwasher and the microwave oven. Large screen televisions usually of the cathode ray or projection type were found in many homes. The Sony Walkman, introduced in 1979, quickly gained popularity as a means for listening to music on the go. The slot machine, so dear to gamblers, was introduced during this period. Casinos were built in Windsor, Niagara Falls and Orillia Ontario, Montreal, Gatineau and Baie St. Paul, Quebec, Halifax, Nova Scotia and Winnipeg, Manitoba. Canada's military suffered a long period of technological decline. Atomic weapons were relinquished. New technologies were acquired, including the CF-18 fighter, the Aurora ASW patrol Aircraft, the Halifax class guided missile frigate, the four ill-fated Victoria class diesel attack submarines, the Leopard tank and the air-defence-anti-tank missile system. The DEW Line was updated and renamed the North Warning System. But these developments were not enough to prevent a general loss of military capability. Other technologies were introduced during this period: the microwave oven, ATM, the cell phone, genetically modified food, remote sensing, the CD and DVD, medical imaging (PET, MRI, etc.), bar codes, the checkout scanner, tailored production runs, direct to home satellite TV and fuel cell cars to name a few. [edit]The Internet Age: Wireless Technology, Mega Oil and Ecological Friendliness (2000 – Present) The internet has become as essential part of daily life and is found in most Canadian homes. In December 2006 there were 22,000,000 Internet users representing 65.9% of the population and 7,675,533 internet broadband connections. By 2006 internet providers began making wireless internet connection available to their customers with companies such as Bell Canada offering their "unplugged" service. This type of service, using the laptop computer and other portable devices has evolved to allow mobile internet connection in many places across Canada. Mobile communications have also been facilitated through the introduction of the widely popular Research In Motion, Blackberry handheld email and telephone machine. Other communications projects have included the series of 4 Nimiq DBS satellites operated by Telesat Canada since 1999. Using these satellites, Star Choice and Expressvu began offering direct-to-home satellite television service and Sirius and XM Canada direct-to-car satellite radio service. In Toronto the CBC bagan broadcasting digital HD over-the-air TV in 2005. A national government regulatory body, the Canadian Radio, Television and Telecommunications Commission has stated that all over-the-air TV broadcasting will be digital by August 2011. In 2008 the Government of Canada announced the initiation of two important transportation projects. In the first instance the government stated that it will acquire, for the Canadian Coast Guard, a new $700 million, Polar class icebreaker for patrolling the Northwest Passage. The ship will enter service in 2017. The government also announced the construction of a second international bridge between Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan, to help relieve the pressure on the heavily overloaded, 80 year old Ambassador Bridge. The $5 billion project will include connections from the Canadian ends of both bridges to the nearby Highway 401 (Ontario). In this new century the largest engineering undertaking by far is the tar sands project in northern Alberta. This has seen the investment of up to $60 billion to develop and build gigantic tar sand mining, transportation, separation and refining facilities to produce oil from the gritty bitumen tar. The project is highly controversial for a number of reasons not the least of which is environmental. As of 2005 operations included the: Suncor Mine, Syncrude Mine, Shell Canada Mine and others producing 760,000 barrels of oil a day. A large number of corporations from a number of countries plan to invest in the tar sands including: Suncor Energy, Syncrude, Shell/Chevron/Marathon, Petro-Canada, EnCana Energy, ConocoPhillips, Japan Canada Oil Sands (JACOS) Japan, Nexen, Canadian Natural Resources Limited, Devon Energy US, Synenco Energy, Sinopec China, Imperial Oil/ExxonMobile US, Husky Energy, Total S.A., Enerplus France, Chevron US, Value Creation Inc., StatoilHydro Norway and the Korea National Oil Corporation, Korea. Recovery techniques include, steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) and cyclic steam stimulation (CSS). These concerns have inspired the development of wind farms that use modern windmills to generate electricity from this renewable resource. One of the first modern windmills was built at Cap Chat in Quebec in the eighties but most wind farms have been built since 2000. As of 2008, 10 megawatt wind farms in Canada were distributed as follows: Alberta 10, Quebec 5, Ontario 5, PEI, 4, Sasketchewan, 3, Manitoba 2 and Nova Scotia 2. Recently Hydro Quebec has announced the construction of 1000 windmills at 15 new sites located mostly in the St. Lawrence River Valley. By 2015 that utility expects that 10% of the province's electricity will be provided by wind power. They have also had a large impact on automobile manufacturers. Fuel efficient hybrid vehicles such as the Chevrolet Tahoe, GMC Yukon, Saturn Vue, Toyota Prius, Toyota Camry Hybrid, Toyota Highlander Hybrid, Ford Escape Hybrid, Honda Insight and Honda Civic Hybrid have become available to Canadian consumers since the turn of the century and the rising cost of gasoline is making them increasingly attractive in spite of their generally higher cost. The field of transportation also saw the Premiers of Ontario and Quebec in 2007 talking of yet another study of a high speed train in the Windsor - Quebec corridor. Efforts to save fuel have also led to efforts to reduce the weight of vehicles through the increased use of composite material. Aircraft manufacturers have been especially notable in this regard and produced new large but relatively light aircraft such as the Boeing B-787 Dreamliner with this new material. Orders for this new machine have been made by a number of major world airlines, including Air Canada. Lasers made their way into routine dentistry by the middle of the first decade, offering faster treatments, less pain and more precise results. They are used to remove tartar, treat soft tissues such as gums and to prepare cavities for filling. Of particular interest in the latter instance is the fact that this treatment is so painless that the use of a needle to inject a local anesthetic us usually unnecessary. Laser treatment results in little bleeding, a lower risk of infection and a quicker healing. Another innovation was the use of computer milled ceramic implants for repairing cavities. Domestic construction has witnessed the introduction of improved building techniques and the smart home. Hydraulic lift equipment is now commonly used for home construction, minimizing or eliminating the need for scafolding. Furthermore homes are built with the electronics necessary for internet connection throughout the premises. Household systems, such as heating/cooling, lighting, communications, entertainment and even food storage and cooking are now all linked to each other through the web. In the kitchen the glass topped stove has become popular. The living room has seen the introduction of the very large, plasma TV which has undergone dramatic price reduction in the last few years and has replaced the cathode-ray TV in consumer appliance/electronic stores. Also popular with consumers is the iPod portable music player introduced to Canadians in 2001 and more recently the iPhone which will be made available to Canadians by Rogers Wireless in 2008. The digital camera which was introduced to Canadians in the eighties has for the most part replaced the film camera in recent years. In the new century Canada's government has shown renewed interest in the acquisition of military technology, especially with its commitment to the war in Afghanistan. Equipments have been improved including the CF-18 fighter with addition of a laser guided bombs and there are plans to update the Aurora patrol aircraft. The airforce has also recently taken possession of the gigantic new C-17 Globemaster III long range transport aircraft and announced plans to renew the fleet of Hercules transport aircraft. The army has acquired the new Leopard tank and C-777 long range gun. Other acquisitions pending include the Cyclone ASW helicopter, the Chinook helicopter, new Arctic patrol vessels for the navy and a new ice breaker for the Canadian Coast Guard. The Canadian Forces have also acquired electronic equipment to face the new cybernetic threat and to conduct cybernetic warfare. The public has also been introduced to such technologies as bio-metrics, genetically modified foods and RFID to name a few. In the earlier parts of Canada's history, the state often played a crucial role in the diffusion of these technologies, in some cases through a monopoly enterprise, in others with a private "partner". In more recent times the need for the role of the state has diminished in the presence of a larger private sector. [edit]Scientific research in Canada
This section outlines the history of the natural sciences in Canada. The social sciences are not treated here. [edit]The beginnings of science (14,000 BC – 1850) [edit]Native peoples and nature (14,000 – 1600) Native peoples of Canada did not undertake scientific research in a formal sense but they did study and have a profound understanding of their natural environment in ways that allowed them to survive and flourish. [edit]The Europeans: Explorers, universities, and talented amateurs (1600 – 1850) Marine Science: The early European explorers were responsible for charting much of what would become the east and west coasts of Canada as well as the Arctic. John Cabot, the Italian explorer sailing under the British flag made two voyages to North America in 1497 and 1498 along the coast of what is now called Newfoundland. Gaspar Corte-Real, the Portuguese explorer is thought to have explored the area along the Newfoundland, Labrador and Greenland coasts in 1500 ad 1501. In 1524, Giovanni da Verrazzano sailing under the French flag, explored the east coast of North America from Cape Fear to Newfoundland. During voyages of exploration in 1534 and 1535-1536, the French explorer Jacques Cartier "discovered" and mapped the St. Lawrence River as far inland as Hochelaga (Montreal). Samuel de Champlain is well known for his explorations of the St Larwrence and Acadia, in 1603 and 1604. The search for fabled Northwest Passage to the orient intrigued European explorers for 300 years. The first efforts in this regard were made by British explorers Martin Frobisher in 1576 and by John Davis in 1585. In 1610 Henry Hudson made his ill fated voyage in search of the Passage. William Baffin and Robert Bylot sailed the Arctic sea in the area around what became known as Baffin Island in 1616. While these voyages not successful, in that they did not discover the Northwest Passage, they provided valuable information on the nature of the Arctic ocean. Voyages by Edward Perry in 1819 and John Ross in 1829 added to the growing body of knowledge relating to the north. The Hudson Bay Company also played a role in Arctic exploration and during the period 1837 – 1839, Peter Warren Dease and Thomas Simpson of that company explored the Arctic coast from Point Barrow to Rae Strait. In 1845, Sir John Franklin with two ships the Erebus and Terror set sail to find the Passage. He died in the attempt but is generally credited with its discovery. In 1774, Captain Juan Perez Hernandez, aboard the Spanish ship Santiago, became the first white man to explore the west coast and is reported to have sailed as far north as the Dixson Entrance. The following year Spanish hydrographer, Bodega Y Quadra, drew the first charts to show a part of the west coast of Canada. The renowned, Captain James Cook explored the west coast in 1778 as part of an attempt to find the Northwest Passage from the Pacific, rather than the Atlantic side. In 1791 – 1792 Captain George Vancouver of Britain and Dionisio Alcalá-Galiano and Cayetano Valdés of Spain conducted further surveys in the area. Universities and Talented Amateurs: The Jesuits, learned men who arrived with the first colonists had some interest in science and their activities complimented the observations of the explorers. In particular they founded Le college de Quebec in 1635, eventually know as L'universite Laval, in Quebec City which would become one of the Group of 13 large research universities in Canada. Other future G-13 members founded during this period, included, Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1818, McGill University in Montreal in 1821, the University of Toronto in 1827, Queens University in Kingston, Ontario in 1841 and the University of Ottawa in 1848. Colonial scientific curricula between 1750 and 1850, included rudimentary studies in astronomy, mathematics, medicine, chemistry, natural philosophy, natural history and moral philosophy. As the colony grew by the beginning of the 1800s, a number of amateur "scientists" , notably in Montreal and Toronto, began to record and study nature as a gentlemanly pursuit and established local learned societies. Mathematics: Mathematics is the language of science and was introduced very early on in New France. The teaching of mathematics began at the College de Quebec in 1651 and was of a quality that equalled the teaching in France. Students were exposed to arithmatic, quadratic equations, geometry, trigonometry, and integral and differential calculus in the final years of an eight year course. In 1778, the first full professor at the College, Martin Boutet de St-Martin, was appointed by Louis XIV to the newly created Royal Chair of Mathematics and Hydrography in Quebec City. The most notable appointee to this post was Louis Joliette the "discoverer" of the Mississippi River. In 1760 the College de Quebec was closed but the new Seminaire de Quebec, under the leadership of Abbé Jérôme Demers, continued in a vigorous fashion, the science and mathematics tradition of the former institution. However after 1840, for religious and social reasons these disciplines floundered. For example, L'ecole polytechnique de Montréal, Montreal's premier engineering school, founded in 1873, only taught intermediate mathematics until 1910. It was not until the twenties and thirties in Quebec that the importance of science and mathematics was once again recognized, a fact reflected in the establishment of the faculties of science at Laval in 1837 and at L'universite de Montreal. Astronomy: Astronomy was one of the first scientific disciplines practiced in the northern North America. There are records of astronomical observations made by Arctic explorers dating from 1612 and by French missionaries in New France who noted eclipses as early as 1618 and 1632. The Marquis de Chabert is reported to have built one of the first observatories in North America at Fort Louisbourg in 1750. A small observatory was built by Joseph Desbarres at Castle Frederick, Nova Scotia, in 1765. Chemistry: Elementary courses in chemistry were introduced into the curriculum of the Seminaires de Quebec by l'abbe John Holmes in 1830 and l'abbe Isaac Desaulniers in Saint-Hyacinthe as well as the Seminaire de Montreal in 1842. Biology: Interest in biology in Canada dates from the times of European exploration. Botany attracted explorers and scientists such as Cartier 1503, Clusius 1576, C. Bauhin 1623 , J. Cornuti 1635, P. Boucher 1664, M. Sarrazin 1697, J.F. Gauthier 1742, A. Michaud, 1785, W.J. Hooker 1820, A.F. Holmes 1821, L. Provencher 1862 and J. Macoun 1883, who collected and/or named various plants found in Canada. Zoology as well was the subject of much early activity. Reports and studies by J. Cabot 1497, N. Denys 1672, C. Perrault and M. Sarrazin 1660, T. Pennent 1784, J. Richardson 1819, P.H. Gosse 1840 and M. Perley 1849, related to the nature of animals found throughout Canada’s eastern and northern regions. A reflection of this activity is seen in the founding of the Botanical Society of Canada in Kingston, Ontario in 1860 and the Entomological Society of Canada in 1863. . [edit]The rise of professional science (1850 – 1900) Scientific research in Canada as a formal undertaking dates from the 1850s and was the result of the impetus provided by the establishment of government scientific research organizations, new universities and the evolution of academic disciplines. [edit]Government research organizations Government organizations specializing in science established during this period included the Geological Survey of Canada, the Dominion Experimental Farms, and the Biological Board (fisheries research). [edit]New universities and changing curricula Additional future members of the G-13 were founded, including l'universite de Montreal and the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario in 1878 and McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario in 1887. University science curicula also changed during this period. Natural philosophy evolved into physics and became closely allied with mathematics. Natural history evolved into geology, biology, zoology and botany. Canada's first, "national" scientific/learned/professional association, the Canadian Medical Association was created during this period, in Quebec City in October 1867. In 1882 the founding of the Royal Society of Canada reflected the maturation of Canada's intellectual development by becoming the first "national" organization to recognize and promote among other things achievement in science. [edit]Disciplines (1850 – 1900) Geology: Professional science in Canada began with the founding of the Geological Survey of Canada, by the Legislature of the Province of Canada, in 1841. William Logan was appointed the first Director in 1842 and after establishing headquarters in Montreal in 1843 began field work searching for coal in the area between Pictou, Nova Scotia and the Gaspe Peninsula in Quebec. His assistant Alexander Perry conducted a similar search in the area between Lakes Huron and Erie. Although no coal was found the surveys demonstrated the importance of systematic study of Canada's land mass. The Survey grew during the forties and in 1851 participated in the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London, England, as well as the Universal Exposition in Paris, in 1855. The efforts of the Survey were so successful that in 1863 it was able to publish its first major work, the Geology of Canada. With Confederation the Survey's area of geographic responsibility grew dramatically as did its reputation, being recognized by the government as an important agent in the establishment of a mining industry in Canada. This recongition also resulted in the headquarters being moved to Ottawa in 1881. As Canada grew the Survey studied the routes of the new Canadian Pacific Railway as well as other areas of the west and north. Director Dawson surveyed British Columbia and the Yukon; Robert Bell studied the north and the coastal areas of Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait. Geologist Tyrell found coal and fossils in Alberta and J. Mackintosh Bell studied the area from Lake Athabasca to Great Bear Lake in 1900. Sailing aboard the Neptune geologist Low explored the Arctic archipelago in 1903-04. Mathematics: English language universities in Canada, had professors teaching mathematics as part of the discipline of natural philosophy from the early years of their founding. The first professorships in natural philosophy were established at Dalhousie in 1838 and at Kings College, later the University of Toronto, in 1843. By 1859 the University of Toronto offered specializations in both fields and formed separate mathematics and physics programmes in 1877, a move that was copied by other universities, notably, Queens, McGill and Dalhousie. By the 1890s most Canadian universities had at least one professor of mathematics on faculty. Mathematicians of repute during this era included Professors J. Bradford Cherriman and James Louden of the University of Toronto, Nathan Fellowes Depuis at Queen's and Alexander Johnson at McGill, all of whom were members of the Royal Society of Canada. Physics: The first full professorships in physics were established at Dalhousie, in Halifax in 1879, Toronto, 1887 and McGill, in Montreal in 1890. Although these were mainly teaching positions there was some research activity. At Dalhousie, Professor J.G.McGregor, the first to hold the position at that university, published about 50 papers during his tenure from 1879 until 1899. Other prominent researchers in the field at this time included H.L. Callendar and E. Rutherford, Macdonald professors of physics at McGill and J.C. McLennan at U of T. Astronomy: The discipline experienced modest growth during this period. New but small observatories were built including: the Toronto Magnetic Observatory in 1840, a facility at the Citadel in Quebec City in 1850, one at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton in 1851, in Kingston, Ontario in 1856, in Montreal in 1862 and another in Quebec City on the Plains of Abraham in 1874. Chemistry: The study of chemistry in Canada began in a modest way in 1829 with courses on the subject at the Montreal General Hospital given as part of medical training. At King's College (University of New Brunswick) in Fredericton, as early as 1837, Dr. James Robb taught a course in natural science that included the study of chemistry within the context ot botany, zoology, mineralogy and geology. Isaac Chipman of Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia introduced chemistry at that institution in 1840 as did Henry How at King's College in Windsor, Nova Scotia. Henry Croft was appointed professor of chemistry and experimental philosophy at King's College (University of Toronto) in Toronto in 1842 where he specialized in toxicology and inorganic chemistry. In 1843 Dr. William Sutherland of the Montreal Medical and Surgical School began teaching chemistry in its own right at the McGill University and the University of Montreal. Growth during the decades that followed was steady but modest. However by the 1890s buildings with well equipped laboratories devoted to the study of chemistry had been built including Carruthers Hall, 1891 at Queen's, in Kingston, the Chemistry Building, 1895 at the University of Toronto, and the Macdonald Chemistry and Mining Building at McGill in Montreal in 1898. The Geological Survey of Canada also developed expertise in the field, hiring Thomas Sterry Hunt in 1847 as a chemist and mineralogist. He was succeeded in this role by G.C. Hoffmann a charter member of the Royal Society of Canada. Biology: Professional biology in Canada dates from the creation of departments of natural history, which included the study of biology, at the Universities of Toronto and McGill in 1854 and 1858 respectively. Government interest in biology was reflected in the establishment of the Experimental Farm Service in 1886 with Professor William Saunders as the first Director. A Central Experimental Farm was established in Ottawa that year as well as regional farms in Nappan, Nova Scotia in 1887, and Brandon, Manitoba, Indian head, NWT and Agassiz, BC in 1888. A number of divisions for the study of topics of special interest to Canadian farmers were established including, entomology and botany, horticulture, chemistry, poultry, cereal, agriculture and tobacco. Public interest in biology lead to the creation of the Botanical Garden at Queen's College in Kingston, Ontario in 1861, the Riverdale Zoo in Toronto, in 1887, the Arboretum and Botanical Gardens in Ottawa that same year and the Stanley Park Zoo in Vancouver in 1888. Medical Research: Medical research in nineteenth century Canada was modest to say the least. The first medical schools were founded during the early part of the 1800s. The Medical Faculty of the University of Montreal was established in 1824 as was that of the University of Toronto. La faculte de medicine de l’universite de Montreal offered the first French language course in medicine in Canada beginning in 1843. The medical faculties at Queen’s in Kingston, Ontario and Dalhousie in Halifax, Nova Scotia were established in 1854 and 1867 respectively followed by those at the University of Western Ontario in 1881 and the University of Manitoba in 1888. While they were excellent institutions of instruction there was no systematic emphasis on medical investigation. Research began almost “accidentally” with the curiosity of Dr. Beaumont in Quebec who was able to investigate gastric digestion in 1825 through the “fistula” created by injury in the abdomen of Alexis St. Martin a voyageur. [edit]Scientists of note (1850 – 1900) Scientists of this period included: William Logan,1798-1875 (geology) and John William Dawson, 1820-1899 (paleobotany), Sir William Osler (medicine), C.H. McLeod (astronomy), W.F. King (astronomy), O.J. Klotz (astronomy) and E.G.D. Deville (astronomy). [edit]Research laboratories, Nobel Prizes and the NRC (1900 – 1939) [edit]University laboratories At the beginning of the twentieth the "research laboratory" was introduced to Canadian universities. The physics laboratory established at McGill in Montreal was home to the discovery of the atomic nucleus by Ernest Rutherford, an achievement for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1908. The University of Toronto established the Connaught Laboratories where Sir Frederick Banting and Best discovered insulin, and won a Nobel Prize as well in 1923. The Dunlap Observatory at the same university was built in 1935. In 1938, l'Institut de microbiologie et d'hygiène de Montréal (l'Institut Armand-Frappier) was founded. The new century witnessed the founding of other future G-13 schools, the University of Alberta in Edmonton and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, both in 1908 as well as the Canadian Society for Chemistry in 1917. In 1931 the need to recognize and support scientific study and research in the French language lead to the founding of L'association canadienne francaise pour l'avancement des sciences (ACFAS). In the early twentieth century moral philosophy evolved into what is today recognized as "social science", economics, sociology, political science etc....This new field of scientific research contributed significantly to the efforts of the Rowell-Sirois Commission studying the effects of the depression on Canada's political economy. The thirties also saw the creation in 1935 of the Fields Medal, the "Nobel Prize" of mathematics, named in honour of its champion, Charles Fields a prominent mathematician at the University of Toronto. [edit]Government laboratories The support of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (1903) stimulated the establishment of the Dominion Observatory (1905). The Federal government established the National Research Council of Canada in 1916 and equipped that organization with laboratories in 1932. The Dominion Bureau of Statistics was also created during this period. The provinces became involved in science as well during these years. The Scientific and Industrial Research Council of Alberta was established in 1921 and the Ontario Reseearch Foundation in 1928. [edit]Disciplines (1900 – 1939) Mathematics: The increased importance of mathematics in fields such as engineering, lead to the growth of the number of mathematics departments in universities across Canada in the new century. Specialization also occurred, as seen for example at the University of Toronto with the creation there, of the first programme in actuarial science in North America. The Canadian Institute of Actuaries was subsequentially established in 1907. In 1915 he first Canadian doctorate in mathematics was awarded to Samuel Beatty, again at the University of Toronto, who went on to eventually become the head of the department there. J.C. Fields another mathematician at U of T was instrumental in reviving the annual meetings of the International Congress of Mathematics, suspended because of World War I and the first post war meeting of that organization was held in Toronto in 1924. As mentioned above he was also instrumental in the creation in 1932 of the "Nobel Prize" of mathematics, posthumously named the Fields medal, after his untimely death. The reputation of the department grew with the addition of the geometer and algebraist Harold S.M. Coxeter to the department in 1936. Physics: The growth of physics was notable during this period. The landmark event, one of the greatest discoveries in the history of physics and the greatest event in the history of Canadian physics, was the discovery of the atomic nucleus by Dr. Ernest Rutherford, Chairman of the Department of Physics at McGill University from 1898 until 1907. J.C. McLennan director of the physics laboratory at U of T from 1906 to 1932 undertook studies in atmospheric conductivity and cathode rays, but in 1912 was inspired by the work of Bohr, to conduct research into atomic spectroscopy. He along with G.M.Shrun, constructed the first machine for the liquification of helium in North America, which was used for cryogenic studies of metals and solid gases. Research into colloid physics in the twenties and thirties by E.F. Burton and his students lead to the construction of the first electron microscope in North America. Geophysics research was also undertaken at the U of T at this time by L. Gilchrist. At McGill, L.V.King studied mathematical physics while D.A. Keys and A.S. Eve conducted research into geophysics and J.S Marshall, into atmospheric physics. McGill also established the first theoretical physics group at a Canadian university. At the University of Alberta, R.W. Boyle became the first professor of physics in 1912 and conducted research into ultrasound while F. Allen established the physics department at the University of Manitoba and bent his efforts towards the physics of physiology. At the University of Saskatchewan, E.L. Harrington was the first physics department head from 1924 to 1956, during which time that institution developed expertise in upper atmospheric research, begun by B.W. Currie in 1932. From 1935 to 1945, Gerhard Herzberg studied atomic and molecular physics there. Physics began at Queen's with the work of A.L.Clark and nuclear research was conducted there by J.A. Gray, B.W. Sargent, A.T. Stewart and others. H.L. Bronson, department head at Dalhousie was active in physics research from 1910 to 1956. Astronomy: The first significant Canadian astronomical facility, the Dominion Observatory, was built in Ottawa in 1905 by the federal government. It featured a refracting telescope and a reflecting solar telescope. This was followed in 1918 by the new Dominion Astrophysical Observatory near Victoria, British Columbia. The 1.88 m (72 inch) reflecting telescope there had been proposed and designed by John Plaskett in 1910 with the backing of the International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research and when it began operation was briefly the largest telesciope in the world. The University of Toronto established the first astronomy department in a Canadian university in 1904 and through the efforts of department head Dr. Chant and the generosity of a private citizen, a large facility, the David Dunlap Observatory was built there in 1935. Geology: The early twentieth century was a difficult time for geology in Canada. The Geological Survery experienced funding and staffing difficulties as the pressures of the Great War placed the focus of government elsewhere. However field studies continued to emphasize the importance of mineral wealth and the survey's activities proved fruitful in spite of strained resources. In the lean Depression Years annual budgets hovered in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars. In 1935 in an effort to stimulate the economy and create employment the budget of the Survey was dramatically increased to $ 1 million and field work increased tenfold. During these years the Survey made use of aircraft in its activities for the first time. One of the great geological finds of all time was made during this period. In 1909,Charles Doolittle Walcott, discovered what came to be known as the Burgess Shale, near Field, British Columbia, a rock formation that contained the very well preserved fossil remains of animals from the Cambrian geological era. Oceanography:The establishment of two professional scientific organizations, the Hydrographic Survey of Canada and the Biological Board, the precursor of the Fisheries Research Board, at the turn of the century, marked the beginning of modern Canadian oceanography. As the result of a tragic marine accident on Georgan Bay the Government of Canada created the Georgian Bay Survey in 1883 to produce reliable navigation charts for safe navigation on that Bay and Lake Huron. The Survey began the hydrographic charting of the west coast in 1891, tidal and current metering in 1893 and the charting of the St. Lawrence River below Quebec City, in 1905. In 1904 under an Order-in -Council it became the Hydrographic Survey of Canada with an expanded mandate. In 1908, the federal government established permanent biological research field stations at St. Andrews, New Bruncwick and Nanaimo, British Columbia, for the scientific study of the fisheries on the east and west coasts. These operations were managed by the Biological Board created in 1912 and renamed the Fisheries Research Council in 1937. Originally staffed by university summer student volunteers, professional full time scientific staff were hired and laboratories related to the fisheries and food processing established on both coasts, in the twenties. Joseph-Elzéar Bernier aboard the Arctic undertook voyages to the Arctic in 1904, 1907 and 1909. During the latter he unveiled a plaque on Melville Island and claimed the Arctic Islands as part of Canada. Chemistry: The growth of the discipline continued in the new century. Departments were established in a number of universities including, chemistry and physical chemistry, at Toronto, 1900, the University of Alberta, Edmonton, 1909, Saskatchewan, 1910, a unified chemistry department at McGill, 1912, the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 1915, L'universite de Montreal, 1920, McMaster, Hamilton, 1930, Sir George Williams College, Montreal, 1936, neurochemistry, the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, 1947 and at Bishop's University, 1948. Graduate programmes in chemistry emphasizing original research were also introduced including: an M.Sc., McGill, 1900, Ph.D., Toronto, 1901, M.Sc., McMaster, 1909, Ph.D.,McGill, 1910, M.Sc., University of Alberta, Edmonton, 1915, M.Sc., University of Saskatchewan, 1923, M.Sc., University of New Brunswick, Fredricton, 1948 and an M.Sc., at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, 1949. Noted university chemists of the period with their date of departmental appointment, included, A.L.F. Lehmann, University of Alberta, 1909, R.D. MacLaurin, University of Saskatchewan, 1910, R.F. Ruttan, McGill, 1912, Lash Miller, Toronto, 1914, D. McIntosh, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 1915, T. Thorvaldson, University of Saskatchewan, 1919, G.Baril, L'universite de Montreal, 1920 and C. E. Burke, McMaster, Hamilton, 1930. The discipline evolved during these years with specializations in physical chemistry and biochemistry. The National Research Council became involved in chemistry during these years. In 1929 the Council founded the Department of Industrial Chemistry with G.S. Whitby as the Director. The Department studied the industrial production and uses of magnesium, natural gas, asbestos, wool, maple products and rubber among other things using new laboratories built on Sussex Street in Ottawa in 1932. In 1939 E.W.R. Steacie became the Director of the Division of Chemistry and lead that organization through the difficult war years. He championed the independence of the Council and the importance of pure sciencific research. Biology: Biochemistry, the chemical basis for biology developed significantly during these years. Departments were established at Toronto, 1907, The Western University of London, 1921, McGill, 1922, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, 1923, Dalhousie University, Halifax, 1923, L'universite de Montreal, 1925, L'universite Laval, Quebec City, 1928, Queen's, Kingston, 1937, University of Saskatchewan, 1946 and the University of Ottawa, 1946. The research in these departments was closely related to that of their associated biology departments. The Experimental Farm Service grew dramatically in the early part of the new century. A large number of farms were created across the country at locations including, Summerland 1914, Vancouver 1925, Kamloops 1935, Creston 1940 and Prince George 1940, all in British Columbia, Lethbridge 1906, Lacombe 1907 and Fort Vermillion 1907, in Alberta, Rosthern 1909, Saskatoon 1917, Swift Current 1921, Regina 1931 and Melfort 1935, in Saskatchewan, Morden 1918, Winnipeg 1924 and Portage La Prairie 1944 in Manitoba , Harrow 1913, Kapuskasing 1916, Delhi 1933 and Thunder Bay 1937 in Ontario, La Pocatiere 1912, Lennoxville 1914 and L’Assomption 1928, in Quebec, Fredericton 1912, New Brunswick 1912, Charlottetown 1909, PEI and Kentville, Nova Scotia 1911. The Service also established an Entomological Branch in 1914 to study the control of field crop insects, forests insects, foreign pests and stored product insects. A Science Service was created in 1937 which included divisions for bacteriology, biology and plant pathology, animal pathology, chemistry, entomology and forest biology. Of particular note was the development of Marquis wheat by researcher Charles Saunders during this period. In 1928 the National Research Council created the Division of Biology and Agriculture. Initially working at the University of Alberta the Division moved into the new laboratory in Ottawa in 1932 and studied the biochemistry of wheat rust, gluten proteins and mutation in cereals among other things. Medical research: Medical Research: Medical investigation grew dramatically in the new century. Almost immediately after Roentgen’s discovery of the x-ray, was used for clinical examination in Montreal on & February in 1896. There were as well, investigations into septicemia at the Montreal General Hospital in 1907. Dr. J.B. Collip isolated the hormone of the parathyroid gland in 1926 and Dr. Maud Abbott of McGill studied congenital diseases of the heart. Drs. Lucas and Henderson of Toronto discovered the anesthetic properties of cyclopropane in 1929 and Dr. Norman Bethune of Montreal developed the first blood bank and battlefield transfusion techniques. Three institutional pillars of medical research were established during these years. The Connaught Laboratories in Toronto, in 1917, the Montreal Neurological Institute in 1934 and L’institute de microbiologie de Montreal. In 1914 Dr. John Fitzgerald established laboratories in Toronto to produce vaccines for smallpox, rabies, diphtheria and tetanus. The facility was named the Connaught laboratories in 1917 in honour of Prince Albert, the Duke of Connaught the recently retired Governor General. Beginning in 1922 the laboratories began to mass produce the newly discovered hormone insulin. The discovery of insulin by Sir Frederick Banting, C. H. Best, J.J.R. MacLeod and J.B. Collip in 1921-22 at the University of Toronto stands as a landmark in Canadian medical research. With a grant of $1,000,000 from the US Rockefeller Foundation, McGill University established the Montreal Neurological Institute in 1934. In these facilities Dr. Wilder Pennfield undertook research into the surgical treatment of epilepsy and scientific inquiry into the nature of the temporal lobe of the human brain. In 1938 Dr. Armand Frappier after years of effort obtained $75,000 from the government of Quebec for the establishment of L’institute de microbiologie de Montreal an organization devoted to the teaching of microbiology, research into the field and the industrial production of vaccines. In 1941 after moving into facilities at the newly constructed Universite de Montreal the Institute began producing vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus and typhoid as well as blood plasma for the war effort. In 1936 the NRC significantly created the Associate Committee of Medical Research to fund medical research in Canada. This organization became the Division of Medical Research in 1956 and the Medical Research Council in 1960. [edit]Scientists of note (1900 – 1939) Scientists who made their mark during this period included: Charles Edward Saunders,1867-1937 (botany), Maude Abbott,1869-1940 (medicine), Harriet Brooks Pitcher, 1867-1933 (atomic physics), Steven Leacock (economics), C.A. Chant (astronomy), J.S. Plaskett (astronomy), Frances Gertrude McGill, 1877-1959 (forensic pathology), Alice Evelyn Wilson, 1881-1964 (geology), Frere Marie Victorin, 1885-1944 (biology), Margret Newton, 1887-1971 (biology), Wilder Pennfield, 1891-1976 (neurology), Harold Innis (economics) and Avery (biology, 1944). [edit]Science at war (1939 – 1945) [edit]Funding and pure science The fortunes of scientific research during WWII were mixed. The social sciences did not do well. The Social Science Federation of Canada (1940) and the closely related Canadian Social Science Research Council and well as the Canadian Federation for the Humanities (1943) and the associated Humanities Research Council of Canada, were all created to counter wartime conditions that threatened the funding of the social sciences and humanities in Canadian universities. Ironically, both research councils relied on funding from US philanthropic organizations, including the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, to administer their programs, until the establishment of the Canada Council in 1957. Of note is the fact that the demands for war research personnel by the National Research Council during these years threatened to deplete the science staff at Canadian universities. However it is also important to note that the scale and achievement of wartime atomic research inspired the founding of both the Canadian Association of Physicists and the Canadian Mathematical Society in 1945. Finally, WWII mobilization, created an acute public familiarity with the breathtaking power of science (the atomic bomb), large organizational structures, complex management techniques and state sponsored funding programmes that would characterize post-war university as well as industrial research. [edit]Disciplines (1939 – 1945) Mathematics: Cryptology became an important activity, both ensuring that Canadian codes were secure and could not be broken by the enemy and attempting in turn to intercept and decode the enemy's radio transmissions. The Examination Unit of the National Research Council engaged in the later activity and both intercepted enemy radio traffic and used mathematics to attempt to break these coded signals. Physics: The use of theoretial and applied physics were an extremely important part of Canada's war effort as reflected in activities involving the development of atomic energy. The Tizard Mission, a delegation of British scientists and military experts, visiting North America to promote wartime allied scientific cooperation, met with NRC nuclear physist George Laurence in Ottawa in 1940. As a result of this meeting, beginning in 1942, a Montreal based British-Canadian project under the aegis of the National Research Council, undertook the construction of a heavy-water atomic reactor. An experimental device with graphite control rods, ZEEP, (Zero Energy Experimental Pile) was built at Chalk River Ontario, before the end of the war and on 5 September 1945 achieved, "the first self-sustained nuclear reaction outside the United States". This momentous event was followed by the construction of a larger full sized reactor the NRX in 1947, also at Chalk River. Studies in radar and optics were also of importance and the practical results of these efforts were seen in the radar sets and range finders, manufactured by Research Enterprised Limited, a crown corporation. [edit]Explosive growth (1945 – 1985) [edit]Universities and government research agencies (1945 – 1985) With the end of the war these factors resulted in the release of a pent-up demand. Universities, the home of academic research, experienced explosive growth as students, the baby boomers and public funds swelled newly created campus science faculties and research institutes. An example of this growth can be seen in the proliferation of learned societies in the field of biology. Their numbers were sufficient to lead to the creation of an umbrella group, The Canadian Federation of Biological Societies in 1957. Similarly the Canadian Geoscience Council, a federation of seven Canadian geoscience societies was founded in 1972, including among its members the Geological Association of Canada formed in 1947. Of special note was the growth of the social sciences in the sixties. Future G-13 institutions founded during this period included the University of Waterloo, in Waterloo, Ontario in 1957 and the University of Calgary in Calgary, Alberta in 1966. At the same time a number of federal governmental research organizations were spun off from the National Research Council. These included the Communications Security Establishment(1946), Defense Research Board (1947), Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (1952) and the Medical Research Council of Canada (1966). Provincial governments continued to establish research organizations as well with the BC Research Council being founded in 1944, the Nova Scotia Research Foundation in 1946 and the Saskatchewan Research Council in 1947. The Government of Quebec established L'institute nationale de recherche scientifique in 1967. A private virtual organization, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research was founded in 1982 and studies topics related to cosmology, nanotechnology and biodiversity among others. [edit]Funding agencies (1945 – 1985) In the pre-war era, the NRC had provided meager resources for the funding of university research in natural science, engineering and medicine. The post war-era changed this. Medical research funding became the responsibility of the Medical Research Council founded in 1960. Natural science and engineering funding was passed to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council in 1977. Funding for university social science research handled by the Canada Council created in the 1957, was handed over to the newly established Humanities and Social Science Research Council in 1977. [edit]Disciplines (1945 – 1985) Mathematics: The dramatic success of the Canadian nuclear programme during the war acted as a catalyst for the convening of the first meeting of Canadian mathematicians, in Montreal in 1945. This lead to the establishment of the Canadian Mathematical Congress that same year. The Congress began publishing the Canadian Journal of Mathematics in 1949. The Summer Research Institute in mathematics was established at Queens in 1950 under the leadership of Professor R.L. Jeffrey who assembled ten researchers there. This idea has since been copied by other universities. The CJM was expanded to include the Canadian Mathematical Bulletin in 1958 and the Canadian Mathematical Congress Notes in 1968. In the fifties, professors J.L. Synge and L. Infield at the department of applied mathematics at U of T, conducted research in the field of theoretical physics. This changed however, in 1958, with the appointment of J. Van Kranendonk, who became the director of the new theoretical physics section of the physics department. The lead in mathematics held by the U of T began to fade in the sixties as other universities across Canada experienced dramatic increases in the quality of their faculties and research, which was boosted in no small measure by the increase in the number of graduate programmes. The growing importance of fields such a statistics, operational research and computer science also gave mathematics a high public profile and lead most dramatically to the creation of separate departments of mathematics and computer science in most universities. Waterloo was a leader in this regard and in 1966 established departments of pure mathematics, applied mathematics, statistics, combinatorics and optimization and applied analysis and computer science. The extent of the growth in mathematics can be seen in the fact that while there were 11 doctorates in mathematics awarded in 1961, there were 94 in 1973. Furthermore, in 1961 there were 250 professors of mathematics but by 1973 that figure had mushroomed to about 1300. At the same time grants for research by the NRC grew from $87,000 in 1961 to $8,400,000 in 1987. This growth is also reflected in the establishment of new societies including, the Statistical Society of Canada, 1971, the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Mathematics, in 1973 and the Canadian Applied Mathematics Society, in 1980. In post war Quebec science experienced a renaisance of sorts and with it mathematics, which regained equal stature with the discipline in the rest of Canada. The establishment, by Maurice L'Abbe, of the Centre de recherches en mathematiques at L'universite de Montreal in 1970 stood as a testament to this recovery. Physics: The NRC continued atomic research at Chalk River Laboratories until the scale of activity necessitated its transfer to a newly created organization, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, dedicated exclusively to atomic research, in 1952. It should be noted that although Canada had the scientific, engineering and industrial means to design, built and test nuclear weapons, the government decided not to pursue this option. AECL took over responsibility for the operations of NRX but coincidentally shortly after the transfer that reactor experienced a serious accident. It was repaired and rebuilt. In 1957 AECL commissioned a new research facility, the heavy-water moderated and cooled National Research Universal Reactor (NRU) at Chalk River. In 1963 a new site, the Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment, became operational at Pinwa, Manitoba. Here a new organically cooled and operated research reactor was built and work was undertaken on the development of the Slow Poke reactor and the thorium fuel cycle. In 1978 research on the safe storage of nuclear waste was initiated. In 1974 India detonated an atomic bomb with plutonium made from a commercial version of the NRX reactor, CIRUS, built in Bombay by AECL in 1956. As a result the government of Canada terminated nuclear co-operation with that country. The wartime research in physics and in particular the efforts of scientist, J.S. Foster, known for his work relating to the Stark effect, resulted in the establishment at McGill, of the Radiation Laboratory, equipped with Canada's first cyclotron (atom smasher) in 1949. Nuclear physicist J.M. Robson was the physics department head at McGill and R.E. Bell the head of the laboratory. In the post war years at U of T, M.F. Crawford, H.L. Welsh, Elizabeth J. Allin and B.P. Stoicheff studied spectroscopy, optics and lasers and J. Tuzo Wilson became noted for his leadership in the field of geophysics. The early sixties saw the initiation of studies in atmospheric physics and K.G. McNeill and A.E. Litherland became active in high-energy particle physics research. H.E. Johns gained a reputation as a bio-physicist. The University of British Columbia developed a notable presence in physics in the post-war years through the activities of professors G.M. Shrum, department head from 1938 to 1961, as well G.M. Volkoff, M. Bloom, R.D. Russell, J.B. Warren and others. Their efforts saw that institution chosen as the site for the Tri-University Meson Facility, Canada's premier particle accelerator, in the seventies. McMaster in Hamilton, Ontario also gained prominence under the leadership of physics department head, H.G. Thode whose studies in the field of mass spectroscopy and isotopes paved the way for research in nuclear physics by M.W. Johns, H.E. Duckworth and B.N. Brockhouse at that institution. The first university research reactor in the Commonwealth was built at McMaster in 1957, followed by particle-accelerator laboratory in the seventies and McMaster became renowned in fields including spectroscopy, solid state physics, biophysics and theoretical physics through the research of A.B. McLay, M.H. Preston, J. Carbotte and others. Post-war francophone universities have also become important research centres. Physics at Laval advanced through the efforts of, F. Rasetti, from 1939 to 1947 and his colleague E. Persico, from 1947 to 1950. Others of note included J.L. Kerwin, P. Marmet and A. Boivin who undertook studies in the fields of nuclear and theoretical physics, atomic and molecular physics and optics. P. Demers, P. Lorrain and others at L'universite de Montreal studied nuclear and plasma physics. The University of Manitoba saw growth after the war. Studies in nuclear physics undertaken by R.W. Pringle lead to further research in that field by B.G. Hogg. Magnetism has been studied by A.H. Morrish. At the U of Sasketchewan, research in photonuclear physics and medical radiation therapy undertaken with Canada's first betatron (25 MeV) facility built in 1948 lead to the development of a cobalt 60 apparatus by H.E.Johns and others. In 1964 the Saskatchewan Accelerator Laboratory (SAL) was completed and remained operational until 1999. It has since been integrated into the Canadian Light Source Synchrotron. Physics at the University of Western Ontario in London received a boost during the war through the initiation of studies in radar by R.C. Dearle, G.A. Woonton and others. Post-war research in the field, under P.A. Forsyth lead to the establishment in 1967 of the Centre for Radio Science which included research into atmospheric and ionospheric physics. J.W. McGowan has undertaken studies in the scattering of positrons there. The growth in physics during this period can be measured by the fact that 1075 doctorates in physics, almost a third of which were at the U of T, were awarded by 28 Canadian universities between 1974 and 1985. Astronomy: Radio astronomy became a prominent feature of post war astronomy in Canada with the construction of the Algonquin Radio Observatory in Algonquin Park, Ontario in 1959. This facility built under the direction of noted astronomer Dr. Arthur Covington, featured a large 150 foot receiving dish. The Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in Penticton, British Columbia, built shortly thereafter, features an interferometric radio telescope, a 26-m single-dish antenna and a solar flux monitor. In 1962 another optical telescope, a 48 inch reflector fitted with a Coude focus and a room sized spectrograph, was added to the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Victoria. The establishment in 1975, of the Herzberg Institute for Astrophysics by the National Research Council of Canada consolidated the work of Canadian astronomy at the institution and this new organization became the prime mover for the construction of the new Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, on Mount Mauna Kea in Hawaii, that saw first light in 1979. Space Science: Canada's initial achievements in space science came as a result of military initiatives. Because the effectiveness of the huge air defence radar chains across Canada's north, as well as radio communications, were effected by the electrical properties of the ionosphere, studies of those properties were undertaken in the fifties. In 1954 the Canadian Army built a rocket launch facility at Fort Churchill (rocket launch site), Manitoba for the launching of rockets with payloads designed to study the upper atmosphere. There were further launches in 1957 and 1958 as part of Canada's participation in the activities of the International Geophysical Year. The site was subsequently used by the National Research Council in the seventies and eighties for the launching of rockets as part of the Canadian Upper Atmosphere Research Programme. In 1958 the newly formed NASA in the US sought international partners for its naissant satellite programme. The Canadian response came from the Defence Research Establishment where Dr. John Chapman proposed that Canada build a satellite to study the properties of the ionosphere from above (the rockets from Fort Churchill studied them from below). NASA accepted the proposal and the DRE in Ottawa with the help of RCA in Montreal, and SPAR Aerospace in Toronto, overcame daunting engineering difficulties and built Alouette I, a 145 kg. satellite which was launched by NASA from the Pacific Missile Test Range in California on 29 September 1962. Alouette I was a great success and contributed significantly to the understanding of the electrical properties of the upper atmosphere. As a result of this success Canada and the US signed an agreement relating to International Satellites for Ionospheric Studies, ISIS, and Canada launched Alouette II in 1965, ISIS I in 1969 and ISIS II in 1970. Geology: Under the pressure of World War II the Survery redoubled efforts to find strategic mineral recources and map the territory of Canada. The exploration of western Canada received major attention with the discovery of oil at Leduc, Alberta in 1947 and Canada's world lead in atomic energy resulted in a successful search for uranium deposits in the north. The Survey's methods became more effective, as seen with the use of the helicopter which greatly accelerated the process of mapping. In 1955 the Survey launched "Operation Franklin" its largest field study up to that time. With air support and under the leadership of Y.O. Fortier the 28 member team mapped 260,000 square kilometers of the high Arctic. The Survey's reputation grew under the leadership of directors G. Hanson from 1953 to 1956 and J.M. Harrison, from 1956 to 1963. In 1966 organizational changes saw the Survey become part of the new Department of Energy, Mines and Resources and as a result new emphasis was placed on the quantitative analysis of Canada's mineral energy wealth. Land use became an important focus in the seventies with the Survey conducting studies of the environmental impact of the proposed Mackenzie Valley Pipeline corridor. During those same years, the extension of Canada's off-shore boundaries to include a new 371 kilometer economic zone increased the Survey's area of responsibility by 40 percent. To deal with the question of energy security the Survey initiated the Frontier Geoscience Program in the eigthties. It also became the agent for Canada's participation in the international Ocean Drilling Program in 1984. That same year the Survey participated in the founding of Lithoprobe, the largest geoscience programme ever undertaken in Canada. This undertaking involving more that 700 scientists from, governments, universities and industry uses state-of-the-art techniques to provide a three dimensional image of the earth's crust to an astonishing depth of 50 kilometers. Oceanography: In the post-war years the Hydrographic Survey continued its work with an expanded mandate. The entry of Newfoundland and Labrador into Confederation in 1949 saw the Survey's charting activities extended to the new coasts. As the air defence of Canada became of paramount importance in the fifties the Survey extended its research, to the Canadian Arctic, especially between 1954 and 1957 and charted routes for the ships carrying the supplies necessary to build the long range radar stations of the DEW Line. Arctic survey activity was further accelerated starting in 1959, the first year of the Polar Continental Shelf survey. The Fisheries Research Board continued its excellent work after the war and up until 1979 when it was disbanded as the result of government reorganization and its responsibilities passed to other organizations. The defence activities of the NRC during the war years, including anti-submarine warfare research were spun off and handed to the newly created Defence Research Board in 1947. That organization established research facilities in Halifax, Nova Scotia and Esquimalt, British Columbia to conduct studies in support of the ASW mission of the Royal Canadian Navy. Research activities focused on physical oceanography as it related to the transmission of sound underwater, including ocean temperature, salinity, currents, tides, surface noise and biological sound sources. The signature event in the history of Canadian oceanography was the founding of the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Instrumental in the establishment was Dr. W. E. van Steenburgh, Director-General of Scientific Services of the Department of Mines and Technical Surveys, who recognized the need for scientific organization to deal with questions relating to defence, sovereignty, fisheries and the environment. As a result of his initiative the Institute and was created in 1962 and acquired the new state-of-the-art research vessel, the CCGS Hudson. In many ways the story of the Institute is the story of that ship. Launched in 1962 and commissioned in 1964 the Hudson undertook five geophysical surveys of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, contributing to the understanding of the new theory of continental drift. In the 1966 the Hudson carried out a detailed survey of the Labrador Sea and studies of the Labrador current. The following year it surveyed the Denmark Strait. In 1970 the ship undertook the "Hudson '70' voyage, an 11 month, first ever, circumnavigation of North and South America and in the latter part of the decade carried out the first surveys of the chemistry of Baffin Bay. In the eighties and nineties surveys within the framework of the international Joint Global Ocean Fluxes Study and World Ocean Circulation Experiment were completed by the Hudson. Chemistry: University chemistry underwent explosive growth in the post-war years, especially in the sixties. The fifies saw the creation of six new universities each with a chemistry department, including, Le College Militaire Royal, 1952, Assumption, 1953, Sherbrooke, 1954, Carleton, 1957, York, 1959 and Waterloo, 1959. But during the sixties, nineteen new universities with their associated departments of chemistry, saw the light of day, including, Sir George Williams, 1960, Laurentien, 1960, Alberta at Calgary, 1960, Saskatchewan at Regina, 1961, Moncton, 1963, Victoria, 1963, Guelph, 1964, Brock, 1964, Trent, 1964, Lakehead, 1965, Simon Fraser, 1965, Lethbridge, 1967, Brandon,1967, Winnipeg, 1967, Quebec, 1969 and PEI, 1969. Laboratory work became more significant and saw the introduction of spectroscopy, mass spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance, flame photometry, and gas chromatography. Original research blossomed during this period. In 1965 there were 664 doctoral students in chemistry at universities across Canada. This figure had jumped to 771 in 1966 and about 40% of the research was devoted to organic chemistry. By the same token in 1964 there were 19 graduate programmes in chemistry while a mere two years later there were 25. The spectacular growth is reflected in the evolution of graduate chemistry at the University of British Columbia where in 1955, seven professors supervised two graduate students compared to a faculty of 50 supervising 150 graduate students in 1968. Research efforts of note included the work of R.U. Lemieux, at the University of Alberta, in the field of carbohydrate chemistry (1953), P.A. Giguere at Laval, in the field of hydrogen peroxide spectroscopy and N. Bartlett at the University of British Columbia in compounds of the so called "inert" xenon. The NRC Division of Chemistry continued its research throughout these years. Biology: In the post war years the number of universities offering courses of one type or another in biology increased significantly as compared to the pre-war situation and stood at 41 in 1971. The connection between biochemistry and microbiology became more pronounced with 10 universities offering at least both courses, including: Victoria, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan (Saskatoon), Manitoba, Western Ontario, Queen’s, Ottawa, McGill, Montreal, Sherbrooke, Laval and Dalhousie. The NRC offered grants in support of animal, plant, cellular and population biology and in 1967 those universities receiving the most money included: British Columbia, $878,000, Guelph, $644,000, Toronto, $559,000, Alberta, $524, 000 and Manitoba, $519,000. The excellent work of the Experimental Farms continued in the post war years. However change was in the wind and in 1959 the Experimental Farm Service was united with the Science Service to form the Research Branch of the Department of Agriculture. To compliment the existing network of farms the new organization created a number of research instututes to deal with a variety of research topics including: genetics, microbiology, cell biology, etomology, plants, animals, soils and insect pathology. Medical Research: The Associate Committee of Medical Research created in 1936 to fund medical research in Canada became the Division of Medical Research in 1956 and the Medical Research Council in 1960. This organization funded medical research at a number of university medical schools and associated teaching hospitals across the country including, Laval/Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, 1639, McGill/Montreal General Hospital, 1819, U of T/the Toronto General Hospital, 1829, Ottawa U/The Ottawa Hospital, 1845, Queen’s/Hotel Dieu Hospital, Kingston, 1845, U of T/Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, 1875, UBC/Vancouver General Hospital, 1886, Dalhousie/Victoria General Hospital, Halifax, 1887 and the U of A/ the University of Alberta Hospital, Edmonton, 1906. The Connaught Laboratories in Toronto conducted ground breaking research in the fifties with respect to the world’s first polio vaccine. Working with Dr. Jonas Salk in the US the laboratories developed a safe inactive vaccine using a new synthetic base, Medium 199. This permitted large volume production through a technique that came to be known as the “Toronto Method” which in turn allowed the mass vaccination campaigns of millions of Canadian and US children against this horrible crippling disease beginning in 1954. The laboratory also produced the first trivalent Sabin live oral polio vaccine in 1959, as well as influenza, measles and a freeze-dried smallpox vaccine which was of crucial importance in the global elimination of that terrible disease. In Montreal L’institute de microbologie continued its research in the fifties and with a $1,000,000 grant from the Quebec government began the production of polio vaccine in 1956. In the sixties the organization initiated research into immunology, in particular as related to organ transplants, as well as infectious mononucleosis, leprosy, cancer and measles. In 1975 the institute became part of the Universite de Quebec network and was renamed L’Institute Armand Frappier. [edit]Big science (1945 – 1985) The post-war years saw dramatic growth in "big science'. In the fifties large atomic research reactors were built in Chalk River Ontario (NRX and NRU) and smaller ones in many universities across the country. Space research satellites (Alouette and ISIS) were built in Ottawa and launched in the US. Upper atmosphere Black Brant research rockets were launched from Churchill, Manitoba. A large state of the art radio telescope was built in Algonquin Park. Although plans to build an Intense Neutron Generator and a large astronomical telescope, to be named the Queen Elizabeth II in the sixties were canceled due to financial pressures, (the later in 1968), the seventies saw the construction of the TRIUMF large meson generator at the University of British Columbia, the Canada-France-Hawaii Observatory in Hawaii and the experimental Tokamak fusion reactor in Varennes, Quebec. [edit]Science policy The long standing science policy of the Government of Canada has been to consider science and technology as supporting activities for the development of Canadian business and industry. The first government science agencies, the Geological Survey of Canada (1842, minerals), the Dominion Experimental Farms (1886, agriculture) and the Biological Board (fisheries) were established to support their respective industries. The National Recearch Council (1916) was founded to support manufacturing research and to provide science and technology advice to the government. The series of post-war NRC spin-offs saw this advisory role handed over to a newly created agency the Science Council of Canada founded in 1966. It provided scientific advice to the government until it was abolished in 1993 as part of federal budget cutbacks. Special circumstances, such as war, have seen the government mobilize science to deal with a national emergency. The government has also for the last fifty years considered the health and more recently the public safety of Canadians to be of great importance and has therefore invested in medical research through the NRC, the Medical Research Board and lately the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Other health and safety science activities include the laboratory investigations of Health Canada and the recently created Public Health Agency of Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. However government policy with respect to what might be described "pure" science has been ambiguous. Early in the twenieth century the government funded the construction of one of the largest astronomical telescopes in the world. Other "big science" projects such as those listed here have also been funded over the last one hundred years. However when the overall funding for this type of activity during the past century is considered there has been a notable lag when Canada's efforts are compared to those of other countries. [edit]Nobel Laureates and other scientists of note (1945 – 1985) A number of Nobel Prizes were awarded to Canadian scientists, during this period including: William Giauque, (Chemistry, 1949), Charles B. Huggins, (Physiology or Medicine, 1966, Gerhard Herzberg, (Chemistry, 1971) and David H. Hubel, (Physiology or Medicine, 1981), Other scientists of note included: Ned Stacie, 1900-1962 (chemistry), Carlyle Beals (astronomy), Marshall McLuhan (sociology/communications), Helen Sawyer Hogg, 1905-1993 (astronomy), John Tuzo Wilson, 1908-1993 (geology), Pierre Dansereau, 1911 (ecology), Douglas Harold Copp, 1915-1998, (medicine), David Suzuki, (genetics, TV personality), Fernand Seguin (scientist, TV personality), Raymond Urgel Lemieux, 1920-2000 (chemistry), Charles Robert Scriver, 1930 (medicine) and Hubert Reeves, 1932 (cosmology). [edit]Cutbacks and recovery (1985 – Present) [edit]Universities and government research agencies (1985 – Present) Growth continued until the mid-eighties when a crisis in public funding curtailed much scientific research at the university and government level. Space activities spread across federal departments were brought under the roof of the Canadian Space Agency, created in 1989. The Defence Research Board was reorganized and emerged as Defence Research and Development Canada. The province of Quebec established the Centre de recherche industriel de Quebec in 1989. The last two decades have witnessed a slow but steady recovery. The mid-nineties saw the voluntary creation of the Group of Ten, large research universities in Canada. Three members were added to create the Group of 13 in 2006. In 1995 the Social Science Federation of Canada and the Canadian Federation for the Humanities amalgamated to form the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. A recent event, the formation in Waterloo, Ontario, of the Perimeter Institute, for the study of quantum mechanics and relativity, is refreshingly novel in that it represents the initiative of a private individual who has entered a field previously occupied by public institutes. [edit]Funding agencies (1985 – Present) In 2000 the Medical Research Council was reorganized and emerged as the new Canadian Institutes of Health Research. At the beginning of the new century the creation of two new funding agencies, the Canada Research Chairs Programme and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, have aided the recovery from government cutbacks. [edit]Disciplines (1985 – Present) Mathematics: The continuing importance of mathematics has been reflected in the establishment of organizations such at the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences at Waterloo (later moved to U of T) in 1991. In the new century there are about 2400 mathematicians in Canadian universities and in 2005 the Canadian Mathematical Society celebrated its sixtieth anniversary. Waterloo has surpassed the University of Toronto in stature and in 2008 is a world leader in mathematics with over 5300 students, 200 full time professors and 180 different courses in mathematics, statistics and computer science. Research institutes include: the Business and Industrial Statistics Research Group, the Centre for Advanced Studies in Finance, the Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research,Centre for Computational Mathematics in Industry and Commerce, the Institute for Computer Research, the Institute of Insurance and Pension Research, the Institute for Quantitative Finance and Insurance and the Institute for Quantum Computing. Physics: Atomic fusion was a significant field of study in this period. From in 1987 to 1999, at Varennes Quebec, Hydro-Quebec operated a Tokomak fusion reactor. Researchers from the Institut de Recherche en Électricité du Québec (IREQ) and the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS) investigated various elements of fusion science at this facility. The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) studied the nature of the sub-atomic particle known as the neutrino from 1999 until 2006. The facility is located about 2 km underground in the former Creighton nickel mine of CVRD Inco in Sudbury, Ontario and was designed to detect solar neutrinos by sensing their interaction with deuterium nuclei and atomic electrons. Observations resulted in a major discovery, demonstrating among other things that solar neutrinos oscillate as they travel through space and therefore have mass. The facility is presently undergoing an upgrade that will result in SNO+ that will permit new experiments. These will involve the study of the proton proton chain reaction, geo-neutrinos (neutrinos produced by natural phenomena in the earth) and neutrinoless double beta decay. One of the largest science projects in Canadian history, the Canadian Light Source Synchrotron at the University of Sasketchewan in Saskatoon began operation in 2004. Covering an area the size of a football field and built at a cost of $175 million it is operated by CLS Inc. a U of S not-for-profit corporation. It is used to investigate the nature of matter at very small scales. Small scale physics is also the focus of the National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT) at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Alberta. Operated by the NRC the institute was created in 2001 and moved into a state of the art facility which is among the largest and quietest of its type in the world, in 2006. It will study a wide range of nanoscale phenomena including, the synthesis of nanocrystals and nanowires and of supramolecular-based nanomaterials, the fabrication of molecular-scale devices, the development of nano-scaled materials for chemical reactions at semiconductor surfaces, protein design and genetic engineering and nanoelectricalmechanical systems. The University of Toronto is the most prominent member of the G13 Canadian research universities and remains one of Canada's premier physics research organizations. In 1997 the physics department celebrated the centenary of its graduate programme. In 2007 it conducted research in a wide ranging number of fields including: planetary physics, quantum optics and condensed matter physics and subatomic physics. A number of research institutes play an important part in this activity including: the Center for Quantum Information and Quantum Control, the Institute for Optical Sciences, the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (C.I.T.A.), Photonics Research Ontario, IsoTrace, the Institute for Aerospace Studies, the Institute of Particle Physics (I.P.P.) and the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics. The University of British Columbia continues to play an important role in physics research. Fields of study include: applied physics, atomic, molecular and optical physics, biophysics, condensed matter, medical physics, particle, subatomic and string theory and theoretical physics. Important research institutes include, the Advanced Materials and Process Engineering Laboratory, the Pacific Institute of Theoretical Physics and of course TRIUMF, Canada's National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics. TRIUMF is also Canada's centre for participation in the construction and eventual operation of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva. Canadian universities and Canadian industry have contributed components to ATLAS, one of that accelerators large particle detectors. TRIUMF also hosts a Tier 1 Computing Centre for ATLAS, one of ten in the world. Canada's number three research university, the University of Alberta in Edmonton, maintains its strong position in physics research in Canada in 2008. Fields of stude include: the astrophysical sciences, condensed matter physics, geophysics and particle physics. Research institutes of note include: the Center for Nanoscale Physics, the Centre for Particle Physics (Center for Subatomic Research), the Institute for Geophysical Research, the Mitpan International Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory, the Space Physics Laboratory and the Theoretical Physics Institute. The reputation of physics research at McGill in Montreal continues to be strong. Fields of study include: astrophysics, condensed matter physics, high energy physics, nuclear physics and nonlinear physics. Research centres of note include: the Centre for the Physics of Materials, the Centre for High Energy Physics, the Interuniversity Centre for Subatomic Physics, and the McGill Institute for Advanced Materials. Arguably Canada's most significant theoretical physics research organization is the newly created Perimeter Institute associated with the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario. Founded in 1999 by Mike Lazaridis, inventor of the Blackberry, and under the leadership of Founding Executive Director Howard Burton, the 60 resident researchers have, since 2001 conducted research in a number of fields including: cosmology, particle physics, quantum foundations, quantum gravity, quantum information and superstring theory. Astronomy: Cutbacks in funding hit Canada's premier astronomical research organization the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics hard. Money could not be found to resurface the Algonquin Park Radio Telescope and it along with the solar telescope near Ottawa were closed in 1986. However that same year, the HIA did establish the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC) which created special software for the archiving of astronomical date. In 1987, the HAI took a 25 percent stake in the 15-m James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (submillimetre radio) and in the nineties a 15 percent stake in the optical 8 metre Gemini Telescope which became operational in 1999. Headquarters for the HIA moved from Ottawa to Victoria in 1995. In the new century the Institute designed instruments for its international telescope programme including the CFHT adaptive optics bonnette, the Gemini multi-object spectrograph and the JCMT auto-correlation spectrometer and imaging system. The HAI is also the principle player in the 1998 – 1999 Long-Range Plan for Astronomy and recently has moved towards a more supportive role for Canadian university astronomy. In 2003 the Canadian Space Agency launched Canada's first astronomical satellite, the Microvariability and Oscillations of STars telescope or MOST, developed by the Agency, Dynacon Enterprises Limited and the astronomy departments at the University of Toronto and British Columbia. Astronomy in the new century at the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the U of T is wide ranging in scope and makes use of some of the world's greatest observatories. Fields of study include: cosmology, the early universe, galaxy clusters, galaxy, star and planet formation, the interstellar medium, high energy astrophysics and stellar structure and evolution. Researchers at the department have access to a number of high quality telescopes including: Gemini North and South, 8.1m , Magellan 6.5 m, the CFHT, 3.6 m, Dupont, 2.5 m and the JCMT, sub-mm as well as other optical, radio and satellite facilities and the use of stratospheric balloons for galactic and cosmological research. Astronomy research in the twenty first century is combined with the work of the physics department at the University of British Columbia. The 22 staff researchers there engage in an active programme of investigation and have access to cutting edge facilities including the CFHT and Gemini telescopes. The Dominion Astrophysical Observatory near Victoria and the two radio telescopes of the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory near Penticton are also used. Furthermore department members have built several liquid mirror telescopes the biggest being the 6 metre Large Zenith Telescope near Vancouver. Other Canadian universities including, Queen's, York, Calgary, the U of Alberta, the U of Victoria, Montreal, Laval and the University of Western Ontario offer graduate astronomy programmes and have their own observatories. Space Science: During this period Canadian space science developed a manned component in addition to unmanned activities. In the early eighties the government of Canada signed an agreement with the US regarding participation by Canada in the NASA space shuttle programme. Canada would design, build and donate four Remote Manipulator System devices, (popularly known as the Canadarm), used to handle cargo and equipment in the bay of the shuttle when it was in orbit, in exchange for the training of a Canadian astronaut corps by NASA and the assignment of Canadian astronauts as crew members aboard space shuttle flights. Shuttle flights have included those by, Marc Garneau, Canada's first astronaut, 1984/1996/2000, Roberta Bondar, 1992, Steve MacLean, 1992/2006, Chris Hadfield, 1995/2001, Robert Thirsk, 1996, Bjarni Tryggvason, 1997, Dave Williams, 1998 and Julie Payette, 1999. Science studies during these missions involved investigations of human physiology including space sickness, intracorporal fluid displacements, spacial orientation and the loss of bone and muscle mass during prolonged periods of weigthtlessness. There were also experiments in materials science and biology amongst others. Canada's unmanned programme included the first launching of a Canadian earth observation satelllite, RADARSAT-1 in 1995 and an improved version RADARSAT-2 in 2007. Placed in polar orbits each of these satellites images almost all of the earth's surface, every 24 days using a powerful synthetic aperature radar, SAR. The images have both operational and sciencific applications and their data is of use in geology, hydrology, agriculture, cartography, forestry, climatology, urbanology, environmental studies, meteorology, oceanography and other fields. The Canadian Space Agency launched the Microvariability and Oscillations of STars (MOST) astronomical and SCISAT-1, satellites in 2003. A year later MOST observed that the star, Procyon, did not oscillate, a finding that has importance with respect to theories relating to the formation and aging of the sun and other stars. Canadian instruments have also flown aboard a number of international satellites. Akebono, a Japanese satellite launched in 1989, to study the earth's magnetosphere, was equipped with the Canadian suprathermal ion mass spectrometer. In 1996, the Canadian auroral ultra-violet imager, flew aboard the Russian satellite Interball-2. FUSE, an international ultraviolet space observatory, launched in 1999, has aboard, the Canadian designed and built Fine Error Sensor camera system for tracking the telescope. Canada provided the $37 million "weather station" aboard the Phoenix Mars unmanned mission scheduled to land on that planet in 2008. In 2008, the Agency plans to launch a bybrid satellite, Cassiope, which includes a scientific package equipped with the "enhanced polar outflow probe", that will study the ionosphere. The Agency has also coordinated Canada's contribution to the HIFI and SPIRE instruments aboard the Herschel Space Observatory and to the Low Ferquency Instrument and the Hight Frequency Instrument aboard the Planck Surveyor astronomical/cosmological satellite both of which which will be launched in 2008. Finally Canada is contributing the Fine Guidance Sensor and Tuneable Filter Imager for the James Web Space Telescope scheluled for launch in 2013. A rather imaginative recent undertaking is one by the Mars Society, an international non-profit space advocacy organization and its Canadian branch, the Mars Society of Canada, which established, as part of their Mars Analogue Research Station Programme, the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS), near the Haughton Meteor Impact Crater on Devon Island, Nunavut in 2002. Designed to develop procedures for an eventual manned mission to Mars, the "crew members", inhabiting a simulated Mars base and wearing simulated space suits conducted microbiological and geological studies and simulated Mars field explorations. Geology: The Geological Survey has continued its research during this period. In 1986 the Survey merged with the Earth Physics Branch of the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources and acquired the national seismology and geomagetic observatory networks of that organization. In the nineties this new organization took the lead in the development of the National Geoscience Mapping Program (NATMAP)with other governments, universities and industry to optimize the use of funding for the new mapping of bedrock and surface geology of Canada. Activity in environmental studies has involved establishing norms for the geochemical profiles of naturally occurring substances and work with respect to climate change as well as hydrogeology and natural radioactivity and the risks associated with natural dangers including earthquakes and tsunanis. The Intergovernmental Geoscience Accord, signed in 1996, clarified the role of the Survey with respect to relations with provincial and territorial governments. As the result of a reorganization the Survey became part of the Earth Sciences division of Natural Resources Canada in the mid-nineties. In recent years the evolution of digital electronics and the internet has seen the Survey undertake the development of the Geoscience Knowledge Network with the aim of making geological information available on line. The budget of the Survey is now about $60 million a year and the staff of 550 are located at headquarters in Ottawa and regional offices in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, St. Foy, Quebec, Calgary, Alberta and Sidney and Vancouver, British Columbia. Present fields of study include: geological hazards and environmental geoscience, marine geoscience, minerals, hydrocarbons and bedrock and surficial geoscience. Oceanography: Because most oceanographical activity in Canada is federally funded, the cutbacks of 1985 effected scientific research in this field. For example the Pacific ocean research facilities of the Defence Research Board were closed. However in spite of this the key player, the Bedford Institute has maintained its status as Canada's premier oceanographical institution. Consolidation over the years recent has brought the oceanographic activities of four departments under the roof of the Institute and at the present time over 400 scientists, engineers, technicians, support staff and others, conduct targeted research in a number of fields. National Defence activities support ocean surveillance through the Maritime Forces Atlantic's Route Survey Office and focus on surveys of the sea floor in areas of military interest. The Shellfish Section of Environment Canada conducts ocean water quality surveys and microbiological studies of shellfish. The Geological Survey of Canada is also present and has established itself as Canada's principle marine geoscience facility with emphasis on geophysics, geochemistry, marine and petroleum geology and the coastal/off-shore landmass. The Science Division and Canadian Hydrographic Service of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans are also represented. Associated researchers study the marine climate and environment, marine and diadromous fish, shell fish, mammals and plants. The Institute presently operates four research vessels, CCGS Matthew acquired in 1990 along with the famous CCGS Hudson (1964), CCGS Navicula (1968) and CCGS Alfred Needler (1982). Chemistry: Although there have been funding difficulties the Group of Thirteen Canadian research universities have been engaged in cutting edge chemistry research during thie period. Not surprisingly the University of Toronto has a very elaborate graduate research programme with specialties in, analytical chemistry, biological and organic chemistry, environmental chemistry, inorganic chemistry, physical chemistry, chemical physics and polymer chemistry. The University of British Columbia has a similarly well developed chemistry research programme in fields such as, analytical chemistry, biochemistry, envirenmental chemistry, inorganic chemistry, material, organic chemistry, physical-theoretical chemistry and nuclear and radiochemistry. The University of Alberta has a number of advanced laboratories supporting research in chemistry. These include: the Analytical and Instrumentation Laboratory, the Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Laboratory and the X-ray Crystallography Laboratory which support, analytical chemistry, chemical biology, chemical physics, inorganic chemistry, materials and surface chemistry, nanotechnology, organic chemistry, physical chemistry and theoretical and computational chemistry. In recent years McGill has emphasized the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of chemical research in fields such as analytical/environmental chemisty, biological chemistry, chemical physics, materials chemistry and synthesis/catalysis. Advanced laboratories combined with a multidisciplinary approach characterize chemistry research at the University of Waterloo. Of note is the new Waterloo Advanced Technology laboratory or WATlLab, a facility that offers researchers, microscopy and lithography, spectromicroscopy and spectroscopy and nanofabrication and materials science tools. Also available is the Waterloo Chemical Analysis Facility which included NMR and mass spectrometry machines. Research institutes include the Guelph-Waterloo Centre for Graduate Work in Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. The NRC continues its work in chemistry notable at the Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences with laboratories in Ottawa (Sussex Drive) and Chalk River, Ontario. Biology: After significant cutbacks and reorganization, biological research at the National Research Council has recovered and is reflected in the activities of a number of sub-organizations including: the Institute for Biological Sciences (NRC-IBS)in Ottawa, Montreal Road and Sussex Drive Campuses, the Biotechnology Research Institute (NRC-BRI)in Montreal, Quebec, the Institute for Biodiagnostics (NRC-IBD)with facilities in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Calgary, Alberta and Halifax, Nova Scotia, the Plant Biotechnology Institute (NRC-PBI)in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and the Institute for Marine Biosciences (NRC-IMB)in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Genomics and the closely related proteomics have become the leading fields for biological research in recent years. In 2000 the government of Canada created Genome Canada to conduct research in these important fields. This organization is composed of six centres, Genome British Columbia, in Vancouver, Genome Alberta in Calgary, Genome Prairie in Saskatoon, the Ontario Genomics Institute in Toronto, Genome Quebec in Montreal and Genome Atlantic in Halifax. These centres conduct genomic and proteomic research in such fields as human health, agriculture, forestry, the environment and the fisheries The Canadian Forest Service a branch of the federal Natural Resources Canada conducts biological research at the Pacific Forestry Centre, in Victoria, British Columbia, the Northern Forestry Centre, in Edmonton, Alberta, the Great Lakes Forestry Centre in Sault St. Marie, Ontario, the Laurentien Forestry Centre, in Quebec, Quebec and the Atlantic Forestry Centre in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Medical Research: The Canadian Institutes of Health Research, which replaced the Medical Research Council in 2000 and consist of a number of virtual institutes fund medical research in a variety of fields including aboriginal peoples' health, aging, cancer, circulatory and respiratory health, gender and health, genetics, human development, infection, musculoskeletal health, diabetes, neuroscience, and public health. Research is conducted in cooperation with the pharmaceutical industry and medical schools across Canada. The Public Health Agency of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario is also a significant player in health research and has a number of facilities that conduct medical research including: the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Control and the Centre for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control, both in Ottawa, and the Laboratory for Foodborn Zoonoses in Guelph, Ontario. Of particular note is the National Microbiological Laboratory in Winnipeg, Manitoba, with its level 4 biohazard containment and research facilities. After a number of complex corporate changes over a period of 30 years Connaught Laboratories emerged in 2004 as Sanofi Pasteur Canada with modern facilities focusing on vaccine research, in Toronto. Ongoing projects include the $350 million 10 year Cancer Vaccine Programme with possible treatments for melanoma, colorectal cancer and breast cancer as well as investigations into vaccines for HIV, pheumococcal infection and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Extensive medical research programmes are also undertaken by a number of other private companies including: Pfizer Canada Inc. (fs) 147.5 GlaxoSmithKline Inc., Merck Frosst Canada Ltd., Biovail Corporation, AstraZeneca Canada Inc., QLT Inc., MDS Inc., Vasogen Inc., Novartis Pharmaceuticals Canada Inc., Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and Neurochem Inc. International cooperation in medical research has become important technique in dealing with the understanding of severe diseases such as cancer. Starting in 2008, Canada, through the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research in Toronto, will lead the International Cancer Genome Consortium, a research project involving nine other countries, that will hunt for the genetic mutations that are the basis for 50 types of cancer. The Canadian contribution includes the investigation of the genetic basis for pancreatic cancer as well and the computer storage and manipulation of the data for the project. [edit]Big science (1985 – Present) Major post war science facilities were closed down during this period, notably the Algonquin Park Radio Observatory and the Tokomak reactor. In spite of cutbacks a number of big new science projects were realized including, the Canadian Astronaut Programme, the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Sudbury, Ontario, the National Microbiological Laboratory in Winnipeg, the Canadian Light Source Syncrotron at the University of Saskatoon in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and the National Institute for Nanotechnology in Edmonton, Alberta. At the beginning of the 21st century due to financial restraints, token funding efforts were made to give Canada a place with the construction and operation of the Gemini astronomical telescopes and the soon to be opened Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. Canada's participation in the international fusion reactor project was canceled. Funding restraints also disrupted the supply of medical isotopes produced at Chalk River in 2007 and Canadian astronaut and former head of the Canadian Space Agency, Marc Garneau called for the creation of a national space policy to revive Canada's flagging space programme. [edit]Nobel Laureates and other scientists of note (1985 – Present) A number of Nobel prizes were awarded to Canadian scientists during this time of restraint including: John C. Polanyi, (Chemistry, 1986), Sidney Altman, (Chemistry, 1989), Richard E. Taylor, (Physics, 1990), Rudolph Marcus, (Chemistry, 1992), Michael Smith, (Chemistry, 1993), Bertram N. Brockhouse, (Physics, 1994), William Vickrey, (Economic Sciences, 1996), Myron Scholes, (Economics, 1997) and Robert Mundell, (Economics, 1999). Other scientists of note include Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute, Today university research accounts for about 40% if all research spending in Canada while scientific research in government laboratories accounts for about 10%. [edit]Innovation, invention, and industrial research in Canada
The terms chosen for the "eras" described below are both literal and metaphorical. They describe the technology that dominated the period of time in question but are also representative of a large number of technologies introduced concurrently. [edit]The Stone Age: Fire 14,000BC – 1600 The first innovators and inventors in Canada were, not surprisingly, the native peoples who arrived here 14,000 years ago. They innovated techniques to survive in a very new and mostly hostile environment. This involved new ways to obtain food, create clothing and travel across a huge territory. Notable inventions included the canoe, snowshoe, igloo and pemmican. The west coast natives innovated construction techniques that included the use of heavy timber and eastern tribes developed sedentary agricultural techniques. [edit]The Age of Sail: Ships, symbolic language, and the wheel (1600 – 1830) The arrival of the Europeans provided a new impetus for innovation and invention. Techniques to improve fishing and the cutting and the transport of timber were refined. The first metal works, Les Forges de St. Maurice developed metal products for colonial use. There were innovations in cultivation techniques to deall with the cold climate. In 1844, in Nova Scotia, Charles Fenerty invented newsprint made from woodpulp and Abraham Gesner invented kerosene in Halifax in 1846. [edit]The Steam Age: Trains, telegraphs, water, and oil (1830 – 1880) This era ushered in experimentation with the design of steam powered locomotives and ships. The building of large wooden ocean going sailing vessels became a hugely successful undertaking in the maritimes in the latter half of the nineteenth century due to innovative construction techniques and designs. Sandford Fleming invented standard time. In the field of agriculture, machines were developed to farm the vast prairie grasslands. One of Canada's best known industrial innovators, the Massey Harris company, became famous for its farm equipment. New strains of wheat were developed to deal with the harsh prairie climate. Thomas Willson innovated techniques for the production of acetylene. Experiments in X-ray technology were conducted at RMC in Kingston Ontario. Henry Ruttan improved techniques for the heating and ventilation of buildings and railway cars. In the US Canadian James Lee invented the rifle magazine. [edit]The Electric Age: Light, street railways, telephones, skyscrapers and central heating (1880 – 1920) Canadian inventors made huge contributions to the electric era. Matthew Evans and Henry Woodward (inventor) invented and patented the incandescent electric light in Toronto in 1874 and later sold the patent to Edison. This would become the basis for his renowned endeavours with electric lighting. Thomas Willson invented the electric arc light during this period. The year 1876 saw Alexander Graham Bell invent the telephone. He would share credit for this achievement between the US and Canada. World shaking experiments in trans-oceanic wireless communication conducted by Guglielmo Marconi in Newfoundland and Cape Breton. In the US, Canadian Reginald Fessenden conducted investigations into what is now called FM radio. Canadian Frederick Creed invented the teleprinter in 1902. Inventive Canadian chemists specializing in the field of electrochemistry during this period included W.T. Gibbs, T.L.Wilson and E.A. LeSeur. The turn of the century witnessed large scale innovation in heavy engineering with the construction of hydro generating facilities at Niagara Falls and at other sites across Canada including the Gatineau River near Ottawa in the twenties. Alexander Graham Bell undertook experiments in aviation and high speed water craft on Lake Bras D'or in Nova Scotia. It was here that Canada's first heavier than air machine, the Silver Dart, took to the air in 1909. The parched could quench their thirst with the newly created Canada Dry ginger ale. Peter Robertson invented the square headed screwdriver in Milton, Ontario in 1908. [edit]Killing Machines I: Artillery and machine guns (1914 – 1918) Peter Nissen invented the "Nissen Hut", military shelter in 1916. Other WWI innovations included the variable pitch propeller, the gas mask, the Curtiss Canada bomber and the ill-starred Ross rifle. [edit]The Automobile Age: Cars, planes and radios (1920 – 1950) In the early twentieth century, several dozen individuals and small businesses located mostly in southern Ontario experimented with automobile innovation. One of these, Samuel McLaughlin of Oshawa, eventually became the basis for General Motors of Canada. It was within this context that Joseph Bombardier in Quebec invented his automobile for the snow or "snowmobile" and founded the Bombardier company. This corporation would become a giant of Canadian industrial research in the latter part of the century. In Montreal Alexis Nihon invented the tubeless tire. Also in Montreal, during the twenties and thirties, Canadian Vickers developed a very successful series of flying boats. Experiments with electrical sound recording by microphone were undertaken by Horace Owen (born Hamilton, Ontario, 1888 died Ottawa 1972) and Lionel Guest in 1919. This period also saw the development of the "batteryless" radio in Toronto by Edward S. Rogers, Sr. and further innovations in radio by Canadian Marconi in Montreal. Experiments in television transmission were conducted there by Ouimet and the wire photo was invented. In 1937, Donald Higgs invented what would become the "Walkie Talkie". On the domestic scene, Herbert McCool invented Easy-Off Oven Cleaner in Regina in 1932 and other Canadians invented, pablum and the zipper. As a student James Hillier invented the electron microscope at the University of Toronto in the early forties and Hugh Le Caine invented the music synthesizer in 1945. The forties also saw Frank Forward invent techniques for refining nickel and cobalt. However it terms of scale, nothing could match the giant of Canadian innovation throughout the late 19th and first half of the 20th century, the Canadian Pacific Angus Locomotive Works of Montreal. This huge enterprise designed, developed and built most of the steam engines for the great Canadian Pacific Railway Company. [edit]Killing Machines II: Bombers, tanks, corvettes, radar and explosives (1939 – 1945) WWII saw science and industry harnessed to fight the enemy. The National Research Council (NRC), created during WWI to advise the government on industrial research, grew exponentially as did Canadian war industries. A tight bond was formed between the two. The NRC itself helped develop radar, the proximity fuse, the explosive RDX, high velocity artillery, fire control computers and submarine detection equipment among other things. The NRC Examination Unit innovated in the field of cryptology. Enterprises such as the Ford Motor Company of Canada developed and built special purpose military transport vehicles. Polymer Corporation of Sarnia, Ontario pioneered new types of synthetic rubber. Canadian Industries Limited in Montreal formulated new types of explosive and Canadian Marconi innovated in the new field of radar. A Canadian version of the US Sherman tank was developed and manufactured at the Angus Works. Canadian versions of British and US combat aircraft, in particular, the Lancaster and the Hurricane, were built in Toronto and Fort William, Ontario. Northern Electric developed telecommunications equipment. Ship building companies on the east and west coast adapted US and British designs and construction techniques for the mass construction of ships. Frank invented the aviation anti-blackout suit in Toronto and experiments in germ and chemical warfare were conducted at Grosse-Isle, Quebec and what is now CFB Suffield, Alberta. Specialized government businesses such as Research Enterprises Limited ( 1940) developed and manufactured what we would now call "high tech" products, including optical systems and communications devices. Secret arrangements with Britain and the US, including the Tizard Mission, saw Canadian industry participate in the development of the atomic bomb, notably through the innovation of uranium refining techniques. [edit]The Television Age: TV, nuclear weapons, atomic energy, and computers (1950 – 1980) After the war a number of innovators including Electrohome of Kitchener, Ontario, offered televisions and entertainment systems to consumers. In the fifties Anthony Barringer invented INPUT, an electromagnetic device used for the aerial detection of mineral deposits. The Toronto area saw the creation of a naissant military industrial complex around the design of jet aircraft. AVRO Canada developed the AVRO Jetliner and then the CF-100 jet fighter. The Orenda jet engine factory developed jet power plants for the new aircraft. The scale of this undertaking grew dramatically with the development of the huge CF-105 long range high altitude interceptor and its associated Velvet Glove air-to -air missile and came crashing to the ground just as quickly when the project was cancelled in 1959. At the same time, with financing from the US, AVRO was developing a supersonic fighter based on a flying saucer design. However the project collapsed when the US withdrew funding.East coast shipbuilders continued to innovate with the construction of new classes of warship. In Ottawa, the Defence Research Board, with the support of industry developed Canada's first satellites and the Black Brant sounding rocket. In the sixties and seventies Gerald Bull experimented with long range artillery. Agent Orange (the herbicide) was tested by the US Army at Gagttown New Brunswick from the early fifties to the nineties. There were also developments in the innovation of civil aviation and space. In the fifties De Havilland Canada developed bush planes and later in the sixties and seventies STOL aircraft. Pratt and Whitney Canada developed its signature PT-6 series of aircraft engines. Telesat Canada pioneered the development of domestic satellite communications. In the field of nuclear energy, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, developed its CANDU series of atomic power reactors. John Hopps invented the pacemaker in Toronto in 1951 and Harold Elford Johns invented the cobalt-60 cancer therapy unit that same year. The Connaught Laboratories in Toronto innovated techniques for the mass production of the Salk vaccine. Nordion developed medical radio isotopes. Gerald Heffernan invented what is known as mini-mill steel manufacturing. In the US, Canadian Lewis Urry working for the Eveready Company invented the alkaline battery and lithium battery. Also in the US, Canadian Willard Boyle working at the Bell Labs invented the charge-coupled device (CCD) which became the key technology for digital photography and improved astronomical telescopes. Innovations in the pulp and paper industry have been made by the Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada and the Pulp and Paper Research Institute of Canada, both located in Pointe-Claire, Québec, Canada. [edit]The PC Age: The Microchip and Mobile Communications (1980 – 2000) The latter part of the twentieth century has been notable for developments in information technology, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals. Canadian companies were early innovators in the PC field with models like the Hyperion. AES developed the word processor. Chip makers, such as ATI, have developed powerful graphics chips for computer games. Business intelligence, and cinematic special effects software products have enjoyed great success, as have a number of consumer oriented offerings including Corel Draw, software by Delrina Corporation of Toronto and many electronic games. Northern Electric maintained its innovative pace, becoming Northern Telecom, and leading the world in the digital switching and other communications technologies. Pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer Canada Inc., GlaxoSmithKline Inc., Merck Frosst Canada Ltd., Biovail Corporation, AstraZeneca Canada Inc. and Sanofi Pasteur Limited invested hundred of millions in drug research. Aviation and space research has seen industry develop the highly successful regional jet passenger aircraft, the Canadarm 1 and 2 for NASA and Radarsat 1 and 2. The NRC and Hughes developed and build MSAT, the mobile communications satellite in 1995. Creative Canadians have also invented the IMAX cinema and improved deep diving submersibles. Ballard Power Systems in Vancouver has produced a number of innovations in fuel cell technology. Michael Brook invented the "Infinite Guitar" in 1987. AECL invented the Slowpoke atomic reactor. Military innovations have included the Halifax Class missile frigate, LAV III light armoured vehicle, air-defense and anti-tank missiles, the CRV-7 rocket and secure communications systems. The US Air Force tested cruise missiles in western Canada in the eighties. [edit]The Internet Age: Wireless Technology, Mega Oil and Ecological Friendliness (2000 – Present) Early in the 21st century the internet reached its stride and contributed significantly to industrial research efforts through the formation of such networks as CANARIE. Industrial software makers such as Cognos have had continued success in the field of business intelligence software and other firms have innovated in such areas as in internet cryptology. In the field of pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, Apotex has become a world leader in the development of generic drugs. The beginning of the 21st century is also notable for the rise of research in nanotechnology. About 140 small to medium sized firms based in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal are researching products in this field, supported by the National Institute for Nanotechnology in Edmonton. There are studies of quantum computing in Waterloo, Ontario and two contestants in the X-Prize competition have made attempts to construct manned sub-orbital space craft. To date these vehicles have not flown. Since 1998, the Mars Society has experimented with procedures related to life on Mars at its simulated base located at Haughton Lake on Devon Island. In 2008, Odessey Moon, based on the Isle of Man announced plans to build the Moon I (M-1)space craft with MacDonald Detwiller and Associated Ltd. of Richmond BC, as prime contractor, as a competitor in the Google Lunar X Prize Challenge. Also in 2008, Bombardier announced plans to introduce the new C-Series of 100 passenger wide-bodied regional jets and AECL introduced the ACR-1000 atomic power reactor. The best known Canadian invention of recent years is surely the Blackberry, by Research in Motion of Waterloo, Ontario, which has become the fashionable communications tool of businessmen around the world. The government of Canada has put into place tax programmes to encourage industrial R&D. Today industrial research accounts for about 50% of all research spending in Canada. [edit]See also
Canadian government scientific research organizations Canadian university scientific research organizations Canadian industrial research and development organizations List of bridges in Canada Former tallest buildings in Canada by province and territory Group of Thirteen (Canadian universities) [edit]References
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Thomson, Don W., Men and Mericians Volumes 1,2,3, Information Canada, Ottawa, 1966. Thomson, Malcolm, M., The Beginning of the Long Dash: A History of Timekeeping in Canada, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1978. Thistle, Mel, The Inner Ring: The Early History of the National Research Council of Canada, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1966. Tremblay, Robert, Histoire des outils manuels au Canada de 1828 a 1960, Transformation Series 10, National Museum of Science and Technology, Ottawa, 2001. Wallace, W. Stewart ed., The Royal Canadian Institute Centennial Volume 1849-1949, Royal Canadian Institute, Toronto, 1949. Warrington, Newbold, Chemical Canada: Past and Present, The Chemical Institute of Canada, Ottawa, 1970. Weir, E. Austin, The Struggle for National Broadcasting in Canada, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 1965. Westman, A.E.R., Chemistry and Chemical Enginering: A Survey of Research and Development in Canada, The Science Council of Canada, Ottawa, 1969. Wilson, Andrew, Background to Invention, Science Council of Canada, 1970. Wilson, Andrew, Research Councils in the Provinces: A Canadian Resource, Science Council of Canada, Ottawa, 1971. Wilson, Garth, A History of Shipbuilding and Naval Architecture in Canada, Transformation Series 4, National Museum of Science and Technology, Ottawa, 1994. Williams, Michael, Massey-Ferguson Tractors, Blandford Press, London, 1987. Zaslow, Morris, Reading the Rocks: The Story of the Geological Survey of Canada 1842-1972, Macmillan of Canada, Toronto, 1975. Zeller,Suzanne, Inventing Canada: Early Victorian Science and the Idea of a Transcontinental Nation, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1987. Scientia Canadensis The Canadian Encyclopedia [edit]External links
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55 comments:
Ok - my first guest blog; these pictures need so much more explanation - the experience was truly magnificent.
These are pictures of two baby Barried Owls. They were next door on a branch of a tree just watching us, maybe 15 feet away. They would make a loud sound, not quite a owl "hoot", but not quite a whistle either, somewhere kind of in between.
Our neighbor, tied a piece of chicken on a fishing pole and would cast it towards them and reel it back. The babies would soar through the air and "pounce" on the moving bait. She could pull it almost to her feet and they would follow the entire way. Sometimes they would just sit on the ground near her feet,eating their catch, looking up with their huge dark brown eyes, their heads almost rotating a full 360 degrees. I'm assuming their parents were near, but we never saw them. They stayed for about an hour....watching us as much as we were watchng them.
Here's some info on the Barred Owl - enjoy;
FLIGHT & HUNTING: Barred owls are often out at night, dawn or dusk, but can be seen during the day. When hunting, they usually perch in a tree and watch and listen for prey. Then they swoop down and grab it with their talons (claws). Their toes are special. Normally, two go forward and two go back. This helps them get a good grip on their prey. But they can turn a back toe forward if they want. This may help them to hold on to a perch tree. Barred owls (like all owls) are carnivores (meat-eaters). They can eat mice, squirrels, foxes, rabbits, bats, small birds, other owls, snakes, lizards, fish, fiddler crabs, and bugs. Since they eat the whole animal (except for the wings of birds), they swallow a lot of fur and bones they can’t digest. Owls will regurgitate (re-gir-ji-tate) or vomit pellets of fur and bones. If you find a pile of little furry balls under a tree, you have found an owl’s perch tree or eating spot. If you pick the pellet apart, you can see the tiny bones and fur of the animals it has eaten.
The same male and female stay together on a 1 square mile territory all year. They do not migrate. Each year they use the same nest. The mother lays 2-3 white, almost round eggs. When the babies are born, they are covered with white fluffy down and their eyes stay closed for a whole week. It is a long time before they can fly, about 40 days.
we have a adult one that hangs out in our front yard and makes all kind of noise. I think it is hunting our cat! Those are nice pictures
please do something about the color of the text on the LI "home photo" that appears at the top of the page. the orange (slogan) is literally illegible against the foliated background, and the tan/white/whateverthehellcolorthatis for the name ain't much better. thanks for your consideration, and in general, i am against owls. mr frick
from the west coast desk of LI news comes this report..........i thought i recognized the name "barred owl" as it has been in our regional news as of late. for those old enough to remember, the plight of the northern spotted owl gained national attention in the late eighties as a poster child for environmental groups. it was eventually awarded endangered species status and consequently loads of acres of old growth forest was kept from logging, as this is the owls habitat. fast forward 20 years and the northern spotted owl population is again on the decline, now from predation by barred owls.
"The barred owl either eats [spotted owls], kicks them out of their habitat, or mates with them—and sometimes the offspring are fertile," said Steven Courtney, vice president of the Sustainable Ecosystems Institute (SEI) in Portland, Oregon.
finally, in a feeble attempt to jump-start this lame blog, i propose a dirty joke contest. i've spoken with colin and he has agreed to furnish the winner (democratically chosen) with 100 of the new james madison $1 coins and a blumpkin in any beaches bathroom of the winner's choosing. sounds fair to me. so enter those jokes!
kicking it off: why did the feminist cross the road? to suck my dick! how many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? two--one the screw it in an one to suck my dick!
mr frick, chief correspondent, LI news
VIII
FOUNDATIONS OF THE UNIVERSE
THE WORLD OF ATOMS
Most people have heard of the oriental race which puzzled over the foundations of the universe, and decided that it must be supported on the back of a giant elephant. But the elephant? They put it on the back of a monstrous tortoise, and there they let the matter end. If every animal in nature had been called upon, they would have been no nearer a foundation. Most ancient peoples, indeed, made no effort to find a foundation. The universe was a very compact little structure, mainly composed of the earth and the great canopy over the earth which they called the sky. They left it, as a whole, floating in nothing. And in this the ancients were wiser than they knew. Things do not fall down unless they are pulled down by that mysterious force which we call gravitation. The earth, it is true, is pulled by the sun, and would fall into it; but the earth escapes this fiery fate by circulating at great speed round the sun. The stars pull each other; but it has already been explained that they meet this by travelling rapidly in gigantic orbits. Yet we do, in a new sense of the word, need foundations of the universe. Our mind craves for some explanation of the matter out of which the universe is made. For this explanation we turn to modern Physics and Chemistry. Both these sciences study, under different aspects, matter and energy; and between them they have put together a conception of the fundamental nature of things which marks an epoch in the history of human thought.
Sec. 1
The Bricks of the Cosmos
More than two thousand years ago the first men of science, the Greeks of the cities of Asia Minor, speculated on the nature of matter. You can grind a piece of stone into dust. You can divide a spoonful of water into as many drops as you like. Apparently you can go on dividing as long as you have got apparatus fine enough for the work. But there must be a limit, these Greeks said, and so they supposed that all matter was ultimately composed of minute particles which were indivisible. That is the meaning of the Greek word "atom."
Like so many other ideas of these brilliant early Greek thinkers, the atom was a sound conception. We know to-day that matter is composed of atoms. But science was then so young that the way in which the Greeks applied the idea was not very profound. A liquid or a gas, they said, consisted of round, smooth atoms, which would not cling together. Then there were atoms with rough surfaces, "hooky" surfaces, and these stuck together and formed solids. The atoms of iron or marble, for instance, were so very hooky that, once they got together, a strong man could not tear them apart. The Greeks thought that the explanation of the universe was that an infinite number of these atoms had been moving and mixing in an infinite space during an infinite time, and had at last hit by chance on the particular combination which is our universe.
This was too simple and superficial. The idea of atoms was cast aside, only to be advanced again in various ways. It was the famous Manchester chemist, John Dalton, who restored it in the early years of the nineteenth century. He first definitely formulated the atomic theory as a scientific hypothesis. The whole physical and chemical science of that century was now based upon the atom, and it is quite a mistake to suppose that recent discoveries have discredited "atomism." An atom is the smallest particle of a chemical element. No one has ever seen an atom. Even the wonderful new microscope which has just been invented cannot possibly show us particles of matter which are a million times smaller than the breadth of a hair; for that is the size of atoms. We can weigh them and measure them, though they are invisible, and we know that all matter is composed of them. It is a new discovery that atoms are not indivisible. They consist themselves of still smaller particles, as we shall see. But the atoms exist all the same, and we may still say that they are the bricks of which the material universe is built.
[Illustration: _Photo: Elliott & Fry._
SIR ERNEST RUTHERFORD
One of our most eminent physicists who has succeeded Sir J. J. Thomson as Cavendish Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge. The modern theory of the structure of the atom is largely due to him.]
[Illustration: _Photo: Rischgitz Collection._
J. CLERK-MAXWELL
One of the greatest scientific men who have ever lived. He revolutionised physics with his electro-magnetic theory of light, and practically all modern researches have had their origin, direct or indirect, in his work. Together with Faraday he constitutes one of the main scientific glories of the nineteenth century.]
[Illustration: _Photo: Ernest H. Mills._
SIR WILLIAM CROOKES
Sir William Crookes experimented on the electric discharge in vacuum tubes and described the phenomena as a "fourth state of matter." He was actually observing the flight of electrons, but he did not fully appreciate the nature of his experiments.]
[Illustration: _Photo: Photo Press_
PROFESSOR SIR W. H. BRAGG
One of the most distinguished physicists of the present day.]
But if we had some magical glass by means of which we could see into the structure of material things, we should not see the atoms put evenly together as bricks are in a wall. As a rule, two or more atoms first come together to form a larger particle, which we call a "molecule." Single atoms do not, as a rule, exist apart from other atoms; if a molecule is broken up, the individual atoms seek to unite with other atoms of another kind or amongst themselves. For example, three atoms of oxygen form what we call ozone; two atoms of hydrogen uniting with one atom of oxygen form water. It is molecules that form the mass of matter; a molecule, as it has been expressed, is a little building of which atoms are the bricks.
In this way we get a useful first view of the material things we handle. In a liquid the molecules of the liquid cling together loosely. They remain together as a body, but they roll over and away from each other. There is "cohesion" between them, but it is less powerful than in a solid. Put some water in a kettle over the lighted gas, and presently the tiny molecules of water will rush through the spout in a cloud of steam and scatter over the kitchen. The heat has broken their bond of association and turned the water into something like a gas; though we know that the particles will come together again, as they cool, and form once more drops of water.
In a gas the molecules have full individual liberty. They are in a state of violent movement, and they form no union with each other. If we want to force them to enter into the loose sort of association which molecules have in a liquid, we have to slow down their individual movements by applying severe cold. That is how a modern man of science liquefies gases. No power that we have will liquefy air at its ordinary temperature. In _very_ severe cold, on the other hand, the air will spontaneously become liquid. Some day, when the fires of the sun have sunk very low, the temperature of the earth will be less than -200 deg. C.: that is to say, more than two hundred degrees Centigrade below freezing-point. It will sink to the temperature of the moon. Our atmosphere will then be an ocean of liquid air, 35 feet deep, lying upon the solidly frozen masses of our water-oceans.
In a solid the molecules cling firmly to each other. We need a force equal to twenty-five tons to tear asunder the molecules in a bar of iron an inch thick. Yet the structure is not "solid" in the popular sense of the word. If you put a piece of solid gold in a little pool of mercury, the gold will take in the mercury _between_ its molecules, as if it were porous like a sponge. The hardest solid is more like a lattice-work than what we usually mean by "solid"; though the molecules are not fixed, like the bars of a lattice-work, but are in violent motion; they vibrate about equilibrium positions. If we could see right into the heart of a bit of the hardest steel, we should see billions of separate molecules, at some distance from each other, all moving rapidly to and fro.
This molecular movement can, in a measure, be made visible. It was noticed by a microscopist named Brown that, in a solution containing very fine suspended particles, the particles were in constant movement. Under a powerful microscope these particles are seen to be violently agitated; they are each independently darting hither and thither somewhat like a lot of billiard balls on a billiard table, colliding and bounding about in all directions. Thousands of times a second these encounters occur, and this lively commotion is always going on, this incessant colliding of one molecule with another is the normal condition of affairs; not one of them is at rest. The reason for this has been worked out, and it is now known that these particles move about because they are being incessantly bombarded by the molecules of the liquid. The molecules cannot, of course, be seen, but the fact of their incessant movement is revealed to the eye by the behaviour of the visible suspended particles. This incessant movement in the world of molecules is called the Brownian movement, and is a striking proof of the reality of molecular motions.
Sec. 2
The Wonder-World of Atoms
The exploration of this wonder-world of atoms and molecules by the physicists and chemists of to-day is one of the most impressive triumphs of modern science. Quite apart from radium and electrons and other sensational discoveries of recent years, the study of ordinary matter is hardly inferior, either in interest or audacity, to the work of the astronomer. And there is the same foundation in both cases--marvellous apparatus, and trains of mathematical reasoning that would have astonished Euclid or Archimedes. Extraordinary, therefore, as are some of the facts and figures we are now going to give in connection with the minuteness of atoms and molecules, let us bear in mind that we owe them to the most solid and severe processes of human thought.
Yet the principle can in most cases be made so clear that the reader will not be asked to take much on trust. It is, for instance, a matter of common knowledge that gold is soft enough to be beaten into gold leaf. It is a matter of common sense, one hopes, that if you beat a measured cube of gold into a leaf six inches square, the mathematician can tell the thickness of that leaf without measuring it. As a matter of fact, a single grain of gold has been beaten into a leaf seventy-five inches square. Now the mathematician can easily find that when a single grain of gold is beaten out to that size, the leaf must be 1/367,000 of an inch thick, or about a thousand times thinner than the paper on which these words are printed; yet the leaf must be several molecules thick.
The finest gold leaf is, in fact, too thick for our purpose, and we turn with a new interest to that toy of our boyhood the soap-bubble. If you carefully examine one of these delicate films of soapy water, you notice certain dark spots or patches on them. These are their thinnest parts, and by two quite independent methods--one using electricity and the other light--we have found that at these spots the bubble is less than the three-millionth of an inch thick! But the molecules in the film cling together so firmly that they must be at least twenty or thirty deep in the thinnest part. A molecule, therefore, must be far less than the three-millionth of an inch thick.
We found next that a film of oil on the surface of water may be even thinner than a soap-bubble. Professor Perrin, the great French authority on atoms, got films of oil down to the fifty-millionth of an inch in thickness! He poured a measured drop of oil upon water. Then he found the exact limits of the area of the oil-sheet by blowing upon the water a fine powder which spread to the edge of the film and clearly outlined it. The rest is safe and simple calculation, as in the case of the beaten grain of gold. Now this film of oil must have been at least two molecules deep, so a single molecule of oil is considerably less than a hundred-millionth of an inch in diameter.
Innumerable methods have been tried, and the result is always the same. A single grain of indigo, for instance, will colour a ton of water. This obviously means that the grain contains billions of molecules which spread through the water. A grain of musk will scent a room--pour molecules into every part of it--for several years, yet not lose one-millionth of its mass in a year. There are a hundred ways of showing the minuteness of the ultimate particles of matter, and some of these enable us to give definite figures. On a careful comparison of the best methods we can say that the average molecule of matter is less than the 1/125,000,000 of an inch in diameter. In a single cubic centimetre of air--a globule about the size of a small marble--there are thirty million trillion molecules. And since the molecule is, as we saw, a group or cluster of atoms, the atom itself is smaller. Atoms, for reasons which we shall see later, differ very greatly from each other in size and weight. It is enough to say that some of them are so small that it would take 400,000,000 of them, in a line, to cover an inch of space; and that it takes at least a quintillion atoms of gold to weigh a single gramme. Five million atoms of helium could be placed in a line across the diameter of a full stop.
[Illustration: An atom is the smallest particle of a chemical element. Two or more atoms come together to form a molecule: thus molecules form the mass of matter. A molecule of water is made up of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. Molecules of different substances, therefore, are of different sizes according to the number and kind of the particular atoms of which they are composed. A starch molecule contains no less than 25,000 atoms.
Molecules, of course, are invisible. The above diagram illustrates the _comparative_ sizes of molecules.]
[Illustration: INCONCEIVABLE NUMBERS AND INCONCEIVABLY SMALL PARTICLES
The molecules, which are inconceivably small, are, on the other hand, so numerous that if one was able to place, end to end, all those contained in, for example, a cubic centimetre of gas (less than a fifteenth of a cubic inch), one would obtain a line capable of passing two hundred times round the earth.]
[Illustration: WHAT IS A MILLION?
In dealing with the infinitely small, it is difficult to apprehend the vast figures with which scientists confront us. A million is one thousand thousand. We may realise what this implies if we consider that a clock, beating seconds, takes approximately 278 hours (i.e. one week four days fourteen hours) to tick one million times. A billion is one million million. To tick a billion the clock would tick for over 31,735 years.
(In France and America a thousand millions is called a billion.)]
[Illustration: THE BROWNIAN MOVEMENT
A diagram, constructed from actual observations, showing the erratic paths pursued by very fine particles suspended in a liquid, when bombarded by the molecules of the liquid. This movement is called the Brownian movement, and it furnishes a striking illustration of the truth of the theory that the molecules of a body are in a state of continual motion.]
The Energy of Atoms
And this is only the beginning of the wonders that were done with "ordinary matter," quite apart from radium and its revelations, to which we will come presently. Most people have heard of "atomic energy," and the extraordinary things that might be accomplished if we could harness this energy and turn it to human use. A deeper and more wonderful source of this energy has been discovered in the last twenty years, but it is well to realise that the atoms themselves have stupendous energy. The atoms of matter are vibrating or gyrating with extraordinary vigour. The piece of cold iron you hold in your hand, the bit of brick you pick up, or the penny you take from your pocket is a colossal reservoir of energy, since it consists of trillions of moving atoms. To realise the total energy, of course, we should have to witness a transformation such as we do in atoms of radio-active elements, about which we shall have something to say presently.
If we put a grain of indigo in a glass of water, or a grain of musk in a perfectly still room, we soon realise that molecules travel. Similarly, the fact that gases spread until they fill every "empty" available space shows definitely that they consist of small particles travelling at great speed. The physicist brings his refined methods to bear on these things, and he measures the energy and velocity of these infinitely minute molecules. He tells us that molecules of oxygen, at the temperature of melting ice, travel at the rate of about 500 yards a second--more than a quarter of a mile a second. Molecules of hydrogen travel at four times that speed, or three times the speed with which a bullet leaves a rifle. Each molecule of the air, which seems so still in the house on a summer's day, is really travelling faster than a rifle bullet does at the beginning of its journey. It collides with another molecule every twenty-thousandth of an inch of its journey. It is turned from its course 5,000,000,000 times in every second by collisions. If we could stop the molecules of hydrogen gas, and utilise their energy, as we utilise the energy of steam or the energy of the water at Niagara, we should find enough in every gramme of gas (about two-thousandths of a pound) to raise a third of a ton to a height of forty inches.
I have used for comparison the speed of a rifle bullet, and in an earlier generation people would have thought it impossible even to estimate this. It is, of course, easy. We put two screens in the path of the bullet, one near the rifle and the other some distance away. We connect them electrically and use a fine time-recording machine, and the bullet itself registers the time it takes to travel from the first to the second screen.
Now this is very simple and superficial work in comparison with the system of exact and minute measurements which the physicist and chemist use. In one of his interesting works Mr. Charles R. Gibson gives a photograph of two exactly equal pieces of paper in the opposite pans of a fine balance. A single word has been written in pencil on one of these papers, and that little scraping of lead has been enough to bring down the scale! The spectroscope will detect a quantity of matter four million times smaller even than this; and the electroscope is a million times still more sensitive than the spectroscope. We have a heat-measuring instrument, the bolometer, which makes the best thermometer seem Early Victorian. It records the millionth of a degree of temperature. It is such instruments, multiplied by the score, which enable us to do the fine work recorded in these pages.
[Illustration: _Reproduced from "The Forces of Nature" (Messrs. Macmillan)._
A SOAP BUBBLE
The iridescent colours sometimes seen on a soap bubble, as in the illustration, may also be seen in very fine sections of crystals, in glass blown into extremely fine bulbs, on the wings of dragon-flies and the surface of oily water. The different colours correspond to different thicknesses of the surface. Part of the light which strikes these thin coatings is reflected from the upper surface, but another part of the light penetrates the transparent coating and is reflected from the lower surface. It is the mixture of these two reflected rays, their "interference" as it is called, which produces the colours observed. The "black spots" on a soap bubble are the places where the soapy film is thinnest. At the black spots the thickness of the bubble is about the three-millionth part of an inch. If the whole bubble were as thin as this it would be completely invisible.]
Sec. 3
THE DISCOVERY OF X-RAYS AND RADIUM
The Discovery of Sir Wm. Crookes
But these wonders of the atom are only a prelude to the more romantic and far-reaching discoveries of the new physics--the wonders of the electron. Another and the most important phase of our exploration of the material universe opened with the discovery of radium in 1898.
In the discovery of radio-active elements, a new property of matter was discovered. What followed on the discovery of radium and of the X-rays we shall see.
As Sir Ernest Rutherford, one of our greatest authorities, recently said, the new physics has dissipated the last doubt about the reality of atoms and molecules. The closer examination of matter which we have been able to make shows positively that it is composed of atoms. But we must not take the word now in its original Greek meaning (an "indivisible" thing). The atoms are not indivisible. They can be broken up. They are composed of still smaller particles.
The discovery that the atom was composed of smaller particles was the welcome realisation of a dream that had haunted the imagination of the nineteenth century. Chemists said that there were about eighty different kinds of atoms--different kinds of matter--but no one was satisfied with the multiplicity. Science is always aiming at simplicity and unity. It may be that science has now taken a long step in the direction of explaining the fundamental unity of all the matter. The chemist was unable to break up these "elements" into something simpler, so he called their atoms "indivisible" in that sense. But one man of science after another expressed the hope that we would yet discover some fundamental matter of which the various atoms were composed--_one primordial substance from which all the varying forms of matter have been evolved or built up_. Prout suggested this at the very beginning of the century, when atoms were rediscovered by Dalton. Father Secchi, the famous Jesuit astronomer said that all the atoms were probably evolved from ether; and this was a very favoured speculation. Sir William Crookes talked of "prothyl" as the fundamental substance. Others thought hydrogen was the stuff out of which all the other atoms were composed.
The work which finally resulted in the discovery of radium began with some beautiful experiments of Professor (later Sir William) Crookes in the eighties.
It had been noticed in 1869 that a strange colouring was caused when an electric charge was sent through a vacuum tube--the walls of the glass tube began to glow with a greenish phosphorescence. A vacuum tube is one from which nearly all the air has been pumped, although we can never completely empty the tube. Crookes used such ingenious methods that he reduced the gas in his tubes until it was twenty million times thinner than the atmosphere. He then sent an electric discharge through, and got very remarkable results. The negative pole of the electric current (the "cathode") _gave off rays which faintly lit the molecules of the thin gas in the tube_, and caused a pretty fluorescence on the glass walls of the tube. What were these Rays? Crookes at first thought they corresponded to a "new or fourth state of matter." Hitherto we had only been familiar with matter in the three conditions of solid, liquid, and gaseous.
Now Crookes really had the great secret under his eyes. But about twenty years elapsed before the true nature of these rays was finally and independently established by various experiments. The experiments proved "that the rays consisted of a stream of negatively charged particles travelling with enormous velocities from 10,000 to 100,000 miles a second. In addition, it was found that the mass of each particle was exceedingly small, about 1/1800 of the mass of a hydrogen atom, the lightest atom known to science." _These particles or electrons, as they are now called, were being liberated from the atom._ The atoms of matter were breaking down in Crookes tubes. At that time, however, it was premature to think of such a thing, and Crookes preferred to say that the particles of the gas were electrified and hurled against the walls of the tube. He said that it was ordinary matter in a new state--"radiant matter." Another distinguished man of science, Lenard, found that, when he fitted a little plate of aluminum in the glass wall of the tube, the mysterious rays passed through this as if it were a window. They must be waves in the ether, he said.
[Illustration: _From "Scientific Ideas of To-day_."
DETECTING A SMALL QUANTITY OF MATTER
In the left-hand photograph the two pieces of paper exactly balance. The balance used is very sensitive, and when the single word "atoms" has been written with a lead pencil upon one of the papers the additional weight is sufficient to depress one of the pans as shown in the second photograph. The spectroscope will detect less than one-millionth of the matter contained in the word pencilled above.]
[Illustration: _Reproduced by permission of X-Rays Ltd._
THIS X-RAY PHOTOGRAPH IS THAT OF A HAND OF A SOLDIER WOUNDED IN THE GREAT WAR
Note the pieces of shrapnel which are revealed.]
[Illustration: _Photo: National Physical Laboratory._
AN X-RAY PHOTOGRAPH OF A GOLF BALL, REVEALING AN IMPERFECT CORE]
[Illustration: _Reproduced by permission of X-Rays Ltd._
A WONDERFUL X-RAY PHOTOGRAPH
Note the fine details revealed, down to the metal tags of the bootlace and the nails in the heel of the boot.]
Sec. 4
The Discovery of X-rays
So the story went on from year to year. We shall see in a moment to what it led. Meanwhile the next great step was when, in 1895, Roentgen discovered the X-rays, which are now known to everybody. He was following up the work of Lenard, and he one day covered a "Crookes tube" with some black stuff. To his astonishment a prepared chemical screen which was near the tube began to glow. _The rays had gone through the black stuff; and on further experiment he found that they would go through stone, living flesh, and all sorts of "opaque" substances._ In a short time the world was astonished to learn that we could photograph the skeleton in a living man's body, locate a penny in the interior of a child that had swallowed one, or take an impression of a coin through a slab of stone.
And what are these X-rays? They are not a form of matter; they are not material particles. X-rays were found to be a new variety of _light_ with a remarkable power of penetration. We have seen what the spectroscope reveals about the varying nature of light wave-lengths. Light-waves are set up by vibrations in ether,[2] and, as we shall see, these ether disturbances are all of the same kind; they only differ as regards wave-lengths. The X-rays which Roentgen discovered, then, are light, but a variety of light previously unknown to us; they are ether waves of very short length. X-rays have proved of great value in many directions, as all the world knows, but that we need not discuss at this point. Let us see what followed Roentgen's discovery.
[2] We refer throughout to the "ether" because, although modern
theories dispense largely with this conception, the theories of
physics are so inextricably interwoven with it that it is necessary,
in an elementary exposition, to assume its existence. The modern
view will be explained later in the article on Einstein's Theory.
While the world wondered at these marvels, the men of science were eagerly following up the new clue to the mystery of matter which was exercising the mind of Crookes and other investigators. In 1896 Becquerel brought us to the threshold of the great discovery.
Certain substances are phosphorescent--they become luminous after they have been exposed to sunlight for some time, and Becquerel was trying to find if any of these substances give rise to X-rays. One day he chose a salt of the metal uranium. He was going to see if, after exposing it to sunlight, he could photograph a cross with it through an opaque substance. He wrapped it up and laid it aside, to wait for the sun, but he found the uranium salt did not wait for the sun. Some strong radiation from it went through the opaque covering and made an impression of the cross upon the plate underneath. Light or darkness was immaterial. The mysterious rays streamed night and day from the salt. This was something new. Here was a substance which appeared to be producing X-rays; the rays emitted by uranium would penetrate the same opaque substances as the X-rays discovered by Roentgen.
Discovery of Radium
Now, at the same time as many other investigators, Professor Curie and his Polish wife took up the search. They decided to find out whether the emission came from the uranium itself or _from something associated with it_, and for this purpose they made a chemical analysis of great quantities of minerals. They found a certain kind of pitchblende which was very active, and they analysed tons of it, concentrating always on the radiant element in it. After a time, as they successively worked out the non-radiant matter, the stuff began to glow. In the end they extracted from eight tons of pitchblende about half a teaspoonful of something _that was a million times more radiant than uranium_. There was only one name for it--Radium.
That was the starting-point of the new development of physics and chemistry. From every laboratory in the world came a cry for radium salts (as pure radium was too precious), and hundreds of brilliant workers fastened on the new element. The inquiry was broadened, and, as year followed year, one substance after another was found to possess the power of emitting rays, that is, to be radio-active. We know to-day that nearly every form of matter can be stimulated to radio-activity; which, as we shall see, means that _its atoms break up into smaller and wonderfully energetic particles which we call "electrons."_ This discovery of electrons has brought about a complete change in our ideas in many directions.
So, instead of atoms being indivisible, they are actually dividing themselves, spontaneously, and giving off throughout the universe tiny fragments of their substance. We shall explain presently what was later discovered about the electron; meanwhile we can say that every glowing metal is pouring out a stream of these electrons. Every arc-lamp is discharging them. Every clap of thunder means a shower of them. Every star is flooding space with them. We are witnessing the spontaneous breaking up of atoms, atoms which had been thought to be indivisible. The sun not only pours out streams of electrons from its own atoms, but the ultra-violet light which it sends to the earth is one of the most powerful agencies for releasing electrons from the surface-atoms of matter on the earth. It is fortunate for us that our atmosphere absorbs most of this ultra-violet or invisible light of the sun--a kind of light which will be explained presently. It has been suggested that, if we received the full flood of it from the sun, our metals would disintegrate under its influence and this "steel civilisation" of ours would be impossible!
But we are here anticipating, we are going beyond radium to the wonderful discoveries which were made by the chemists and physicists of the world who concentrated upon it. The work of Professor and Mme. Curie was merely the final clue to guide the great search. How it was followed up, how we penetrated into the very heart of the minute atom and discovered new and portentous mines of energy, and how we were able to understand, not only matter, but electricity and light, will be told in the next chapter.
THE DISCOVERY OF THE ELECTRON AND HOW IT EFFECTED A REVOLUTION IN IDEAS
What the discovery of radium implied was only gradually realised. Radium captivated the imagination of the world; it was a boon to medicine, but to the man of science it was at first a most puzzling and most attractive phenomenon. It was felt that some great secret of nature was dimly unveiled in its wonderful manifestations, and there now concentrated upon it as gifted a body of men--conspicuous amongst them Sir J. J. Thomson, Sir Ernest Rutherford, Sir W. Ramsay, and Professor Soddy--as any age could boast, with an apparatus of research as far beyond that of any other age as the _Aquitania_ is beyond a Roman galley. Within five years the secret was fairly mastered. Not only were all kinds of matter reduced to a common basis, but the forces of the universe were brought into a unity and understood as they had never been understood before.
[Illustration: ELECTRIC DISCHARGE IN A VACUUM TUBE
The two ends, marked + and -, of a tube from which nearly all air has been exhausted are connected to electric terminals, thus producing an electric discharge in the vacuum tube. This discharge travels straight along the tube, as in the upper diagram. When a magnetic field is applied, however, the rays are deflected, as shown in the lower diagram. The similarity of the behaviour of the electric discharge with the radium rays (see diagram of deflection of radium rays, _post_) shows that the two phenomena may be identified. It was by this means that the characteristics of electrons were first discovered.]
[Illustration: THE RELATIVE SIZES OF ATOMS AND ELECTRONS
An atom is far too small to be seen. In a bubble of hydrogen gas no larger than the letter "O" there are billions of atoms, whilst an electron is more than a thousand times smaller than the smallest atom. How their size is ascertained is described in the text. In this diagram a bubble of gas is magnified to the size of the world. Adopting this scale, _each atom_ in the bubble would then be as large as a tennis ball.]
[Illustration: IF AN ATOM WERE MAGNIFIED TO THE SIZE OF ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, EACH ELECTRON IN THE ATOM (AS REPRESENTED BY THE CATHEDRAL) WOULD THEN BE ABOUT THE SIZE OF A SMALL BULLET]
[Illustration: ELECTRONS STREAMING FROM THE SUN TO THE EARTH
There are strong reasons for supposing that sun-spots are huge electronic cyclones. The sun is constantly pouring out vast streams of electrons into space. Many of these streams encounter the earth, giving rise to various electrical phenomena.]
Sec. 5
The Discovery of the Electron
Physicists did not take long to discover that the radiation from radium was very like the radiation in a "Crookes tube." It was quickly recognised, moreover, that both in the tube and in radium (and other metals) the atoms of matter were somehow breaking down.
However, the first step was to recognise that there were three distinct and different rays that were given off by such metals as radium and uranium. Sir Ernest Rutherford christened them, after the first three letters of the Greek alphabet, the Alpha, the Beta, and Gamma rays. We are concerned chiefly with the second group and purpose here to deal with that group only.[3]
[3] The "Alpha rays" were presently recognised as atoms of helium
gas, shot out at the rate of 12,000 miles a second.
The "Gamma rays" are _waves_, like the X-rays, not material particles. They appear to be a type of X-rays. They possess the remarkable power of penetrating opaque substances; they will pass through a foot of solid iron, for example.
The "Beta rays," as they were at first called, have proved to be one of the most interesting discoveries that science ever made. They proved what Crookes had surmised about the radiations he discovered in his vacuum tube. But it was _not_ a fourth state of matter that had been found, but a new _property_ of matter, a property common to all atoms of matter. The Beta rays were later christened Electrons. They are particles of disembodied electricity, here spontaneously liberated from the atoms of matter: only when the electron was isolated from the atom was it recognised for the first time as a separate entity. Electrons, therefore, are a constituent of the atoms of matter, and we have discovered that they can be released from the atom by a variety of agencies. Electrons are to be found everywhere, forming part of every atom.
"An electron," Sir William Bragg says, "can only maintain a separate existence if it is travelling at an immense rate, from one three-hundredth of the velocity of light upwards, that is to say, at least 600 _miles a second, or thereabouts_. Otherwise the electron sticks to the first atom it meets." These amazing particles may travel with the enormous velocity of from 10,000 to more than 100,000 miles a second. It was first learned that they are of an electrical nature, because they are bent out of their normal path if a magnet is brought near them. And this fact led to a further discovery: to one of those sensational estimates which the general public is apt to believe to be founded on the most abstruse speculations. The physicist set up a little chemical screen for the "Beta rays" to hit, and he so arranged his tube that only a narrow sheaf of the rays poured on to the screen. He then drew this sheaf of rays out of its course with a magnet, and he accurately measured the shift of the luminous spot on the screen where the rays impinged on it. But when he knows the exact intensity of his magnetic field--which he can control as he likes--and the amount of deviation it causes, and the mass of the moving particles, he can tell the speed of the moving particles which he thus diverts. These particles were being hurled out of the atoms of radium, or from the negative pole in a vacuum tube, at a speed which, in good conditions, reached nearly the velocity of light, i.e. nearly 186,000 miles a second.
Their speed has, of course, been confirmed by numbers of experiments; and another series of experiments enabled physicists to determine the size of the particles. Only one of these need be described, to give the reader an idea how men of science arrived at their more startling results.
Fog, as most people know, is thick in our great cities because the water-vapour gathers on the particles of dust and smoke that are in the atmosphere. This fact was used as the basis of some beautiful experiments. Artificial fogs were created in little glass tubes, by introducing dust, in various proportions, for supersaturated vapour to gather on. In the end it was possible to cause tiny drops of rain, each with a particle of dust at its core, to fall upon a silver mirror and be counted. It was a method of counting the quite invisible particles of dust in the tube; and the method was now successfully applied to the new rays. Yet another method was to direct a slender stream of the particles upon a chemical screen. The screen glowed under the cannonade of particles, and a powerful lens resolved the glow into distinct sparks, which could be counted.
In short, a series of the most remarkable and beautiful experiments, checked in all the great laboratories of the world, settled the nature of these so-called rays. They were streams of particles more than a thousand times smaller than the smallest known atom. The mass of each particle is, according to the latest and finest measurements 1/1845 of that of an atom of hydrogen. The physicist has not been able to find any character except electricity in them, and the name "electrons" has been generally adopted.
The Key to many Mysteries
The Electron is an atom, of disembodied electricity; it occupies an exceedingly small volume, and its "mass" is entirely electrical. These electrons are the key to half the mysteries of matter. Electrons in rapid motion, as we shall see, explain what we mean by an "electric current," not so long ago regarded as one of the most mysterious manifestations in nature.
"What a wonder, then, have we here!" says Professor R. K. Duncan. "An innocent-looking little pinch of salt and yet possessed of special properties utterly beyond even the fanciful imaginings of men of past time; for nowhere do we find in the records of thought even the hint of the possibility of things which we now regard as established fact. This pinch of salt projects from its surface bodies [i.e. electrons] possessing the inconceivable velocity of over 100,000 miles a second, a velocity sufficient to carry them, if unimpeded, five times around the earth in a second, and possessing with this velocity, masses a thousand times smaller than the smallest atom known to science. Furthermore, they are charged with negative electricity; they pass straight through bodies considered opaque with a sublime indifference to the properties of the body, with the exception of its mere density; they cause bodies which they strike to shine out in the dark; they affect a photographic plate; they render the air a conductor of electricity; they cause clouds in moist air; they cause chemical action and have a peculiar physiological action. Who, to-day, shall predict the ultimate service to humanity of the beta-rays from radium!"
Sec. 6
THE ELECTRON THEORY, OR THE NEW VIEW OF MATTER
The Structure of the Atom
There is general agreement amongst all chemists, physicists, and mathematicians upon the conclusions which we have so far given. We know that the atoms of matter are constantly--either spontaneously or under stimulation--giving off electrons, or breaking up into electrons; and they therefore contain electrons. Thus we have now complete proof of the independent existence of atoms and also of electrons.
When, however, the man of science tries to tell us _how_ electrons compose atoms, he passes from facts to speculation, and very difficult speculation. Take the letter "o" as it is printed on this page. In a little bubble of hydrogen gas no larger than that letter there are _trillions_ of atoms; and they are not packed together, but are circulating as freely as dancers in a ball-room. We are asking the physicist to take one of these minute atoms and tell us how the still smaller electrons are arranged in it. Naturally he can only make mental pictures, guesses or hypotheses, which he tries to fit to the facts, and discards when they will _not_ fit.
At present, after nearly twenty years of critical discussion, there are two chief theories of the structure of the atom. At first Sir J. J. Thomson imagined the electrons circulating in shells (like the layers of an onion) round the nucleus of the atom. This did not suit, and Sir E. Rutherford and others worked out a theory that the electrons circulated round a nucleus rather like the planets of our solar system revolving round the central sun. Is there a nucleus, then, round which the electrons revolve? The electron, as we saw, is a disembodied atom of electricity; we should say, of "negative" electricity. Let us picture these electrons all moving round in orbits with great velocity. Now it is suggested that there is a nucleus of "positive" electricity attracting or pulling the revolving electrons to it, and so forming an equilibrium, otherwise the electrons would fly off in all directions. This nucleus has been recently named the proton. We have thus two electricities in the atom: the positive = the nucleus; the negative = the electron. Of recent years Dr. Langmuir has put out a theory that the electrons do not _revolve round_ the nucleus, but remain in a state of violent agitation of some sort at fixed distances from the nucleus.
[Illustration: PROFESSOR SIR J. J. THOMSON
Experimental discoverer of the electronic constitution of matter, in the Cavendish Physical Laboratory, Cambridge. A great investigator, noted for the imaginative range of his hypotheses and his fertility in experimental devices.]
[Illustration: _From the Smithsonian Report_, 1915.
ELECTRONS PRODUCED BY PASSAGE OF X-RAYS THROUGH AIR
A photograph clearly showing that electrons are definite entities. As electrons leave atoms they may traverse matter or pass through the air in a straight path The illustration shows the tortuous path of electrons resulting from collision with atoms.]
[Illustration: MAGNETIC DEFLECTION OF RADIUM RAYS
The radium rays are made to strike a screen, producing visible spots of light. When a magnetic field is applied the rays are seen to be deflected, as in the diagram. This can only happen if the rays carry an electric charge, and it was by experiments of this kind that we obtained our knowledge respecting the electric charges carried by radium rays.]
[Illustration: _Reproduced by permission of "Scientific American."_
PROFESSOR R. A. MILLIKAN'S APPARATUS FOR COUNTING ELECTRONS]
But we will confine ourselves here to the facts, and leave the contending theories to scientific men. It is now pretty generally accepted that an atom of matter consists of a number of electrons, or charges of negative electricity, held together by a charge of positive electricity. It is not disputed that these electrons are in a state of violent motion or strain, and that therefore a vast energy is locked up in the atoms of matter. To that we will return later. Here, rather, we will notice another remarkable discovery which helps us to understand the nature of matter.
A brilliant young man of science who was killed in the war, Mr. Moseley, some years ago showed that, when the atoms of different substances are arranged in order of their weight, _they are also arranged in the order of increasing complexity of structure_. That is to say, the heavier the atom, the more electrons it contains. There is a gradual building up of atoms containing more and more electrons from the lightest atom to the heaviest. Here it is enough to say that as he took element after element, from the lightest (hydrogen) to the heaviest (uranium) he found a strangely regular relation between them. If hydrogen were represented by the figure one, helium by two, lithium three, and so on up to uranium, then uranium should have the figure ninety-two. This makes it probable that there are in nature ninety-two elements--we have found eighty-seven--and that the number Mr. Moseley found is the number of electrons in the atom of each element; that is to say, the number is arranged in order of the atomic numbers of the various elements.
Sec. 7
The New View of Matter
Up to the point we have reached, then, we see what the new view of Matter is. Every atom of matter, of whatever kind throughout the whole universe, is built up of electrons in conjunction with a nucleus. From the smallest atom of all--the atom of hydrogen--which consists of one electron, rotating round a positively charged nucleus, to a heavy complicated atom, such as the atom of gold, constituted of many electrons and a complex nucleus, _we have only to do with positive and negative units of electricity_. The electron and its nucleus are particles of electricity. All Matter, therefore, is nothing but a manifestation of electricity. The atoms of matter, as we saw, combine and form molecules. Atoms and molecules are the bricks out of which nature has built up everything; ourselves, the earth, the stars, the whole universe.
But more than bricks are required to build a house. There are other fundamental existences, such as the various forms of energy, which give rise to several complex problems. And we have also to remember, that there are more than eighty distinct elements, each with its own definite type of atom. We shall deal with energy later. Meanwhile it remains to be said that, although we have discovered a great deal about the electron and the constitution of matter, and that while the physicists of our own day seem to see a possibility of explaining positive and negative electricity, the nature of them both is unknown. There exists the theory that the particles of positive and negative electricity, which make up the atoms of matter, are points or centres of disturbances of some kind in a universal ether, and that all the various forms of energy are, in some fundamental way, aspects of the same primary entity which constitutes matter itself.
But the discovery of the property of radio-activity has raised many other interesting questions, besides that which we have just dealt with. In radio-active elements, such as uranium for example, the element is breaking down; in what we call radio-activity we have a manifestation of the spontaneous change of elements. What is really taking place is a transmutation of one element into another, from a heavier to a lighter. The element uranium spontaneously becomes radium, and radium passes through a number of other stages until it, in turn, becomes lead. Each descending element is of lighter atomic weight than its predecessor. The changing process, of course, is a very slow one. It may be that all matter is radio-active, or can be made so. This raises the question whether all the matter in the universe may not undergo disintegration.
There is, however, another side of the question, which the discovery of radio-activity has brought to light, and which has effected a revolution in our views. We have seen that in radio-active substances the elements are breaking down. Is there a process of building up at work? If the more complicated atoms are breaking down into simpler forms, may there not be a converse process--a building up from simpler elements to more complicated elements? It is probably the case that both processes are at work.
There are some eighty-odd chemical elements on the earth to-day: are they all the outcome of an inorganic evolution, element giving rise to element, going back and back to some primeval stuff from which they were all originally derived infinitely long ago? Is there an evolution in the inorganic world which may be going on, parallel to that of the evolution of living things; or is organic evolution a continuation of inorganic evolution? We have seen what evidence there is of this inorganic evolution in the case of the stars. We cannot go deeply into the matter here, nor has the time come for any direct statement that can be based on the findings of modern investigation. Taking it altogether the evidence is steadily accumulating, and there are authorities who maintain that already the evidence of inorganic evolution is convincing enough. The heavier atoms would appear to behave as though they were evolved from the lighter. The more complex forms, it is supposed, have _evolved_ from the simpler forms. Moseley's discovery, to which reference has been made, points to the conclusion that the elements are built up one from another.
Sec. 8
Other New Views
We may here refer to another new conception to which the discovery of radio-activity has given rise. Lord Kelvin, who estimated the age of the earth at twenty million years, reached this estimate by considering the earth as a body which is gradually cooling down, "losing its primitive heat, like a loaf taken from the oven, at a rate which could be calculated, and that the heat radiated by the sun was due to contraction." Uranium and radio-activity were not known to Kelvin, and their discovery has upset both his arguments. Radio-active substances, which are perpetually giving out heat, introduce an entirely new factor. We cannot now assume that the earth is necessarily cooling down; it may even, for all we know, be getting hotter. At the 1921 meeting of the British Association, Professor Rayleigh stated that further knowledge had extended the probable period during which there had been life on this globe to about one thousand million years, and the total age of the earth to some small multiple of that. The earth, he considers, is not cooling, but "contains an internal source of heat from the disintegration of uranium in the outer crust." On the whole the estimate obtained would seem to be in agreement with the geological estimates. The question, of course, cannot, in the present state of our knowledge, be settled within fixed limits that meet with general agreement.
[Illustration: MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE
Radium, as explained in the text, emits rays--the "Alpha," the "Beta" (electrons), and "Gamma" rays. The above illustration indicates the method by which these invisible rays are made visible, and enables the nature of the rays to be investigated. To the right of the diagram is the instrument used, the Spinthariscope, making the impact of radium rays visible on a screen.
The radium rays shoot out in all directions; those that fall on the screen make it glow with points of light. These points of light are observed by the magnifying lens.
A. Magnifying lens. B. A zinc sulphite screen. C. A needle on whose point is placed a speck of radium.
The lower picture shows the screen and needle magnified.]
[Illustration: THE THEORY OF ELECTRONS
An atom of matter is composed of electrons. We picture an atom as a sort of miniature solar system, the electrons (particles of negative electricity) rotating round a central nucleus of positive electricity, as described in the text. In the above pictorial representation of an atom the whirling electrons are indicated in the outer ring. Electrons move with incredible speed as they pass from one atom to another.]
[Illustration: ARRANGEMENTS OF ATOMS IN A DIAMOND
The above is a model (seen from two points of view) of the arrangement of the atoms in a diamond. The arrangement is found by studying the X-ray spectra of the diamond.]
As we have said, there are other fundamental existences which give rise to more complex problems. The three great fundamental entities in the physical universe are matter, ether, and energy; so far as we know, outside these there is nothing. We have dealt with matter, there remain ether and energy. We shall see that just as no particle of matter, however small, may be created or destroyed, and just as there is no such thing as empty space--ether pervades everything--so there is no such thing as _rest_. Every particle that goes to make up our solid earth is in a state of perpetual unremitting vibration; energy "is the universal commodity on which all life depends." Separate and distinct as these three fundamental entities--matter, ether, and energy--may appear, it may be that, after all, they are only different and mysterious phases of an essential "oneness" of the universe.
Sec. 9
The Future
Let us, in concluding this chapter, give just one illustration of the way in which all this new knowledge may prove to be as valuable practically as it is wonderful intellectually. We saw that electrons are shot out of atoms at a speed that may approach 160,000 miles a second. Sir Oliver Lodge has written recently that a seventieth of a grain of radium discharges, at a speed a thousand times that of a rifle bullet, thirty million electrons a second. Professor Le Bon has calculated that it would take 1,340,000 barrels of powder to give a bullet the speed of one of these electrons. He shows that the smallest French copper coin--smaller than a farthing--contains an energy equal to eighty million horsepower. A few pounds of matter contain more energy than we could extract from millions of tons of coal. Even in the atoms of hydrogen at a temperature which we could produce in an electric furnace the electrons spin round at a rate of nearly a hundred trillion revolutions a second!
Every man asks at once: "Will science ever tap this energy?" If it does, no more smoke, no mining, no transit, no bulky fuel. The energy of an atom is of course only liberated when an atom passes from one state to another. The stored up energy is fortunately fast bound by the electrons being held together as has been described. If it were not so "the earth would explode and become a gaseous nebula"! It is believed that some day we shall be able to release, harness, and utilise atomic energy. "I am of opinion," says Sir William Bragg, "that atom energy will supply our future need. A thousand years may pass before we can harness the atom, or to-morrow might see us with the reins in our hands. That is the peculiarity of Physics--research and 'accidental' discovery go hand in hand." Half a brick contains as much energy as a small coal-field. The difficulties are tremendous, but, as Sir Oliver Lodge reminds us, there was just as much scepticism at one time about the utilisation of steam or electricity. "Is it to be supposed," he asks, "that there can be no fresh invention, that all the discoveries have been made?" More than one man of science encourages us to hope. Here are some remarkable words written by Professor Soddy, one of the highest authorities on radio-active matter, in our chief scientific weekly (_Nature_, November 6, 1919):
The prospects of the successful accomplishment of artificial
transmutation brighten almost daily. The ancients seem to have had
something more than an inkling that the accomplishment of
transmutation would confer upon men powers hitherto the prerogative
of the gods. But now we know definitely that the material aspect of
transmutation would be of small importance in comparison with the
control over the inexhaustible stores of internal atomic energy to
which its successful accomplishment would inevitably lead. It has
become a problem, no longer redolent of the evil associations of the
age of alchemy, but one big with the promise of a veritable physical
renaissance of the whole world.
If that "promise" is ever realised, the economic and social face of the world will be transformed.
Before passing on to the consideration of ether, light, and energy, let us see what new light the discovery of the electron has thrown on the nature and manipulation of electricity.
WHAT IS ELECTRICITY?
The Nature of Electricity
There is at least one manifestation in nature, and so late as twenty years ago it seemed to be one of the most mysterious manifestations of all, which has been in great measure explained by the new discoveries. Already, at the beginning of this century, we spoke of our "age of electricity," yet there were few things in nature about which we knew less. The "electric current" rang our bells, drove our trains, lit our rooms, but none knew what the current was. There was a vague idea that it was a sort of fluid that flowed along copper wires as water flows in a pipe. We now suppose that it is _a rapid movement of electrons from atom to atom_ in the wire or wherever the current is.
Let us try to grasp the principle of the new view of electricity and see how it applies to all the varied electrical phenomena in the world about us. As we saw, the nucleus of an atom of matter consists of positive electricity which holds together a number of electrons, or charges of negative electricity.[4] This certainly tells us to some extent what electricity is, and how it is related to matter, but it leaves us with the usual difficulty about fundamental realities. But we now know that electricity, like matter, is atomic in structure; a charge of electricity is made up of a number of small units or charges of a definite, constant amount. It has been suggested that the two kinds of electricity, i.e. positive and negative, are right-handed and left-handed vortices or whirlpools in ether, or rings in ether, but there are very serious difficulties, and we leave this to the future.
[4] The words "positive" and "negative" electricity belong to the
days when it was regarded as a fluid. A body overcharged with the
fluid was called positive; an undercharged body was called negative.
A positively-electrified body is now one whose atoms have lost some
of their outlying electrons, so that the positive charge of
electricity predominates. The negatively-electrified body is one
with more than the normal number of electrons.
Sec. 10
What an Electric Current is
The discovery of these two kinds of electricity has, however, enabled us to understand very fairly what goes on in electrical phenomena. The outlying electrons, as we saw, may pass from atom to atom, and this, on a large scale, is the meaning of the electric current. In other words, we believe an electric current to be a flow of electrons. Let us take, to begin with, a simple electrical "cell," in which a feeble current is generated: such a cell as there is in every house to serve its electric bells.
In the original form this simple sort of "battery" consisted of a plate of zinc and a plate of copper immersed in a chemical. Long before anything was known about electrons it was known that, if you put zinc and copper together, you produce a mild current of electricity. We know now what this means. Zinc is a metal the atoms of which are particularly disposed to part with some of their outlying electrons. Why, we do not know; but the fact is the basis of these small batteries. Electrons from the atoms of zinc pass to the atoms of copper, and their passage is a "current." Each atom gives up an electron to its neighbour. It was further found long ago that if the zinc and copper were immersed in certain chemicals, which slowly dissolve the zinc, and the two metals were connected by a copper wire, the current was stronger. In modern language, there is a brisker flow of electrons. The reason is that the atoms of zinc which are stolen by the chemical leave their detachable electrons behind them, and the zinc has therefore more electrons to pass on to the copper.
[Illustration: DISINTEGRATION OF ATOMS
An atom of Uranium, by ejecting an Alpha particle, becomes Uranium X. This substance, by ejecting Beta and Gamma rays, becomes Radium. Radium passes through a number of further changes, as shown in the diagram, and finally becomes lead. Some radio-active substances disintegrate much faster than others. Thus Uranium changes very slowly, taking 5,000,000,000 years to reach the same stage of disintegration that Radium A reaches in 3 minutes. As the disintegration proceeds, the substances become of lighter and lighter atomic weights. Thus Uranium has an atomic weight of 238, whereas lead has an atomic weight of only 206. The breaking down of atoms is fully explained in the text.]
[Illustration: _Reproduced by permission from "The Interpretation of Radium" (John Murray)._
SILK TASSEL ELECTRIFIED
The separate threads of the tassel, being each electrified with the same kind of electricity, repel one another, and thus the tassel branches out as in the photograph.]
[Illustration: SILK TASSEL DISCHARGED BY THE RAYS FROM RADIUM
When the radium rays, carrying an opposite electric charge to that on the tassel, strikes the threads, the threads are neutralised, and hence fall together again.]
[Illustration: A HUGE ELECTRIC SPARK
This is an actual photograph of an electric spark. It is leaping a distance of about 10 feet, and is the discharge of a million volts. It is a graphic illustration of the tremendous energy of electrons.]
[Illustration: _From "Scientific Ideas of To-day_."
ELECTRICAL ATTRACTION BETWEEN COMMON OBJECTS
Take an ordinary flower-vase well dried and energetically rub it with a silk handkerchief. The vase which thus becomes electrified will attract any light body, such as a feather, as shown in the above illustration.]
Such cells are now made of zinc and carbon, immersed in sal-ammoniac, but the principle is the same. The flow of electricity is a flow of electrons; though we ought to repeat that they do not flow in a body, as molecules of water do. You may have seen boys place a row of bricks, each standing on one end, in such order that the first, if it is pushed, will knock over the second, the second the third, and so on to the last. There is a flow of _movement_ all along the line, but each brick moves only a short distance. So an electron merely passes to the next atom, which sends on an electron to a third atom, and so on. In this case, however, the movement from atom to atom is so rapid that the ripple of movement, if we may call it so, may pass along at an enormous speed. We have seen how swiftly electrons travel.
But how is this turned into power enough even to ring a bell? The actual mechanical apparatus by which the energy of the electron current is turned into sound, or heat, or light will be described in a technical section later in this work. We are concerned here only with the principle, which is clear. While zinc is very apt to part with electrons, copper is just as obliging in facilitating their passage onward. Electrons will travel in this way in most metals, but copper is one of the best "conductors." So we lengthen the copper wire between the zinc and the carbon until it goes as far as the front door and the bell, which are included in the circuit. When you press the button at the door, two wires are brought together, and the current of electrons rushes round the circuit; and at the bell its energy is diverted into the mechanical apparatus which rings the bell.
Copper is a good conductor--six times as good as iron--and is therefore so common in electrical industries. Some other substances are just as stubborn as copper is yielding, and we call them "insulators," because they resist the current instead of letting it flow. Their atoms do not easily part with electrons. Glass, vulcanite, and porcelain are very good insulators for this reason.
What the Dynamo does
But even several cells together do not produce the currents needed in modern industry, and the flow is produced in a different manner. As the invisible electrons pass along a wire they produce what we call a magnetic field around the wire, they produce a disturbance in the surrounding ether. To be exact, it is through the ether surrounding the wire that the energy originated by the electrons is transmitted. To set electrons moving on a large scale we use a "dynamo." By means of the dynamo it is possible to transform mechanical energy into electrical energy. The modern dynamo, as Professor Soddy puts it, may be looked upon as an electron pump. We cannot go into the subject deeply here, we would only say that a large coil of copper wire is caused to turn round rapidly between the poles of a powerful magnet. That is the essential construction of the "dynamo," which is used for generating strong currents. We shall see in a moment how magnetism differs from electricity, and will say here only that round the poles of a large magnet there is a field of intense disturbance which will start a flow of electrons in any copper that is introduced into it. On account of the speed given to the coil of wire its atoms enter suddenly this magnetic field, and they give off crowds of electrons in a flash.
It is found that a similar disturbance is caused, though the flow is in the _opposite_ direction, when the coil of wire leaves the magnetic field. And as the coil is revolving very rapidly we get a powerful current of electricity that runs in alternate directions--an "alternating" current. Electricians have apparatus for converting it into a continuous current where this is necessary.
A current, therefore, means a steady flow of the electrons from atom to atom. Sometimes, however, a number of electrons rush violently and explosively from one body to another, as in the electric spark or the occasional flash from an electric tram or train. The grandest and most spectacular display of this phenomenon is the thunderstorm. As we saw earlier, a portentous furnace like the sun is constantly pouring floods of electrons from its atoms into space. The earth intercepts great numbers of these electrons. In the upper regions of the air the stream of solar electrons has the effect of separating positively-electrified atoms from negatively-electrified ones, and the water-vapour, which is constantly rising from the surface of the sea, gathers more freely round the positively-electrified atoms, and brings them down, as rain, to the earth. Thus the upper air loses a proportion of positive electricity, or becomes "negatively electrified." In the thunderstorm we get both kinds of clouds--some with large excesses of electrons, and some deficient in electrons--and the tension grows until at last it is relieved by a sudden and violent discharge of electrons from one cloud to another or to the earth--an electric spark on a prodigious scale.
Sec. 11
Magnetism
We have seen that an electric current is really a flow of electrons. Now an electric current exhibits a magnetic effect. The surrounding space is endowed with energy which we call electro-magnetic energy. A piece of magnetised iron attracting other pieces of iron to it is the popular idea of a magnet. If we arrange a wire to pass vertically through a piece of cardboard and then sprinkle iron filings on the cardboard we shall find that, on passing an electric current through the wire, the iron filings arrange themselves in circles round it. The magnetic force, due to the electric current, seems to exist in circles round the wire, an ether disturbance being set up. Even a single electron, when in movement, creates a magnetic "field," as it is called, round its path. There is no movement of electrons without this attendant field of energy, and their motion is not stopped until that field of energy disappears from the ether. The modern theory of magnetism supposes that all magnetism is produced in this way. All magnetism is supposed to arise from the small whirling motions of the electrons contained in the ultimate atoms of matter. We cannot here go into the details of the theory nor explain why, for instance, iron behaves so differently from other substances, but it is sufficient to say that here, also, the electron theory provides the key. This theory is not yet definitely _proved_, but it furnishes a sufficient theoretical basis for future research. The earth itself is a gigantic magnet, a fact which makes the compass possible, and it is well known that the earth's magnetism is affected by those great outbreaks on the sun called sun-spots. Now it has been recently shown that a sun-spot is a vast whirlpool of electrons and that it exerts a strong magnetic action. There is doubtless a connection between these outbreaks of electronic activity and the consequent changes in the earth's magnetism. The precise mechanism of the connection, however, is still a matter that is being investigated.
ETHER AND WAVES
Ether and Waves
The whole material universe is supposed to be embedded in a vast medium called the ether. It is true that the notion of the ether has been abandoned by some modern physicists, but, whether or not it is ultimately dispensed with, the conception of the ether has entered so deeply into the scientific mind that the science of physics cannot be understood unless we know something about the properties attributed to the ether. The ether was invented to explain the phenomena of light, and to account for the flow of energy across empty space. Light takes time to travel. We see the sun at any moment by the light that left it 8 minutes before. It has taken that 8 minutes for the light from the sun to travel that 93,000,000 miles odd which separates it from our earth. Besides the fact that light takes time to travel, it can be shown that light travels in the form of waves. We know that sound travels in waves; sound consists of waves in the air, or water or wood or whatever medium we hear it through. If an electric bell be put in a glass jar and the air be pumped out of the jar, the sound of the bell becomes feebler and feebler until, when enough air has been taken out, we do not hear the bell at all. Sound cannot travel in a vacuum. We continue to _see_ the bell, however, so that evidently light can travel in a vacuum. The invisible medium through which the waves of light travel is the ether, and this ether permeates all space _and all matter_. Between us and the stars stretch vast regions empty of all matter. But we see the stars; their light reaches us, even though it may take centuries to do so. We conceive, then, that it is the universal ether which conveys that light. All the energy which has reached the earth from the sun and which, stored for ages in our coal-fields, is now used to propel our trains and steamships, to heat and light our cities, to perform all the multifarious tasks of modern life, was conveyed by the ether. Without that universal carrier of energy we should have nothing but a stagnant, lifeless world.
[Illustration: _Photo: Leadbeater._
AN ELECTRIC SPARK
An electric spark consists of a rush of electrons across the space between the two terminals. A state of tension is established in the ether by the electric charges, and when this tension passes a certain limit the discharge takes place.]
[Illustration: _From "Scientific Ideas of To-day."_
AN ETHER DISTURBANCE AROUND AN ELECTRON CURRENT
In the left-hand photograph an electric current is passing through the coil, thus producing a magnetic field and transforming the poker into a magnet. The poker is then able to support a pair of scissors. As soon as the electric current is broken off, as in the second photograph, the ether disturbance ceases. The poker loses its magnetism, and the scissors fall.]
We have said that light consists of waves. The ether may be considered as resembling, in some respects, a jelly. It can transmit vibrations. The waves of light are really excessively small ripples, measuring from crest to crest. The distance from crest to crest of the ripples in a pond is sometimes no more than an inch or two. This distance is enormously great compared to the longest of the wave-lengths that constitute light. We say the longest, for the waves of light differ in length; the colour depends upon the length of the light. Red light has the longest waves and violet the shortest. The longest waves, the waves of deep-red light, are seven two hundred and fifty thousandths of an inch in length (7/250,000 inch). This is nearly twice the length of deep-violet light-waves, which are 1/67,000 inch. But light-waves, the waves that affect the eye, are not the only waves carried by the ether. Waves too short to affect the eye can affect the photographic plate, and we can discover in this way the existence of waves only half the length of the deep-violet waves. Still shorter waves can be discovered, until we come to those excessively minute rays, the X-rays.
Below the Limits of Visibility
But we can extend our investigations in the other direction; we find that the ether carries many waves longer than light-waves. Special photographic emulsions can reveal the existence of waves five times longer than violet-light waves. Extending below the limits of visibility are waves we detect as heat-waves. Radiant heat, like the heat from a fire, is also a form of wave-motion in the ether, but the waves our senses recognise as heat are longer than light-waves. There are longer waves still, but our senses do not recognise them. But we can detect them by our instruments. These are the waves used in wireless telegraphy, and their length may be, in some cases, measured in miles. These waves are the so-called electro-magnetic waves. Light, radiant heat, and electro-magnetic waves are all of the same nature; they differ only as regards their wave-lengths.
LIGHT--VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE
If Light, then, consists of waves transmitted through the ether, what gives rise to the waves? Whatever sets up such wonderfully rapid series of waves must be something with an enormous vibration. We come back to the electron: all atoms of matter, as we have seen, are made up of electrons revolving in a regular orbit round a nucleus. These electrons may be affected by out-side influences, they may be agitated and their speed or vibration increased.
Electrons and Light
The particles even of a piece of cold iron are in a state of vibration. No nerves of ours are able to feel and register the waves they emit, but your cold poker is really radiating, or sending out a series of wave-movements, on every side. After what we saw about the nature of matter, this will surprise none. Put your poker in the fire for a time. The particles of the glowing coal, which are violently agitated, communicate some of their energy to the particles of iron in the poker. They move to and fro more rapidly, and the waves which they create are now able to affect your nerves and cause a sensation of heat. Put the poker again in the fire, until its temperature rises to 500 deg. C. It begins to glow with a dull red. Its particles are now moving very violently, and the waves they send out are so short and rapid that they can be picked up by the eye--we have _visible_ light. They would still not affect a photographic plate. Heat the iron further, and the crowds of electrons now send out waves of various lengths which blend into white light. What is happening is the agitated electrons flying round in their orbits at a speed of trillions of times a second. Make the iron "blue hot," and it pours out, in addition to light, the _invisible_ waves which alter the film on the photographic plate. And beyond these there is a long range of still shorter waves, culminating in the X-rays, which will pass between the atoms of flesh or stone.
Nearly two hundred and fifty years ago it was proved that light travelled at least 600,000 times faster than sound. Jupiter, as we saw, has moons, which circle round it. They pass behind the body of the planet, and reappear at the other side. But it was noticed that, when Jupiter is at its greatest distance from us, the reappearance of the moon from behind it is 16 minutes and 36 seconds later than when the planet is nearest to us. Plainly this was because light took so long to cover the additional distance. The distance was then imperfectly known, and the speed of light was underrated. We now know the distance, and we easily get the velocity of light.
No doubt it seems far more wonderful to discover this within the walls of a laboratory, but it was done as long ago as 1850. A cogged wheel is so mounted that a ray of light passes between two of the teeth and is reflected back from a mirror. Now, slight as is the fraction of a second which light takes to travel that distance, it is possible to give such speed to the wheel that the next tooth catches the ray of light on its return and cuts it off. The speed is increased still further until the ray of light returns to the eye of the observer through the notch _next_ to the one by which it had passed to the mirror! The speed of the wheel was known, and it was thus possible again to gather the velocity of light. If the shortest waves are 1/67,000 of an inch in length, and light travels at 186,000 miles a second, any person can work out that about 800 trillion waves enter the eye in a second when we see "violet."
Sorting out Light-waves
The waves sent out on every side by the energetic electrons become faintly visible to us when they reach about 1/35,000 of an inch. As they become shorter and more rapid, as the electrons increase their speed, we get, in succession, the colours red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Each distinct sensation of colour means a wave of different length. When they are all mingled together, as in the light of the sun, we get white light. When this white light passes through glass, the speed of the waves is lessened; and, if the ray of light falls obliquely on a triangular piece of glass, the waves of different lengths part company as they travel through it, and the light is spread out in a band of rainbow-colour. The waves are sorted out according to their lengths in the "obstacle race" through the glass. Anyone may see this for himself by holding up a wedge-shaped piece of crystal between the sunlight and the eye; the prism separates the sunlight into its constituent colours, and these various colours will be seen quite readily. Or the thing may be realised in another way. If the seven colours are painted on a wheel as shown opposite page 280 (in the proportion shown), and the wheel rapidly revolved on a pivot, the wheel will appear a dull white, the several colours will not be seen. But _omit_ one of the colours, then the wheel, when revolved, will not appear white, but will give the impression of one colour, corresponding to what the union of six colours gives. Another experiment will show that some bodies held up between the eye and a white light will not permit all the rays to pass through, but will intercept some; a body that intercepts all the seven rays except red will give the impression of red, or if all the rays except violet, then violet will be the colour seen.
[Illustration: _Photo: H. J. Shepstone._
LIGHTNING
In a thunderstorm we have the most spectacular display in lightning of a violent and explosive rush of electrons (electricity) from one body to another, from cloud to cloud, or to the earth. In this wonderful photograph of an electrical storm note the long branched and undulating flashes of lightning. Each flash lasts no longer than the one hundred-thousandth part of a second of time.]
[Illustration: LIGHT WAVES
Light consists of waves transmitted through the ether. Waves of light differ in length. The colour of the light depends on the wave-length. Deep-red waves (the longest) are 7/250000 inch and deep-violet waves 1/67000 inch. The diagram shows two wave-motions of different wave-lengths. From crest to crest, or from trough to trough, is the length of the wave.]
[Illustration: THE MAGNETIC CIRCUIT OF AN ELECTRIC CURRENT
The electric current passing in the direction of the arrow round the electric circuit generates in the surrounding space circular magnetic circuits as shown in the diagram. It is this property which lies at the base of the electro-magnet and of the electric dynamo.]
[Illustration: THE MAGNET
The illustration shows the lines of force between two magnets. The lines of force proceed from the north pole of one magnet to the south pole of the other. They also proceed from the north to the south poles of the same magnet. These facts are shown clearly in the diagram. The north pole of a magnet is that end of it which turns to the north when the magnet is freely suspended.]
The Fate of the World
Professor Soddy has given an interesting picture of what might happen when the sun's light and heat is no longer what it is. The human eye "has adapted itself through the ages to the peculiarities of the sun's light, so as to make the most of that wave-length of which there is most.... Let us indulge for a moment in these gloomy prognostications, as to the consequences to this earth of the cooling of the sun with the lapse of ages, which used to be in vogue, but which radio-activity has so rudely shaken. Picture the fate of the world when the sun has become a dull red-hot ball, or even when it has cooled so far that it would no longer emit light to us. That does not all mean that the world would be in inky darkness, and that the sun would not emit light to the people then inhabiting this world, if any had survived and could keep themselves from freezing. To such, if the eye continued to adapt itself to the changing conditions, our blues and violets would be ultra-violet and invisible, but our dark heat would be light and hot bodies would be luminous to them which would be dark to us."
Sec. 12
What the Blue "Sky" means
We saw in a previous chapter how the spectroscope splits up light-waves into their colours. But nature is constantly splitting the light into its different-lengthed waves, its colours. The rainbow, where dense moisture in the air acts as a spectroscope, is the most familiar example. A piece of mother-of-pearl, or even a film of oil on the street or on water, has the same effect, owing to the fine inequalities in its surface. The atmosphere all day long is sorting out the waves. The blue "sky" overhead means that the fine particles in the upper atmosphere catch the shorter waves, the blue waves, and scatter them. We can make a tubeful of blue sky in the laboratory at any time. The beautiful pink-flush on the Alps at sunrise, the red glory that lingers in the west at sunset, mean that, as the sun's rays must struggle through denser masses of air when it is low on the horizon, the long red waves are sifted out from the other shafts.
Then there is the varied face of nature which, by absorbing some waves and reflecting others, weaves its own beautiful robe of colour. Here and there is a black patch, which _absorbs_ all the light. White surfaces _reflect_ the whole of it. What is reflected depends on the period of vibration of the electrons in the particular kind of matter. Generally, as the electrons receive the flood of trillions of waves, they absorb either the long or the medium or the short, and they give us the wonderful colour-scheme of nature. In some cases the electrons continue to radiate long after the sunlight has ceased to fall upon them. We get from them "black" or invisible light, and we can take photographs by it. Other bodies, like glass, vibrate in unison with the period of the light-waves and let them stream through.
Light without Heat
There are substances--"phosphorescent" things we call them--which give out a mysterious cold light of their own. It is one of the problems of science, and one of profound practical interest. If we could produce light without heat our "gas bill" would shrink amazingly. So much energy is wasted in the production of heat-waves and ultra-violet waves which we do not want, that 90 per cent. or more of the power used in illumination is wasted. Would that the glow-worm, or even the dead herring, would yield us its secret! Phosphorus is the one thing we know as yet that suits the purpose, and--it smells! Indeed, our artificial light is not only extravagant in cost, but often poor in colour. The unwary person often buys a garment by artificial light, and is disgusted next morning to find in it a colour which is not wanted. The colour disclosed by the sun was not in the waves of the artificial light.
[Illustration: ROTATING DISC OF SIR ISAAC NEWTON FOR MIXING COLOURS
The Spectroscope sorts out the above seven colours from sunlight (which is compounded of these seven colours). If painted in proper proportions on a wheel, as shown in the coloured illustration, and the wheel be turned rapidly on a pivot through its centre, only a dull white will be perceived. If one colour be omitted, the result will be one colour--the result of the union of the remaining six.]
Beyond the waves of violet light are the still shorter and more rapid waves--the "ultra-violet" waves--which are precious to the photographer. As every amateur knows, his plate may safely be exposed to light that comes through a red or an orange screen. Such a screen means "no thoroughfare" for the blue and "beyond-blue" waves, and it is these which arrange the little grains of silver on the plate. It is the same waves which supply the energy to the little green grains of matter (chlorophyll) in the plant, preparing our food and timber for us, as will be seen later. The tree struggles upward and spreads out its leaves fanwise to the blue sky to receive them. In our coal-measures, the mighty dead forests of long ago, are vast stores of sunlight which we are prodigally using up.
The X-rays are the extreme end, the highest octave, of the series of waves. Their power of penetration implies that they are excessively minute, but even these have not held their secret from the modern physicist. From a series of beautiful experiments, in which they were made to pass amongst the atoms of a crystal, we learned their length. It is about the ten-millionth of a millimetre, and a millimetre is about the 1/25 of an inch!
One of the most recent discoveries, made during a recent eclipse of the sun, is that light is subject to gravitation. A ray of light from a star is bent out of its straight path when it passes near the mass of the sun. Professor Eddington tells us that we have as much right to speak of a pound of light as of a pound of sugar. Professor Eddington even calculates that the earth receives 160 tons of light from the sun every year!
ENERGY: HOW ALL LIFE DEPENDS ON IT
As we have seen in an earlier chapter, one of the fundamental entities of the universe is matter. A second, not less important, is called energy. Energy is indispensable if the world is to continue to exist, since all phenomena, including life, depend on it. Just as it is humanly impossible to create or to destroy a particle of matter, so is it impossible to create or to destroy energy. This statement will be more readily understood when we have considered what energy is.
Energy, like matter, is indestructible, and just as matter exists in various forms so does energy. And we may add, just as we are ignorant of what the negative and positive particles of electricity which constitute matter really are, so we are ignorant of the true nature of energy. At the same time, energy is not so completely mysterious as it once was. It is another of nature's mysteries which the advance of modern science has in some measure unveiled. It was only during the nineteenth century that energy came to be known as something as distinct and permanent as matter itself.
Forms of Energy
The existence of various forms of energy had been known, of course, for ages; there was the energy of a falling stone, the energy produced by burning wood or coal or any other substance, but the essential _identity_ of all these forms of energy had not been suspected. The conception of energy as something which, like matter, was constant in amount, which could not be created nor destroyed, was one of the great scientific acquisitions of the past century.
[Illustration: WAVE SHAPES
Wave-motions are often complex. The above illustration shows some fairly complicated wave shapes. All such wave-motions can be produced by superposing a number of simple wave forms.]
[Illustration: THE POWER OF A MAGNET
The illustration is that of a "Phoenix" electric magnet lifting scrap from railway trucks. The magnet is 52 inches in diameter and lifts a weight of 26 tons. The same type of magnet, 62 inches in diameter, lifts a weight of 40 tons.]
[Illustration: _Photo: The Locomotive Publishing Co., Ltd._
THE SPEED OF LIGHT
A train travelling at the rate of sixty miles per hour would take rather more than seventeen and a quarter days to go round the earth at the equator, i.e. a distance of 25,000 miles. Light, which travels at the rate of 186,000 miles per second, would take between one-seventh and one-eighth of a second to go the same distance.]
[Illustration: ROTATING DISC OF SIR ISAAC NEWTON FOR MIXING COLOURS
The Spectroscope sorts out the above seven colours from sunlight (which is compounded of these seven colours). If painted in proper proportions on a wheel, as shown in the coloured illustration, and the wheel turned rapidly on a pivot through its centre, only a dull white will be perceived. If one colour be omitted, the result will be one colour--the result of the union of the remaining six.]
It is not possible to enter deeply into this subject here. It is sufficient if we briefly outline its salient aspects. Energy is recognised in two forms, kinetic and potential. The form of energy which is most apparent to us is the _energy of motion_; for example, a rolling stone, running water, a falling body, and so on. We call the energy of motion _kinetic energy_. Potential energy is the energy a body has in virtue of its position--it is its capacity, in other words, to acquire kinetic energy, as in the case of a stone resting on the edge of a cliff.
Energy may assume different forms; one kind of energy may be converted directly or indirectly into some other form. The energy of burning coal, for example, is converted into heat, and from heat energy we have mechanical energy, such as that manifested by the steam-engine. In this way we can transfer energy from one body to another. There is the energy of the great waterfalls of Niagara, for instance, which are used to supply the energy of huge electric power stations.
What Heat is
An important fact about energy is, that all energy _tends to take the form of heat energy_. The impact of a falling stone generates heat; a waterfall is hotter at the bottom than at the top--the falling particles of water, on striking the ground, generate heat; and most chemical changes are attended by heat changes. Energy may remain latent indefinitely in a lump of wood, but in combustion it is liberated, and we have heat as a result. The atom of radium or of any other radio-active substance, as it disintegrates, generates heat. "Every hour radium generates sufficient heat to raise the temperature of its own weight of water, from the freezing point to the boiling point." And what is heat? _Heat is molecular motion._ The molecules of every substance, as we have seen on a previous page, are in a state of continual motion, and the more vigorous the motion the hotter the body. As wood or coal burns, the invisible molecules of these substances are violently agitated, and give rise to ether waves which our senses interpret as light and heat. In this constant movement of the molecules, then, we have a manifestation of the energy of motion and of heat.
That energy which disappears in one form reappears in another has been found to be universally true. It was Joule who, by churning water, first showed that a measurable quantity of mechanical energy could be transformed into a measurable quantity of heat energy. By causing an apparatus to stir water vigorously, that apparatus being driven by falling weights or a rotating flywheel or by any other mechanical means, the water became heated. A certain amount of mechanical energy had been used up and a certain amount of heat had appeared. The relation between these two things was found to be invariable. Every physical change in nature involves a transformation of energy, but the total quantity of energy in the universe remains unaltered. This is the great doctrine of the Conservation of Energy.
Sec. 13
Substitutes for Coal
Consider the source of nearly all the energy which is used in modern civilisation--coal. The great forests of the Carboniferous epoch now exists as beds of coal. By the burning of coal--a chemical transformation--the heat energy is produced on which at present our whole civilisation depends. Whence is the energy locked up in the coal derived? From the sun. For millions of years the energy of the sun's rays had gone to form the vast vegetation of the Carboniferous era and had been transformed, by various subtle processes, into the potential energy that slumbers in those immense fossilized forests.
The exhaustion of our coal deposits would mean, so far as our knowledge extends at present, the end of the world's civilisation. There are other known sources of energy, it is true. There is the energy of falling water; the great falls of Niagara are used to supply the energy of huge electric power stations. Perhaps, also, something could be done to utilise the energy of the tides--another instance of the energy of moving water. And attempts have been made to utilise directly the energy of the sun's rays. But all these sources of energy are small compared with the energy of coal. A suggestion was made at a recent British Association meeting that deep borings might be sunk in order to utilise the internal heat of the earth, but this is not, perhaps, a very practical proposal. By far the most effective substitutes for coal would be found in the interior energy of the atom, a source of energy which, as we have seen, is practically illimitable. If the immense electrical energy in the interior of the atom can ever be liberated and controlled, then our steadily decreasing coal supply will no longer be the bugbear it now is to all thoughtful men.
The stored-up energy of the great coal-fields can be used up, but we cannot replace it or create fresh supplies. As we have seen, energy cannot be destroyed, but it can become _unavailable_. Let us consider what this important fact means.
Sec. 14
Dissipation of Energy
Energy may become dissipated. Where does it go? since if it is indestructible it must still exist. It is easier to ask the question than to give a final answer, and it is not possible in this OUTLINE, where an advanced knowledge of physics is not assumed on the part of the reader, to go fully into the somewhat difficult theories put forward by physicists and chemists. We may raise the temperature, say, of iron, until it is white-hot. If we stop the process the temperature of the iron will gradually settle down to the temperature of surrounding bodies. As it does so, where does its previous energy go? In some measure it may pass to other bodies in contact with the piece of iron, but ultimately the heat becomes radiated away in space where we cannot follow it. It has been added to the vast reservoir of _unavailable_ heat energy of uniform temperature. It is sufficient here to say that if all bodies had a uniform temperature we should experience no such thing as heat, because heat only travels from one body to another, having the effect of cooling the one and warming the other. In time the two bodies acquire the same temperature. The sum-total of the heat in any body is measured in terms of the kinetic energy of its moving molecules.
There must come a time, so far as we can see at present, when, even if all the heat energy of the universe is not radiated away into empty infinite space, yet a uniform temperature will prevail. If one body is hotter than another it radiates heat to that body until both are at the same temperature. Each body may still possess a considerable quantity of heat energy, which it has absorbed, but that energy, so far as reactions between those two bodies are concerned, _is now unavailable_. The same principle applies whatever number of bodies we consider. Before heat energy can be utilised we must have bodies with different temperature. If the whole universe were at some uniform temperature, then, although it might possess an enormous amount of heat energy, this energy would be unavailable.
What a Uniform Temperature would mean
And what does this imply? It implies a great deal: for if all the energy in the world became unavailable, the universe, as it now is, would cease to be. It is possible that, by the constant interchange of heat radiations, the whole universe is tending to some uniform temperature, in which case, although all molecular motion would not have ceased, it would have become unavailable. In this sense it may be said that the universe is running down.
[Illustration: NIAGARA FALLS
The energy of this falling water is prodigious. It is used to generate thousands of horse-power in great electrical installations. The power is used to drive electric trams in cities 150 to 250 miles away.]
[Illustration: _Photo: Stephen Cribb._
TRANSFORMATION OF ENERGY
An illustration of Energy. The chemical energy brought into existence by firing the explosive manifesting itself as mechanical energy, sufficient to impart violent motion to tons of water.]
[Illustration: _Photo: Underwood & Underwood._
"BOILING" A KETTLE ON ICE
When a kettle containing liquid air is placed on ice it "boils" because the ice is intensely hot _when compared with the very low temperature of the liquid air_.]
If all the molecules of a substance were brought to a standstill, that substance would be at the absolute zero of temperature. There could be nothing colder. The temperature at which all molecular motions would cease is known: it is -273 deg. C. No body could possibly attain a lower temperature than this: a lower temperature could not exist. Unless there exists in nature some process, of which we know nothing at present, whereby energy is renewed, our solar system must one day sink to this absolute zero of temperature. The sun, the earth, and every other body in the universe is steadily radiating heat, and this radiation cannot go on for ever, because heat continually tends to diffuse and to equalise temperatures.
But we can see, theoretically, that there is a way of evading this law. If the chaotic molecular motions which constitute heat could be _regulated_, then the heat energy of a body could be utilised directly. Some authorities think that some of the processes which go on in the living body do not involve any waste energy, that the chemical energy of food is transformed directly into work without any of it being dissipated as useless heat energy. It may be, therefore, that man will finally discover some way of escape from the natural law that, while energy cannot be destroyed, it has a tendency to become unavailable.
The primary reservoir of energy is the atom; it is the energy of the atom, the atom of elements in the sun, the stars, the earth, from which nature draws for all her supply of energy. Shall we ever discover how we can replenish the dwindling resources of energy, or find out how we can call into being the at present unavailable energy which is stored up in uniform temperature?
It looks as if our successors would witness an interesting race,
between the progress of science on the one hand and the depletion of
natural resources upon the other. The natural rate of flow of energy
from its primary atomic reservoirs to the sea of waste heat energy
of uniform temperature, allows life to proceed at a complete pace
sternly regulated by the inexorable laws of supply and demand,
which the biologists have recognised in their field as the struggle
for existence.[5]
[5] _Matter and Energy_, by Professor Soddy.
It is certain that energy is an actual entity just as much as matter, and that it cannot be created or destroyed. Matter and ether are receptacles or vehicles of energy. As we have said, what these entities really are in themselves we do not know. It may be that all forms of energy are in some fundamental way aspects of the same primary entity which constitutes matter: how all matter is constituted of particles of electricity we have already seen. The question to which we await an answer is: What is electricity?
Sec. 15
MATTER, ETHER, AND EINSTEIN
The supreme synthesis, the crown of all this progressive conquest of nature, would be to discover that the particles of positive and negative electricity, which make up the atoms of matter, are points or centres of disturbances of some kind in a universal ether, and that all our "energies" (light, magnetism, gravitation, etc.) are waves or strains of some kind set up in the ether by these clusters of electrons.
It is a fascinating, tantalising dream. Larmor suggested in 1900 that the electron is a tiny whirlpool, or "vortex," in ether; and, as such a vortex may turn in either of two opposite ways, we seem to see a possibility of explaining positive and negative electricity. But the difficulties have proved very serious, and the nature of the electron is unknown. A recent view is that it is "a ring of negative electricity rotating about its axis at a high speed," though that does not carry us very far. The unit of positive electricity is even less known. We must be content to know the general lines on which thought is moving toward the final unification.
We say "unification," but it would be a grave error to think that ether is the only possible basis for such unity, or to make it an essential part of one's philosophy of the universe. Ether was never more than an imagined entity to which we ascribed the most extraordinary properties, and which seemed then to promise considerable aid. It was conceived as an elastic solid of very great density, stretching from end to end of the universe, transmitting waves from star to star at the rate of 186,000 miles a second; yet it was believed that the most solid matter passed through it as if it did not exist.
Some years ago a delicate experiment was tried for the purpose of detecting the ether. Since the earth, in travelling round the sun, must move through the ether if the ether exists, there ought to be a stream of ether flowing through every laboratory; just as the motion of a ship through a still atmosphere will make "a wind." In 1887 Michelson and Morley tried to detect this. Theoretically, a ray of light in the direction of the stream ought to travel at a different rate from a ray of light against the stream or across it. They found no difference, and scores of other experiments have failed. This does not prove that there is no ether, as there is reason to suppose that our instruments would appear to shrink in precisely the same proportion as the alteration of the light; but the fact remains that we have no proof of the existence of ether. J. H. Jeans says that "nature acts as if no such thing existed." Even the phenomena of light and magnetism, he says, do not imply ether; and he thinks that the hypothesis may be abandoned. The primary reason, of course, for giving up the notion of the ether is that, as Einstein has shown, there is no way of detecting its existence. If there is an ether, then, since the earth is moving through it, there should be some way of detecting this motion. The experiment has been tried, as we have said, but, although the method used was very sensitive, no motion was discovered. It is Einstein who, by revolutionising our conceptions of space and time, showed that no such motion ever could be discovered, whatever means were employed, and that the usual notion of the ether must be abandoned. We shall explain this theory more fully in a later section.
INFLUENCE OF THE TIDES: ORIGIN OF THE MOON: THE EARTH SLOWING DOWN
Sec. 16
Until comparatively recent times, until, in fact, the full dawn of modern science, the tides ranked amongst the greatest of nature's mysteries. And, indeed, what agency could be invoked to explain this mysteriously regular flux and reflux of the waters of the ocean? It is not surprising that that steady, rhythmical rise and fall suggested to some imaginative minds the breathing of a mighty animal. And even when man first became aware of the fact that this regular movement was somehow associated with the moon, was he much nearer an explanation? What bond could exist between the movements of that distant world and the diurnal variation of the waters of the earth? It is reported that an ancient astronomer, despairing of ever resolving the mystery, drowned himself in the sea.
The Earth Pulled by the Moon
But it was part of the merit of Newton's mighty theory of gravitation that it furnished an explanation even of this age-old mystery. We can see, in broad outlines at any rate, that the theory of universal attraction can be applied to this case. For the moon, Newton taught us, pulls every particle of matter throughout the earth. If we imagine that part of the earth's surface which comprises the Pacific Ocean, for instance, to be turned towards the moon, we see that the moon's pull, _acting on the loose and mobile water_, would tend to heap it up into a sort of mound. The whole earth is pulled by the moon, but the water is more free to obey this pull than is the solid earth, although small tides are also caused in the earth's solid crust. It can be shown also that a corresponding hump would tend to be produced on the other side of the earth, owing, in this case, to the tendency of the water, being more loosely connected, to lag behind the solid earth. If the earth's surface were entirely fluid the rotation of the earth would give the impression that these two humps were continually travelling round the world, once every day. At any given part of the earth's surface, therefore, there would be two humps daily, i.e. two periods of high water. Such is the simplest possible outline of the gravitational theory of the tides.
[Illustration: THE CAUSE OF TIDES
The tides of the sea are due to the pull of the moon, and, in lesser degree, of the sun. The whole earth is pulled by the moon, but the loose and mobile water is more free to obey this pull than is the solid earth, although small tides are also caused in the earth's solid crust. The effect which the tides have on slowing down the rotation of the earth is explained in the text.]
[Illustration: _Photo: G. Brocklehurst._
THE AEGIR ON THE TRENT
An exceptionally smooth formation due to perfect weather conditions. The wall-like formation of these tidal waves (see next page also) will be noticed. The reason for this is that the downward current in the river heads the sea-water back, and thus helps to exaggerate the advancing slope of the wave. The exceptional spring tides are caused by the combined operation of the moon and the sun, as is explained in the text.]
[Illustration: _Photo: G. Brocklehurst._
A BIG SPRING TIDE, THE AEGIR ON THE TRENT]
The actually observed phenomena are vastly more complicated, and the complete theory bears very little resemblance to the simple form we have just outlined. Everyone who lives in the neighbourhood of a port knows, for instance, that high water seldom coincides with the time when the moon crosses the meridian. It may be several hours early or late. High water at London Bridge, for instance, occurs about one and a half hours after the moon has passed the meridian, while at Dublin high water occurs about one and a half hours before the moon crosses the meridian. The actually observed phenomena, then, are far from simple; they have, nevertheless, been very completely worked out, and the times of high water for every port in the world can now be prophesied for a considerable time ahead.
The Action of Sun and Moon
It would be beyond our scope to attempt to explain the complete theory, but we may mention one obvious factor which must be taken into account. Since the moon, by its gravitational attraction, produces tides, we should expect that the sun, whose gravitational attraction is so much stronger, should also produce tides and, we would suppose at first sight, more powerful tides than the moon. But while it is true that the sun produces tides, it is not true that they are more powerful than those produced by the moon. The sun's tide-producing power is, as a matter of fact, less than half that of the moon. The reason of this is that _distance_ plays an enormous role in the production of tides. The mass of the sun is 26,000,000 times that of the moon; on the other hand it is 386 times as far off as the moon. This greater distance more than counterbalances its greater mass, and the result, as we have said, is that the moon is more than twice as powerful. Sometimes the sun and moon act together, and we have what are called spring tides; sometimes they act against one another, and we have neap tides. These effects are further complicated by a number of other factors, and the tides, at various places, vary enormously. Thus at St. Helena the sea rises and falls about three feet, whereas in the Bay of Fundy it rises and falls more than fifty feet. But here, again, the reasons are complicated.
Sec. 17
Origin of the Moon
But there is another aspect of the tides which is of vastly greater interest and importance than the theory we have just been discussing. In the hands of Sir George H. Darwin, the son of Charles Darwin, the tides had been made to throw light on the evolution of our solar system. In particular, they have illustrated the origin and development of the system formed by our earth and moon. It is quite certain that, long ages ago, the earth was rotating immensely faster than it is now, and that the moon was so near as to be actually in contact with the earth. In that remote age the moon was just on the point of separating from the earth, of being thrown off by the earth. Earth and moon were once one body, but the high rate of rotation caused this body to split up into two pieces; one piece became the earth we now know, and the other became the moon. Such is the conclusion to which we are led by an examination of the tides. In the first place let us consider the energy produced by the tides. We see evidences of this energy all round the word's coastlines. Estuaries are scooped out, great rocks are gradually reduced to rubble, innumerable tons of matter are continually being set in movement. Whence is this energy derived? Energy, like matter, cannot be created from nothing; what, then, is the source which makes this colossal expenditure possible.
The Earth Slowing down
The answer is simple, but startling. _The source of tidal energy is the rotation of the earth._ The massive bulk of the earth, turning every twenty-four hours on its axis, is like a gigantic flywheel. In virtue of its rotation it possesses an enormous store of energy. But even the heaviest and swiftest flywheel, if it is doing work, or even if it is only working against the friction of its bearings, cannot dispense energy for ever. It must, gradually, slow down. There is no escape from this reasoning. It is the rotation of the earth which supplies the energy of the tides, and, as a consequence, the tides must be slowing down the earth. The tides act as a kind of brake on the earth's rotation. These masses of water, _held back by the moon_, exert a kind of dragging effect on the rotating earth. Doubtless this effect, measured by our ordinary standards, is very small; it is, however, continuous, and in the course of the millions of years dealt with in astronomy, this small but constant effect may produce very considerable results.
But there is another effect which can be shown to be a necessary mathematical consequence of tidal action. It is the moon's action on the earth which produces the tides, but they also react on the moon. The tides are slowing down the earth, and they are also driving the moon farther and farther away. This result, strange as it may seem, does not permit of doubt, for it is the result of an indubitable dynamical principle, which cannot be made clear without a mathematical discussion. Some interesting consequences follow.
Since the earth is slowing down, it follows that it was once rotating faster. There was a period, a long time ago, when the day comprised only twenty hours. Going farther back still we come to a day of ten hours, until, inconceivable ages ago, the earth must have been rotating on its axis in a period of from three to four hours.
At this point let us stop and inquire what was happening to the moon. We have seen that at present the moon is getting farther and farther away. It follows, therefore, that when the day was shorter the moon was nearer. As we go farther back in time we find the moon nearer and nearer to an earth rotating faster and faster. When we reach the period we have already mentioned, the period when the earth completed a revolution in three or four hours, we find that the moon was so near as to be almost grazing the earth. This fact is very remarkable. Everybody knows that there is a _critical velocity_ for a rotating flywheel, a velocity beyond which the flywheel would fly into pieces because the centrifugal force developed is so great as to overcome the cohesion of the molecules of the flywheel. We have already likened our earth to a flywheel, and we have traced its history back to the point where it was rotating with immense velocity. We have also seen that, at that moment, the moon was barely separated from the earth. The conclusion is irresistible. In an age more remote the earth _did_ fly in pieces, and one of those pieces is the moon. Such, in brief outline, is the tidal theory of the origin of the earth-moon system.
The Day Becoming Longer
At the beginning, when the moon split off from the earth, it obviously must have shared the earth's rotation. It flew round the earth in the same time that the earth rotated, that is to say, the month and the day were of equal length. As the moon began to get farther from the earth, the month, because the moon took longer to rotate round the earth, began to get correspondingly longer. The day also became longer, because the earth was slowing down, taking longer to rotate on its axis, but the month increased at a greater rate than the day. Presently the month became equal to two days, then to three, and so on. It has been calculated that this process went on until there were twenty-nine days in the month. After that the number of days in the month began to decrease until it reached its present value or magnitude, and will continue to decrease until once more the month and the day are equal. In that age the earth will be rotating very slowly. The braking action of the tides will cause the earth always to keep the same face to the moon; it will rotate on its axis in the same time that the moon turns round the earth. If nothing but the earth and moon were involved this state of affairs would be final. But there is also the effect of the solar tides to be considered. The moon makes the day equal to the month, but the sun has a tendency, by still further slowing down the earth's rotation on its axis, to make the day equal to the year. It would do this, of course, by making the earth take as long to turn on its axis as to go round the sun. It cannot succeed in this, owing to the action of the moon, but it can succeed in making the day rather longer than the month.
Surprising as it may seem, we already have an illustration of this possibility in the satellites of Mars. The Martian day is about one half-hour longer than ours, but when the two minute satellites of Mars were discovered it was noticed that the inner one of the two revolved round Mars in about seven hours forty minutes. In one Martian day, therefore, one of the moons of Mars makes more than three complete revolutions round that planet, so that, to an inhabitant of Mars, there would be more than three months in a day.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ARRHENIUS, SVANTE, _Worlds in the Making_.
CLERK-MAXWELL, JAMES, _Matter and Motion_.
DANIELL, ALFRED, _A Text-Book of the Principles of Physics_.
DARWIN, SIR G. H., _The Tides_.
HOLMAN, _Matter, Energy, Force and Work_.
KAPP, GISBERT, _Electricity_.
KELVIN, LORD, _Popular Lectures and Addresses_. Vol. i. _Constitution
of Matter._
LOCKYER, SIR NORMAN, _Inorganic Evolution_.
LODGE, SIR OLIVER, _Electrons_ and _The Ether of Space_.
PERRIN, JEAN, _Brownian Movement and Molecular Reality_.
SODDY, FREDERICK, _Matter and Energy_ and _The Interpretation of Radium_.
THOMPSON, SILVANUS P., _Light, Visible and Invisible_.
THOMSON, SIR J. J., _The Corpuscular Theory of Matter_.
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The diffusion of technology in Canada
The terms chosen for the "age" described below are both literal and metaphorical. They describe the technology that dominated the period of time in question but are also representative of a large number of other technologies introduced during the same period. Also of note is the fact that the period of diffusion of a technology can begin modestly and can extend well beyond the "age" of its introduction. To maintain continuity, the treatment of its diffusion is dealt with in the context of its dominant "age". For example the "Steam Age" here is defined as the period from 1840 to 1880. However steam powered boats were introduced in 1809, the CPR was completed in 1885 and railway construction in Canada continued well into the twentieth century. To preserve continuity, the development of steam, in the early and later years, is therefore considered within the "Steam Age". Technology can be applied in many fields. Those chosen for treatment here include, in rough order, transportation, communication, energy, materials, industry, public works, public services (health care), domestic/consumer and defence technologies.
[edit]The Stone Age: Fire (14,000 BC – 1600)
The diffusion of technology in what is now Canada began with the arrival of the first humans about 14,000 BC.
These people brought with them stone and bone tools. These took the form of arrowheads, axes, blades, scrappers, needles, harpoon heads and fishhooks used mostly to kill animals and fish for food and skins. They also brought fire which they used for heating their dwellings and for cooking which was done onyou beep! open fires. There were no clay pots or ovens.
In the Arctic the Innu used stick frames covered with animal skins for shelter during the summer months while during the harsh winter they built houses made of snow or igloos. On the plains native peoples used the wellfasdfasdfasfas known teepee. This consisted of a number of poles arranged to form a conical structure which was in turn covered with animal skins. In central Canada the long house was popular. This large structure was built from interwoven branches and could house 70 to 80 people. Several of these structures would be built together to form a village which was often surrounded by a palisade of logs stuck vertically into the ground as protection from hostile tribes. On the west coast native peoples constructed dwellings made from heavy timber. These structures were built near the wateradgasdgasdgsdgasdgsadgasdgsdgf's edge and were often decorated with elaborate and elegant carved images.
Transportation techniques were simple. The aboriginal peoples did not have the wheel, horses or the sail. The paddle powered canoe was the most common means of transport and was especially practical during the summer, considering the large number of lakes and rivers that characterized the topography. The duggout was favoured in the waters off the west coast. Summer travel also saw use of the travois, a simple type of sled that was pulled over the ground by a dog and used to transport a light load. In the winter the snow shoe made walking in the deep snow practical. Winter transport in the Arctic made use of the dog team and in warmer summer months the use of the kayak was common.
Clothing was made of animal skins which were cut with stone and bone tools and sewn with bone needles and animal sinews. Native peoples did not have textiles.
For the most part native peoples were hunters and gatherers, chasing large animals, and fishing for a source of protein. Plants and fruits that grew naturally were also an important food source. A common, easily stored and readily transportable food was pemmican, dried powerdered meat mixed with fat, berries and "vegetables". In central Canada there was limited agriculture which allowed the storage of some food during times of privation. Of note was the fact that they did not have the plow or draught animals.
The first peoples had techniques for dealing with disease. Medicines included those made from high bush cranberries, oil of wintergreen and bloodroot, among others. A type of tea made from the bark of the spruce or hemlock could prevent or cure scurvy.
The first peoples did not have writing or any way of communicating in symbolic form or storing information. Their extensive knowledge of the natural world and information relating to their customs and traditions was passed orally.
Weapons of war were made by hand from wood and stone. The long range weapon of these times was the bow and arrow with an effective range of 100+ metres. Close in fighting was conducted with a range of simple armaments including: stone tipped spears, stone axes (tomahawk), stone blades used as knives and stone and wooden clubs of various types. Because there was no knowledge of metal working with the exception of some small items of jewelry made from copper, such weapons as swords and metal knives were not part of this early arsenal.
[edit]The Age of Sail: Ships, symbolic language, and the wheel (1600 – 1830)
The arrival of white explorers and colonists in the 1500s introduced those technologies popular in Europe at the time, such as iron making, the wheel, writing, paper, printing, books, newspapers, long range navigation, large ship construction, stone and brick and mortar construction, surgery, firearms, new crops, livestock, the knife fork and spoon, china plates and cups, iron pots, cotton and linen cloth, horses and livestock.
The use of wind and water as sources of power were major developments in the technological history of the new colonies. Ships with large masts and huge canvas sails maintained the link between the colonies and the imperial centres, Paris, France until 1763 and London, England until the arrival of steam power in 1850. Wind power was used to a lesser extent to turn the sails of the windmill, which did not come into widespread use. However water power was used extensively to power grist mill in both New France and later, Quebec and Upper Canada and Lower Canada. Animal power in the form of the horse or ox, was used to work the fields. Fire from a wood or oil fuel source was not new but the use of stone fireplaces and ovens along with metal pots and pans dramatically changed the nature of cooking. The new arrivals also brought new eating habits. Meat from animals such as cows, sheep, chickens and pigs was common as were new types of fruits and vegetables. These items were eaten fresh but could be stored for later consumption if salted, pickled or frozen. Grain was ground to flour at the local grist mill and baked in the home oven with yeast to make bread. Hopps, grain and fruit were fermented to make beer, hard alcohol and wine. Meals were served on pewter or china plates and eaten with a metal knife, fork and spoon. The places were set on a simple wooden table with wooden chairs often made by the man of the house.
Inland travel by the coureurs de bois was by way of an Indian invention, the canoe. Within settlements transport was often simply a matter of walking around town. The horse, introduced by the new arrivals also provided a new and convenient mode of transport. The wooden cart, wagon and carriage, made possible by the introduction of the wheel in combination with the horse, dramatically improved the transport of people and goods. The first graded road in Canada was built by Samuel de Champlain in 1606 and linked the settlement at Port Royal to Digby Cape, 16 kilometers away. By 1734 Quebec City and Montreal were connected by a road, Le chemin du roi, along the north shore of the St Lawrence. The 267 distance could be traversed with great difficulty and discomfort by horse drawn carriage in four to five days. The period also saw the construction a number of important canals including: the Rideau Canal, Ottawa - Kingston, 1820, the Lachine Canal, Montreal, 1825, the Ottawa River Canals at Grenville and Carillon, Quebec, 1834 and the Chambly Canal, Chambly, Quebec, 1843.
The introduction of written language to the new world was of paramount importance. The 26 letter, Roman based alphabet that formed the basis for French and English words was arguably much more flexible that the pictographs that characterized eastern languages. The pen along with ink and paper made written communication possible and allowed private individuals, businessmen, the clergy and government officials to produce the documents essential for social, commercial, religious and political intercourse. This created a need for mail service. Messages were originally carried bwtween settlements on the St. Lawrence by canoe. After 1734 the road between Montreal and Quebec was used by a special courier to carry official dispatches. In 1755 a post office was opened in Halifax by Benjamin Franklin, the Post Master of the British colonies, as part of a trans-Atlantic mail service that he established between Falmouth, England and New York. In 1763 Franklin opened other post offices in Quebec City, Trois Rivieres and Montreal with a link from the latter city to New York and the trans-Atlantic service. The War of American Independence seriously disrupted mail service in Canada but by 1783 peace had been restored and Hugh Finlay was appointed Post Master for the northern colonies in 1784. That same year Finlay hired Pierre Durand to survey an all-Canadian mail route to Halifax. The path chosen took 15 weeks for a round trip!
Although the written word was a vital part of communications, French colonial policy opposed the establishment of newspapers in New France. Canada's first paper, the Halifax Gazette produced on a simple printing press, began publication in 1752 under the watchful eye of John Bushell. In 1764, the Quebec Gazette was established in Quebec City by William Brown and Thomas Gilmore. The Montreal Gazette was founded in that city in 1785 by Fleury Mesplet. Other newspapers followed including the Upper Canada Gazette at Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake)in 1793, the first newspaper in what is now Ontario, the Québec City Mercury, 1805, the Montréal Herald, 1811, Le Canadien 1806, La Minerve, 1826, and the Colonial Advocate and Novascotian both in 1824. These publications were simple affairs, type set by hand, consisting of only a few pages, produced in limited quanties on simple presses and of limited distribution.
Between the 1530s and 1626 Basque whalers frequented the waters of Newfoundland and the north shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence from the Strait of Bell Isle to the mouth of the Sagenuay River. They constructed stone ovens ashore for fires to melt whale fat. However as whales became scarce, the cod fishery off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland became hotly contested by the British and French, in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The British used small boats close to shore from which they caught the cod with hook and line. They practiced the "dry fishery" technique which involved shore based settlements for the drying of cod on flakes or racks placed in the open air for their subsequent transport back to Europe. The French on the other hand practiced the "green fishery" which involved processing the catch with salt aboard ship. At the same time fleet of schooners fishing for cod, halibut, haddock, and mackerel became prominent off the Atlantic coast. The use of the long line and purse seine net increased the size of the catch.
It is ironic that a phenomenon as fickle as fashion would be responsible for the economic development and exploration of half a continent but such was the case with the fur trade in North America between 1650 and 1850. The subject of bitter rivalry between the British and French Empires and inter-corporate rivalry among a number of business organizations, notably the Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Company, the technology of the trade was the picture of simplicity. Traders, be they French or British would set out in birch bark canoes, loaded with trade goods (knives, ax heads, cloth blankets, alcohol, firearms and other items) and travel west along Canada's numerous rivers, streams and lakes in search of Indians and exchange these items for beaver skins. The skins came from animals trapped by the native peoples and worn as clothing during the long cold Canadian winter. The skins were worn with the fur side next to the skin and by the spring the long hairs would be worn away leaving the short hairs which were used to make felt. The skins were them transported by the traders in their canoes back to trading posts in Montreal or on Hudson Bay and transported by sailing ship to England or France. There they were processed by a technique involving mercury, and the felt that resulted from the treatment was used to make beaver hats, and coincidentally gave rise to an associated phenomenon, the mad hatter. A combination of declining beaver stocks and a change in fashion that saw a decline in the popularity of the beaver hat put an end to the trade.
Agriculture was an essential colonial activity. The settlers who founded Port Royal in Acadia in 1605 drained coastal marshes with a system of dikes and grew vegetables, flax and wheat and raised livestock. After 1713 the British promoted the Maritimes as a source of hemp for the rope for the Royal Navy, with moderate success. Mixed farming, the growing of wheat and the raising of livestock would characterize the nature of maritime agriculture well into the mid-nineteenth century. In 1617, Louis Hebert in Quebec began to raise cattle and grow peas, grain and corn on a very small plot. In the 1640s charter companies promoted agriculture and settlers cleared forested land with the use of oxen, horses and asses. In 1663 Louis XIV, through his colonial administrators Colbert and Jean Talon took steps to promote the cultivation of hops and hemp and the raising of livestock. By 1721 the harvest of the farmers of New France consisted predominantly of wheat and the census of horses, pigs, cattle and sheep registered 30,0000 animals. In the latter part of the century the British promoted the cultivation of potatoes. The arrival of the Loyalists in Upper Canada in the late eighteenth century resulted in the cultivation of hemp but agriculture was dominated by the wheat culture well into the mid-nineteenth century.
The Europeans brought with them metal and textiles and a knowledge of the means to make them. Les Forges de St. Maurice which began producing iron in 1738 at facilities near Trois Rivieres and the Marmora Ironworks established in 1822 near Peterborough were the first iron works in Canada. Both ceased operations in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Early sixteenth century female settlers along the St Lawrence and in Acadia were almost all were familiar with the techniques of spinning yarn and weaving cloth for everyday clothes and bedding and the home production of textiles eventually became an important cottage industry. The spinning wheel and loom were features of many colonial homes and weaving techniques included the "à la planche" and "boutonné" methods. Loyalist women settling in Upper and Lower Canada, grew flax and raised sheep for wool to make clothing, blankets and linen. The Jacquard loom, introduced in the 1830s, featured a complex system of punch cards to control the pattern and was the first programmable machine in Canada. With the arrival of industrial textile mills in Montreal and Toronto in the late nineteenth century, the economic advantage of home weaving faded.
Money, then as now was of vital interest to individuals and to the functioning of the economy. The first coin produced for use in New France was the "Gloria Regni" a silver piece, struck in Paris in 1670. The first paper money in New France consisted of playing cards signed by the governor and issued in 1685 to help deal with the chronic shortage of coins. After 1760 the British introduced the sterling which officially stood as Canada's currency for almost a century. However the monetary system in reality was a chaotic affair and the British coins and paper circulated along with, Spanish dollars, Nova Scotia provincial money, US dollars and gold coins and British paper "army bills" used buy supplies in the War of 1812. In 1858 the government of the Province of Canada begn keeping its accounts in Canadian dollars and to circulate its own paper currency alongside the paper dollars circulated by the Bank of Montreal and other banks.
Medical treatment at this time reflected techniques available in France and was provided by a barber-surgeon. The first in New France was Robert Giffard who arrived in Quebec City in 1627 and "practiced" at Hotel-Dieu, Canada's first hospital, a very modest four-room structure, founded by the church. The panacea was bleeding, which involved the use of a knife to cut open a blood vessel and drain way a quantity of the patients blood. There was some surgery but it was undertaken with primitive instruments and without anesthetic or any familiarity with the concept of infection and both the procedure and results were usually quite gruesome. Another figure of repute, Michel Sarrazin, a noted botanist as well as doctor arrived from France in the latter half of the sevententh century and served as the surgeon-major of the French troops in New France. He too practiced at Hotel-Dieu and while there treated hundreds of patients infected during a typhus epidemic. Eyeglasses for the correction of vision became available at this time. The mercury thermometer, invented in 1714, became a useful diagnostic tool for doctors as did the stethescope invented in 1816. Because doctors were few and far between people with medical problems often had to treat themselves. They used Indian medicines or home remedies based on the internal and external application of various herbal and animal products. Advances in surgery came in the early 1800s with the innovative work of Dr. Christopher Widmer who practiced at York Hospital (later known as Toronto General Hospital) and R.W. Beaumont made a name as a noted inventor of surgical instruments. The early part of the nineteenth century also witnessed the first halting steps with respect to the use of inoculation, in Nova Scotia, in this case against smallpox. However it would take another one hundred years for the practice to become widespread. General hospitals were established in Montreal in 1819 and York (Toronto, Ontario) in 1829.
The first domestic homes in Canada were constructed at Port Royal on the Annapolis River in what is now Nova Scotia in 1605. The colonists built simple wooden frame homes with peaked roofs around a central courtyard. This established a house building tradition that lasts to this day, for by far the most common domestic structure in Canada for the last 400 years has been the wood frame peak roofed house. Most domestic homes both urban and rural in New France from about 1650 to 1750 were simple wooden structures. Wood was inexpensive, readily available and easily worked by most residents. Rooms were small, usually limited to a living/dining/ kitchen space and perhaps a bedroom. Roofs were usually peaked to deflect the rain and very heavy snow. After fires in Quebec City in 1682 and Montreal in 1721 building codes emphasized the importance of stone construction but these requirements were mostly ignored except by the most affluent. The most popular type of domestic dwelling in Loyalist Upper Canada in the late 1700s was the log house or the wood frame house or less commomly the stone house. When homes were heated it was by a fire place burning wood or a cast iron wood stove, which was also used for cooking and they were lit by candle light or whale oil lamp. Kerosene lamps became popular in the 1840s when Gesner of Halifax developed an effective way to manufacture that product. Water for drinking and washing was carried to the home from an outside source and the chamber pot or outdoor prive served as a toilet.
Musical instruments did much to enliven the colonial life. In the well known documents The Jesuit Relations, there is reference to the playing of the fiddle in 1645 and the organ in 1661. Quebec City boasted of Canada's first piano in 1784.
The Europeans introduced extremely important innovations relating to warfare, gunpowder, the cannon and the musket. The cannon was used to arm a number of important military structures including: the Citadel of Quebec, Quebec City, Quebec, 1745, the Fortress of Louisburg, Louisburg, Nova Scotia, 1745 and Fort Henry, Kingston, Ontario, 1812. They were also the primary weapon aboard the warships of the era. French regular soldiers stationed in New France and British regulars stationed in British North America after 1763 were equipped with a musket and bayonet. Ironically in the Battle of Quebec, one of the great battles of history, the French General Montcalm ordered his troops out of the ultra-modern stone-walled Citadel, with its heavy defensive cannon and onto the adjacent Plains of Abraham where they were felled by a single volley of musket fire from the British line. Both the British/Canadian/Indian troops and American troops were equipped with cannons and muskets when invading American armies attacked Canada in 1775 and again during the period from 1812 to 1814 with the intent of annexation. In both cases the invaders were defeated.
[edit]The Steam Age: Trains, telegraphs, water, and oil (1830 – 1880)
The pace of diffusion quickened in the 1800s with the introduction of such technologies as steam power and the telegraph. Indeed it was the introduction of steam power that allowed politicians in Ottawa to entertain the idea of creating a transcontinental state. In addition to steam power, municipal water systems and sewer systems were introduced in the latter part of the century. The field of medecine saw the introduction of anesthetic and antiseptics.
It was via the paddle powered steam boat that steam power was first introduced to Canada. The Accommodation, a side-wheeler built entirely in Montreal by the Eagle Foundry and launched in 1809, was the first steamer to ply Canadian waters, making its maiden voyage from Montréal to Québec that same year in 36-hours. Other paddle-wheel steamboats included: the Frontenac, Lake Ontario, 1816, the General Stacey Smyth, Saint John River, 1816, the Union, lower Ottawa River, 1819, the Royal William, Québec to Halifax, 1831 and the Beaver, BC coast,1836. Transatlantic steam service was introduced by the Montreal Ocean Steamship Company founded Sir Hugh Allan in Montreal in 1854.
The first steam powered railway service in Canada was offered by the Champlain and St. Lawrence Railroad, Quebec, in 1836. Other railway systems soon followed including: the Albion Mines Railway, Nova, Scotia, 1839, the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad, 1853, the Great Western Railway, Montreal to Windsor, 1854, the Grand Trunk Railway, Montreal to Sarnia, 1860, the Intercolonial Railway, 1876, the Chignecto Marine Transport Railway, Tignish, Nova Scotia, 1888, the Edmonton, Yukon & Pacific Railway, 1891 and the Newfoundland Railway, St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, 1893, the White Pass and Yukon Railway, Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, 1900, the Kettle Valley Railway, British Columbia, 1916 and Canadian National Railways, 1917.
One of the great engineering works of the world, the Canadian Pacific Railway and its associated Canadian Pacific trans-Canada telegraph system, was completed in 1885. Between 1881 and 1961 CPR would operate 3,267 steam locomotives.
Canada's initial telegraph service introduced in 1846, was offered by the Toronto, Hamilton and Niagara Electro-Magnetic Telegraph Co. Others soon followed including: the telegraph system of The Montreal Telegraph Company, 1847 and the telegraph system of the Dominion Telegraph Company, 1868.
The newspaper benefitted from the introduction of the telegraph and the rotary press. This latter device, invented in the US, was first used in Canada by George Brown in Toronto starting in 1844 to print copies of the Globe. This process permitted the printing of thousands of copies of each daily paper rather than the mere hundreds of copies possible with previous technologies.
The lumber industry grew to become one of Canada's most important economic engines during this period. A market for Canadian wood developed in Britain where access to traditional sources of lumber for the construction of ships for the Royal Navy, as well as industrial structures, was blocked by Napoleon in 1806. As a result Britain turned to her colonies in North America to supply masts for her ships as well as sawn lumber and square timber. Other wood products included barrel staves, shingles, box shooks and spoolwood for textile factories. Growth during this period was staggering. In 1805, 9000 loads of lumber arrived in Britain from Canada. In 1807, the total shipped rose to 27,000 loads, in 1809, 90,000 and by 1846, 750,000 loads.
Water was nesessary for the transport of lumber to saw mill and ports as well as providing the power for the saw mills themselves and as a result the industry developed along the rivers of New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario, including the Mirimachi, St. John, Ottawa and Gatineau. The logging itself was a winter activity and began with the first snowfall when roads and camps were built in the forest. Trees were cut with steel axes until about 1870 when the two-man crosscut saw was introduced. The felled trees had their branches removed and were hauled over the snow roads by teams of oxen or horses to the nearest frozen stream or river. In the spring melt they would be carried by the rushing water downstream to the mills. Often the logs "jammed" and on the way the lumberjacks would undertake the very dangerous lob of breaking the "jam". Where there were rapids or obstacles, special timber "slides" were constructed to aid transport. Large numbers of logs were often assembled into rafts to aid their movement or into very large booms which drifted down river to mills and market. A number of large firms appeared as a result of this activity including, Cunard and Pollok, Gilmour and Co. in New Brusswick, William Price in Chicoutimi, Quebec and J.R.Booth in Ottawa. It is important to note that the introduction of the railway at mid-century served to decrease the importance of water transport for the industry.
The industry in western Canada and in particular British Columbia did not develop as quickly as in the east but with the exhaustion of the eastern forests and the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, it eventually overtook the scale of activity in eastern Canada. Different conditions there required different logging techniques. Because the trees were much larger and heavier, three times as many horses or oxen were required to haul them. The more moderate climate meant that the winter snow roads could not be used and instead necessitated the use of log skid roads. Trees were so tall that springboards were wedged into notches cut into the trunk to serve as work platforms for two loggers using heavy double bit steel axes. Human and animal muscle, powered the industry until 1897 when the steam-powered "donkey engine" was introduced in B.C. from the US. This stationary machine drove a winch connected to a rope or wire which was used to haul logs up to 150 metres across the forest floor. A series of such engines placed at intervals could be used to haul large numbers of logs, long distances in relatively short periods of time. The "high lead system" in which a wire or lead suspended in trees was used to haul logs, was also introduced about this time.
A naissant manufacturing capability began to develop during this period. Canada's first paper mill was built in St. Andrews, Quebec in 1805 by two new Englanders and produced paper for sale in Montreal and Quebec City. By 1869 Alexander Burtin was operating Canada's first groundwood paper mill in Valleyfield, Quebec. It was equipped with two wood grinders imported from Germany and produced primarily newsprint. North America's first chemical wood-pulp mill was constructed in Windsor mills, Quebec in 1864 by Angus and Logan. C.B.Wright & Sons began to make "hydraulic cement" in Hull, Quebec in 1830. Leather tanning gained prominence and James Davis among others made a mark in this field in Toronto beginning in 1832. Canada became the world's largest exporter of potash in the 1830s and 1840s. In 1840 Darling & Brady began to manufacture soap in Montreal. E.B.Eddy began to produce matches in Hull, Quebec in 1851. Explosives were manufactured by an increasing number of companies including the Gore Powder Works at Cumminsville, Canada West, 1852, the Canada Powder Company, 1855, the Acadia Powder Company 1862, and the Hamiltom Powder Company established that same year. In 1879 that company built Canada's first high explosives manufacturing plant in Beloeil, Quebec. Rubber footwear was produced by the Canadian Rubber Company in Montreal starting in 1854. The first salt well was drilled at Goderich, Canada West in 1866. Phosphate fertilizer was first made in Brockville, Ontario in 1869.
Glass manufacturing took hold at this time. Glass was manufactured at Mallorytown, Upper Canada beginning in 1825. Window glass was produced at the Canada Glass Works in St. Jean, Canada East (Quebec)from 1845 to 1851 and the Ottawa Glass Works at Como in Ottawa, Canada West (Ontario) from 1847 to 1857. Glass was blown to form tubes which were cut lengthwise, unrolled and flattened. Glass bottles were produced starting in 1851 by the Ottawa factory and Foster Brothers Glass Works, in St. Jean starting in 1855. Other manufacturers included: the Canada Glass Works, Hudson, Qué, 1864-1872 and the Hamilton Glass Company, Hamilton, Ont, 1865-96, which produced "green" glass and the St. Lawrence Glass Company, Montréal, 1867-73 and Burlington Glass Company of Hamilton, Ont, 1874-98 which produced "flint" or clear glass.
Industrial textile production also took its first steps during these years. In 1826, Mahlon Willett established a woollen cloth manufacturing factory in L'Acadie, Lower Canada and by 1844 the Sherbrooke Cotton Factory in Sherbrooke was producing cotton cloth. This establishment also had powered knitting machines and may therefore have been Canada's first knitting mill before burning down in 1854. There were cloth manufacturing mills in operation at Ancaster, Ontario by 1859, as well as Merritton, Ontario (the Lybster Mills, 1860). In Montreal a cotton mill operated on the banks of the Lachine Canal at the St-Gabriel Lock from 1853 until at least 1871 and Belding Paul & Co., operated Canada's first silk cloth manufacturing factory in that city starting in 1876.
The mass production of clothing began at this time. Livingstone and Johnston, later W.R. Johnston & Company, founded in Toronto in 1868, was the first in Canada to cut cloth and and sew together the component pieces with the help of the newly introduced sewing machine, as part of a continuous operation.
The growing agricultural activity in southern Ontario and Quebec provided the basis for farm mechanization and the manufacturing industry to meet the demand for agricultural machinery. The area around Hamilton had become attractive for iron and steel industries based on railway construction and the source of this raw material made the same area attractive to aspiring farm implement manufacturers. By about 1850 there were factories producing plows, mowers, reapers, seed drills, cutting boxes, fanning mills threshing machines and steam engines, established by entrepreneurs including the well known Massey family, Harris, Wisner, Cockshutt, Sawyer, Patterson, Verity and Willkinson. Although the industry was located mostly around Hamilton there were other smaller manufacturers in other locations including, Frost and Wood of Smith Falls, Ontario, Herring of Napanee, Ontario Ontario, Harris and Allen of Saint John and the Connell Brothers of Woodstock, both in New Brunswick and Mathew Moody and Sons of Terrebonne and Doré et Fils of La Prairie both in Quebec.
Meat processing had been a local undertaking since the beginning of the colony with the farmer and local butcher providing nearby customers with product. Health concerns were evident from the start and regulations for the butchering and sale of meat were promulgated in New France in 1706 and in Lower Canada in 1805. Activity grew to reach an industrial scale by the middle of the nineteenth century. Laing Packing and Provisions was founded in Montreal in 1852, F.W. Fearman began processing operations in Hamilton, Ontario and in Toronto William E. Davies established Canada's first large scale hog slaughter house in Toronto in 1874.
Drilling for oil was first undertaken in Canada in 1851 in Enniskillen Township in Lambton County by the International Mining and Manufacturing Company of Woodstock, Ontario. There was fierce competition for oil drilling, refining and distribution in southern Ontario until 1880 when 16 oil refineries merged to form Imperial Oil. This company was in turn acquired in 1898 by John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust. Oil discovery and development in the west dates from the early twentieth century with Imperial becoming a major player by 1914, at Turner Valley, Alberta and in 1920 at Norman Wells, NWT. British based corporations such as Royal Dutch Shell and Anglo-Persian Oil (British Petroleum) also became involved in oil exploration in the west at this time.
The refining of oil required sulfuric acid and two entrepreneurs, T.H. Smallman and W. Bowman, established the Canadian Chemical Company in London, Ontario in 1867 to manufacture this product for the region's oil industry. This marked the beginning of the mass production of heavy industrial chemicals in Canada.
The founding of the Canadian Manufacturers Association in 1871 was symptomatic of the growth of this sector of the economy with its related technologies.
The retail industry also experienced considerable innovation during these years at the hands of Timothy Eaton of Toronto. He offered for sale large numbers of "consumer" goods such as clothes, shoes and household items under the roof of one large store and sold then at fixed prices eliminating the concept of barter. This had become possible because of the recent stabalisation of the Canadian currency through the creation of the Canadian dollar. In 1884 he created the iconic Eaton's catalogue which formed the basis for his catalogue sales operation which allowed rural dwellers to order and receive by mail or train the products that were available to those who had access to his growing chain of giant urban department stores.
Coal gas public street lighting systems were introduced in Montreal in 1838 in Toronto in 1841 and in Halifax in 1850. Horse drawn street rail coaches for public transport were introduced in large Canadian cities about his time. Water distribution systems also became a feature of many Canadian cities during this period and their installation represented the most significant development in public health in Canada's history. Gravity feed systems were in operation in Saint John, New Brunswick in 1838 and Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1848. Steam powered pumping stations were in service in Toronto in 1841, Kingston, Ontario in 1850 and Hamilton, Ontario in 1859. Most large cities had steam powered municipal systems by the 1870s. Sewer systems necessarily followed and with them the flush toilet in the 1880s made popular by Crapper in Great Britain at that time.
There were dramatic developments in the field of medicine during these years. In 1834, a British surgeon with the Royal Navy suggested a link between sanitation and disease. This lead to the establishment of departments of public health across the country by the end of the century and provided an impetus to municipalities to supply clean water to their citizens as noted above. The use of the hypodermic syringe, invented in 1853 was quickly adopted by Canadian doctors. Two other medical innovations also appeared at this time, anesthetic and antiseptic. The use of ether and chlorophorm as anesthetics became common in England and the US after 1846. In Canada, Dr. David Parker of Halifax is credited as the first to use anesthesia during surgery. Antiseptic was being used in the operating rooms of the Montreal and Toronto General hospitals by 1869.
Notable works of civil engineering realized during this period included: the Reversing Falls Bridges, St. John, New Brunswick, 1853 and 1885, The Halifax Citadel, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1856, Victoria Bridge, Montreal, Quebec, 1859, Canada's first tunnel, the Brockville Railway Tunnel, Brockville, Ontario, 1869, the Kettle Creek Bridge, St. Thomas, Ontario, 1871 and the Grand Rapids Tramway, Grand Rapids, Manitoba, 1877.
The grand hotel made its first appearance during these years with the opening of the Clifton Hotel in Niagara Falls, Upper Canada in 1833. Other hotels of note included: St. Lawrence Hall, Montreal, 1851, the Queen's Hotel, Toronto, 1862 and the Tadoussac Hotel, Tadoussac, Quebec, 1865.
The Militia Act of 1855 passed by the Parliament of the United Provinces of Canada established the basis for the Canadian military. The act established seven batteries of artillery which grew to 10 field batteries and 30 batteries of garrison artillery by 1870. Weapons used by these units included the 7-pounder smooth bore muzzle loading and the 9-pounder Rifled Muzzle-Loading (RML) guns.
[edit]The Electric Age: Light, street railways, telephones, skyscrapers and central heating (1880 – 1920)
No event in the history of Canada has had a greater continuous, positive, daily impact on the daily lives of every man, woman and child than the introduction of electricity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Public electric lighting received its first Canadian demonstration in Manitoba at the Davis House hotel on Main Street, Winnipeg, March 12, 1873. In 1880, the Manitoba Electric and Gas Light Company was incorporated to provide public lighting and power and in 1893 the Winnipeg Electric Street Railway Company was established. A number of corporations offered commercially available power to Manitobans until Manitoba Hydro was formed in 1961. Halifax had electric lights installed by the Halifax Electric Light Company Limited in 1881. The Nova Scotia Power Commission was in turn established in 1919. After a number of corporate transactions the Nova Scotia Power Corporation was established in 1974. The year 1883 saw the introduction of electric street lighting in Victoria, the first city in British Columbia to get public electric power. Vancouver got electricity in 1887. New companies joined the electric business in the twentieth century and after a number of corporate mergers and nationalizations, BC-Hydro, was formed 1962. In 1884, the Royal Electric Company began offering commercial power to Montreal. After a chaotic half century the electric companies in that province were acquired by the Quebec Hydro Electric Commission (Hydro-Québec) between 1944 and 1963. Also in 1884, Saint John, New Brunswick was the first city in that province to have commercially available power delivered by the Saint John Electric Light Company. Other companies entered the field and in 1917 merged to form the New Brunswick Power Company. In 1948 the assets of this company were purchased by the New Brunswick Electric Power Commission. The Toronto Power House and the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario began offering electricity to that city and the province respectively in 1906. The Commission became Ontario Hydro in 1974. Edmonton's first power company was established in 1891 and placed street lights along the city's main street, Jasper Avenue. The power company was purchased by the Town of Edmonton in 1902 and to this day remains a municipal government enterprise known as EPCOR. Electricity in Saskatchewan was provided by Saskatchewan Power Commission established in 1929. It became the Saskatchewan Power Corporation in 1949 while abbreviated name SaskPower was officially adopted in 1987.
The telephone began to make its mark in Canada, modestly at first. The telephone system of the Bell Telephone Company of Canada was established in 1881. Telephone penetration rates had reached 1.2% of the population by 1901, 3.9% by 1910 and 7.6% by 1915. The telephone system of Maritime Telephone and Telegraph, Halifax was established in 1910. The Trans-Canada Telephone System providing Canadians with the first all-Canadian transcontinental telephone connection was established in 1932.
The bicycle made its appearance at this time. The "boneshaker", with the pedals connected directly to the front wheel appeared in the Maritimes in 1866 followed by the penny-farthing bicycle after 1876. The machine evolved and was improved with the adition of pneumatic tires, a central crank for the pedals and a coasting back wheel with brake. The increasing popularity of bicycles lead to the formation of a national bicycle club, the Canadian Wheelsman's in London, Ontario in 1879. In 1899 five important Canadian bicycle manufacturere, Gendron, Goold, Massey-Harris, H.A. Lozier and Welland Vale, combined to form the Canadian Cycle and Motor Company with 1700 employees and an annual production of 40,000 bicycles.
In 1891, the newly formed Canadian Pacific Steamship Lines began offering trans-Pacific steamship service from Vancouver with three large steel-hulled ships, the "Empress", liners, India, China and Japan. From 1903, additional Empress liners were being used for service across the Atlantic. One of these, the Empress of Ireland, sunk after a collision in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1914 with the loss of 1000 lives. A fleet of smaller "Princess" steam ships were used for coastal service and the Great Lakes. Of note is the fact that Canadian Pacific, with its combination of steam ships and steam locomotives built a transportation empire that spanned more that half the globe. Few other companies anywhere in the world at that time could boast of such an accomplishment. Canada Steamship Lines, founded in 1913, as the result of the amalgamation of other companies, has offered cargo shipping services on the Great Lakes since that time.
The first airplane flight in Canada took place on 23 February, 1909 when pilot J.A.D. McCurdy became airborn in the AEA Silver Dart and flew almost a kilometer over the frozen Bras d'Or Lake in Nova Scotia. Canada's first aerodrome (airport) was located at Long Branch Toronto and operations there began modestly in 1915. It was here that the Curtiss Aircraft company manufactured the Curtis JN-3 Jenny for the Royal Flying Corps Canada. Air stations were also built at Halifax and Sydney, Nova Scotia in 1918 for anti-submarine operations.
Mining also became significant industry during this period. The invention of the electric dymano, electroplating and steel in the 1870s created a strong demand for copper and nickel. Hard rock mining became a practical consideration because of the concurrent development of the hard rock drill and dynamite. A copper mine was established in Orford County Quebec in 1877, by the Orford Company while the Canadian Copper Company was founded in 1886 to exploit copper deposits at Sudbury made accessible by the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The ore from that mine was found to contain nickel as well as copper and a technique known as the Orford process using nitrate cake (acid sodium sulphate ) was developed to separate the metals. The International Nickel Company (Inco) was established in 1902 through the fusion of the two companies. A refinery using the Orford process was built in Port Colborne, Ontario in 1918 and then moved to Copper Cliff, Ontario where it was replaced by th matte flotation process in 1948. Hard rock gold mining became practical in 1887, with the development of the potassium cyanidation process which was used to separate the gold from the ore, by the Scott MacArthur. This technique was first used in Canada at the Mikado Mine in the Lake-of-the-Woods Region again made acdcessible by the CPR. The CPR also provided access the B.C. interior where lead, copper, silver and gold ores had been discovered in the Rossland area in 1891. The ores were transported to Trail, B.C. where they were roasted. After CPR built the Crowsnest Pass it purchased the Trail roasting facility and in 1899 built a blast furnace to smelt lead ore. In 1902 the first electrolytic lead refining plant using the Betts Cell Process began operation in Trail. The Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada Ltd. was founded as a CPR subsidiary and began to develop the Sullivan Mine with its lead, zinc and silver ores, in Kimberley in 1909.
The pulp and paper industry also developed during these years. The sulphite pulp process developed in the US in 1866 became the basis for the Canadian industry. The first sulphite pulp mill in Canada, the Halifax Wood Fibre Company, was established in Sheet Harbour, Nova Scotia in 1885. Others followed including plants in Cornwall, Ontario, 1888, Hull, Quebec, 1889, Chatham, Quebec, 1889, the biggest, the Riordon Company in Merritton, Ontario in 1890 and in Hawkesbury, Ontario, 1898. The closely related sulphite pulp process was introduced in Canada in 1907 when the Brompton Pulp & Paper Company began operation in East Angus, Quebec. This process dominates the industry to this day. The pulp slurry was fed in a continuous process into a paper making machine that flattened, pressed and dried it into newsprint on huge rolls many metres wide and containing thousands of meters of paper.
New printing technologies and the availability of this new material, newsprint, had a dramatic effect on the newspaper industry. By the 1880s the rotary press had evolved into a high speed machine and with the use of streotyping allowed the production of large numbers daily papers. In 1876 daily newspaper circulation in Canada's nine major urban centres stood at 113,000 copies. By 1883 it had more than doubled. The introduction of typecasting machines such as the linotype in the 1890s lead to an expansion in size of the indiviual paper from eight to 12 pages to 32 or 48 pages. This was also made possible by the availability of cheap newsprint manufactured in huge continuous rolls that could be fitted directly into the high speed presses.
The distillation of products from wood characterized the transition from the use of natural chemical products to that of fully synthetic products. The Rathburn Company of Toronto began to produce distillates including, wood alcohol and calcium acetate, used to make acetic acid or acteone, in 1897. The Standard Chemical Company of Toronto established in 1897, initiated the production of acetic acid in 1899 and formaldehyde, from the oxidation of wood alcohol, in 1909. This later product was an essential element in the production of the fully synthetic, phenol-formaldehyde plastic.
The wheat economy developed on the prairies during these years. Agriculture in that region had begun around the Red River Colony in 1812, based on French Canadian survey techniques for land division and Scottish farming practices. The "infield" consisting of long narrow strips of land rising from the Red River Valley gave way to the "outfield" of pasture lands. Confederation spurred interest in western agriculture with the government of Canada subsequently purchasing Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Company in 1870 and supressing Metis resistance to eastern intervention with armed force that included the use of the gatling gun in 1885. Conditions were best suited for the growing of wheat but a naturally dry climate and a short growing season as well as low grain prices made the 1890s difficult. However the difficulties were overcome. Reduced rail transportation costs which helped ease the burden of getting wheat to market and a rise in wheat prices served to encourage the development of the industry. The introduction in 1907 of the Canadian developed genetically modified Marquis wheat with its hardy growing characteristics helped overcome arduous climatic conditions. Immigration stimulated by the policies of Federal Minister Clifford Sifton provided labour for increased production. The introduction of steam and gas tractors and the threshing machine also caused a dramatic increase in crop yield. Between 1901 and 1931 land under cultivation on the prairies grew from 1.5 to 16.4 hectares. In the 1870s and 1880s ranching gained prominance as well in southern Sasketchewan and Alberta where dry and even drought like conditions were eventually overcome with irrigation after the introduction of irrigation in 1894.
The growth of western agriculture stimulated the growth of the eastern farm implement industry. Companies such as Bell, Waterloo, Lobsinger, Hergott and Sawyer-Massey were soon shipping their large metal threshing machines and other types of equipment, via the CPR to western farms. Arguably the most notable of these corporations was Massey-Harris Co. Ltd. of Toronto, created in 1891 through the merger of Massey Manufacturing Co. (1847) and A. Harris, Son & Co Ltd. (1857) which became the largest manufacturer of farm machinery in the British Empire. Innovation was the key to the company's success, highlighted by best selling machines like the Toronto Light Binder at the turn of the century and the Wallis Tractor in 1927.
Railway construction in the latter nineteenth century created a huge demand for steel. The Bessemer furnace at the Algom steel mill in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario went into operation in 1902. The Montreal Rolling Mills Co, The Hamilton Steel and Iron Co, the Canada Screw Company, the Canada Bolt and Nut Company, and the Dominion Wire Manufacturing Company were consolidated in 1910 to form the The Steel Company of Canada headquartered in Toronto. With mills located in Hamilton and other cities it was the largest producer of steel in Canada for most of the century. Its competitor, the Dominion Steel Castings Company Limited founded in 1912, renamed the Dominion Foundries and Steel Company in 1917 and Dofasco in 1980, had its Hamilton facilities located next to those of Stelco.
Portland cement was imported from England to Canada in barrels during the nineteenth century complimenting the modest production of hydraulic cement that began in in Hull, Quebec in 1830. By 1889 there were noted increases in the output of cement in Hull and other cement factories were built in Montreal, Napanee and Shallow Lake Ontario and in Vancouver in 1893.
The very popular and practical tin can was introduced during this period. In the 1880s George Dunning built Canada's first canning factory in Prince Edward County, Ontario, for the canning of fruits and vegetables. By 1900 there were eight such factories in Canada, four of which were in that same county and within a few years canning factories were found all across the country. In the fourties, high-temperature canning, which sterilized the contents of the can and permitted long-term storage, was introduced.
Business and public administration was improved and simplified with the introduction of the typewriter which acquired a familiar standaridized form by about 1910. Features included the "qwerty" keyboad, the typebar, ribbon, cylinder and carriage return lever. Popular models in Canada were manufactured by the U.S. Remington and Underwood companies among others. The introduction of the mechanical desk top calculator complimented that of the typewriter. Most machines used in Canada we manufactured in the U.S. by companies such as Friden, Monroe, and SCM/Marchant.
The techniques of film making were introduced to Canada in 1897. In that year Manitoban James Freer made a series of films about farm life in western Canada. In 1889-1899 the Canadian Pacific Railway sponsored a successful tour by Freer to present these films in Britain to encourage immigration from that country for the development of the prairies and therefore boost the business of the railway. This inspired the railway to finance the production of additional films and hire a British firm, which created a Canadian arm, the Bioscope Company of Canada and produced 35 films about Canadian life. In 1910 the CPR engaged the Edison Company from the US to produce a further series of 10 films about the prairies. A number of Canadian firms became involved in feature film making with little success. These included: The Canadian Bioscope Company, Halifax, Nova Scotia, which produced Evangeline, Canada's first feature in 1913, the British American Film Company, Montreal, which produced Battle of the Long Sault, 1913, the Conness Till Company, Toronto, 1914-1915 and the All Red Feature Company, Windsor, Ontario, producing The War Pigeon, 1914.
In Montreal in 1900, Emile Berliner, inventor of the gramophone sound recording technique, established the Berliner Gramaphone Company and began to manufacture the first phonograph records in Canada. First produced were seven inch single sided discs, followed by 10 inch in 1901, 12 inch in 1903 and the two sided disc in 1908. These discs were played on a gramophone, also manufactured by Berliner, which produced sound through purely mechanical means.
The introduction of the medical x-ray during this period dramatically improved medical diagnostics. Discovered by Roentgen in Germany in 1895, x-ray units were in operation at the Toronto and Montreal General Hospitals by the turn of the century. The sphygmomanometer or blood pressure meter, that familiar device employing a cuff placed around the patients arm, found its way into the office of most Canadian doctors in the early twentieth century. The spread of bovine tuberculosis a crippling childhood disease, was curbed through the introduction of pasturized milk in Montreal and Toronto at the turn of the century. This practice was soon followed by the dairy industry across Canada. Bayer began marketing the wonder drug of the age, Aspirin, in 1899. It was an instant success and quickly became popular in Canada. Originally sold as a powder, the tablet was introduced in 1914. A very important step in the mass production of medical products was taken that same year when Dr. John Fitzgerald founded an institution that would be named the Connaught Laboraties in 1917, at the University of Toronto. Initially the laboratories produced vaccines and antiooxins for smallpox, tetanus, diphtheria and rabies. In 1922 after the Nobel Prize winning work on Dr. Banting and Dr. Best the facility began to manufacture insulin.
Notable works of civil engineering realized during these years included: the Lakehead Terminal Grain Elevators, 1882, the Naden First Graving Dock, Esquimalt, British Columbia, 1887, the St. Clair Railway Tunnel, Sarnia, Ontario, 1890 and the Alexandra Bridge, Ottawa, Ontario - Hull, Quebec, 1900. The new century witnessed the completion of: the Lethbridge Viaduct, Lethbridge, Alberta, 1909, the Spiral Tunnels, Hector to Field BC, 1909, the St. Andrew's Lock and Dam, Lockport, Manitoba, 1910, the Brooks Aqueduct, Brooks, Albert, 1914, the Quebec Bridge, Ste-Foy, Quebec, 1916, the Connaught Tunnel, Rogers Pass, BC, 1916, the Ogden Point Breakwater and Docks, Victoria, British Columbia, 1917, the Prince Edward Viaduct, Toronto, Ontario, 1919, the Shoal Lake Aqueduct, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 1919 and the Trent-Severn Waterway, Ontario, 1920.Baseball in Canada received its first permanent home with the construction in 1877 of Tecumseh Park, built in London, Ontario for the London Tecumsehs baseball team. Other fields followed including Sunlight Park, in Toronto, 1886, Atwater Park, Montreal, in 1890 and Hanlan's Point Ball Field, 1897, in Toronto home of the Maple Leafs.
It was the age of the skyscraper. The first in Canada was the eight floor New York Life Insurance Co Building in Montréal, 1887-89, although it did not have a steel frame. The first self-supporting steel framed skyscraper in Canada was the Robert Simpson Department Store at the corner of Yonge and Queen in Toronto with its six floors and electric elevators, built in 1895. The race to build the tallest structure in the British Empire set off a competition among cities across Canada. Successive record holders included: the Traders Bank of Canada, 15 floors, Yonge St, Toronto, 1905, the Dominion Building, 13 floors, Vancouver, 1910, World (Sun) Tower, 17 floors, Vancouver, 1912, the Canadian Pacific Building, 16 floors, Toronto, 1913, the Royal Bank, 20 floors, Toronto, 1915, the Royal Bank, Montreal, 1928, the Royal York Hotel, Toronto, 1929 and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Toronto, in 1931.
A number of grand hotels also opened during these years including: the Banff Springs Hotel, Banff, Alberta, 1888, the Algonquin, St. Andrews, New Brunswick, 1889, the Chateau Frontenac, Quebec, City, 1893, the Queen's, Montreal, 1893, the "new" Chateau Lake Louise, Lake Louise, Alberta, 1894, the Manoir Richelieu, Point-au-Pic, Quebec, 1899, the Royal Muskoka Hotel, Muskoka, Ontario, 1901, the King Edward Hotel, Toronto, 1903, the Royal Alexandra Hotel, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 1906, the Empress Hotel, Victoria, British Columbia, 1908, the Ritz-Carleton, Montreal, 1912, the Chateau Laurier, Ottawa, Ontario, 1912, the Fort Garry Hotel, Winnipg, 1913, the Palliser Hotel, Calgary, Alberta, 1914 and the Hotel MacDonald, Edmonton, 1915.
The construction of skyscrapers, grand hotels and other large buildings lead to the development of central heating, an essential feature in Canada's cold climate. Up to that time large buildings and homes were heated with fireplaces and iron stoves that used wood or coal as fuel. The construction of large multi-story buildings made this impractical. Fireplaces and stoves on the lower floors would have long flues and would not draw properly. On the upper floors it would be necessary to transport fuel and to remove ashes up and down many flights of stairs or with an elevator. Central heating solved these problems. In 1832 Angier March Perkins a British inventor developed a steam heating system for domestic use. This inspired the use of closed circuit hot water systems for large buildings. A metal furnace in the basement using wood or coal was used to heat water in a tank which was in turn was circulated by an electric pump through a system of iron pipes throughout the building to radiators in rooms where it lost its heat to the ambient air. The cooler water then returned to the water heater with the help of gravity where it was reheated and recirculated. Large systems could be used to heat several buildings in a city block. In the twentieth century such systems were used to provide heat to small communities such as university campuses, northern industrial towns or military bases. Smaller systems were used in private homes. Another technique, the “convection method” was introduced to domestic dwellings at this time. A metal furnace in the basement, using wood or coal as fuel, would heat air in a plenum which would rise by convection through a series of metal ducts into the rooms of the house above. When the air cooled it would fall to the floor and return to the plenum through another series of metal return ducts. In later years an electric fan was used to “force” the hot air from the plenum through the ducts.
Suburbia made its first appearance on the edge of the commercial/industrial core of most large cities. The growing popularity of the automobile and the extension of electric street railways radiating from the city centre provided transport for a newly affluent middle class. Houses which were often based on common designs of the bungalow type and were sited away from the street with a front and back yard and usually a back ally which served as a service route for coal, ice, milk and bread delivery. Houses were often made of brick and built with a full basement which provided space for a coal fired furnace for central heating. Plaster walls and hardwood floors were standard. They were equipped with all the modern conveniences including electricity, an electric or gas stove, an ice box, which was eventually replaced by an electric refrigerator, running water, a flush toilet and a sewer pipe running underground to the street.
In 1885 the newly introduced gatling gun was first used by Canadian troops during the Riel Rebellion. The 12-pounder field gun was used by Canadian soldiers in the Boer War. The 13 and 18 pound muzzle loading gun with modern recoil and sighting systems were acquired at the turn of the century. A notable acquisition was the first breech loading gun, in Canadian use, the 13-pounder quick-firing (Q.F.) and 18-pounder Q.F. firing shrapnel and high explosive rounds, in 1905. The Royal Canadian Navy founded in 1910, took possession of two tired steel-hulled former Royal Navy cruisers, the Rainbow, in 1910, stationed Esquimalt on the west coast and the Niobe at Halifax on the east coast.
The turn of the century saw the introduction of other technologies such as central heating, the cinema, recorded sound, concrete and steel construction, the assembly line, skyscrapers, elevators, escalators and military aircraft.
A reflection of this intense engineering activity is seen in the founding of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering in 1887.
[edit]Killing Machines I: Artillery and machine guns (1914 – 1918)
In Europe the most deadly weapon by far was the artillery piece. The Canadian Army acquired hundreds of guns during the war and used them with deadly effect on the German army. Guns included : the 13-pounder with the RCHA, the “turned up” anti-aircraft 13-pounder mounted on a truck, the 18-pounder and 4.5-inch howitzer in the field artillery, the 60-pounder, 6-inch, 8-inch and 9.2-inch heavy guns in garrison, 12-inch howitzers and 15-inch howitzers and 6-inch Newton mortars and 9.45-inch mortars. Of note is the fact that these weapons were moved about the battlefield with teams of horses. The infantry took the machine gun into battle for the first time and was equipped with the Colt machine gun, the Vickers machine gun and the Lewis machine gun. The infantry also used the .303 rifle, including the much despised Canadian Ross Mark III from 1913 to 1916 and the British Lee Enfield (SMLE) Mark III, from 1916.
The Royal Canadian Navy was a coastal defence organization during the First World War, equipped with a rag-tag collection of small ships that patrolled the east coast for German submarines. Built in shipyards in Ontario and Quebec notable classes of vessel included: the TR 1 to 60 series of large minesweeping trawlers based on the Royal Navy Castle Class, the C.D. 1 to 100 series of wooden-hulled drifters used for minesweeping and patrol duties and 12 Battle Class trawlers armed with a single small deck gun in the bow.
Canadians flew in large numbers with the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Air Force during the war, but Canada did not provide any combat aircraft of note in that conflict. The Royal Flying Corps Canada in 1917 established a number of bases at and around Camp Borden in southern Ontario to train pilots for the front in Europe. To meet the need for aircraft Curtiss of Toronto supplied hundreds of Curtiss Jenny training planes using assembly line techniques, making it the first mass produced aircraft in Canada.
The wrist watch was introduced during the war as a tool to help the precise timing of attacks. It was used by Canadian gunners, infantry and airmen. After the war, returning soldiers now civilians, continued to use their watches as part of their daily routine and it became popular with other civilian men and women.
Canada produced vast quantities of explosives in the form of Cordite, nitrocellulose and trinitrotoluene (TNT) during the Great War. Cordite was manufactured at Beloeil and Nobel, Quebec, by Canadian Explosives Limited and at Nobel by British Cordite Limited. Nitrocellulose was produced by a number of companies including, Aetna Chemical Company of Drummondville, Quebec, British Chemical Company at Trenton, Ontario and O'Brien Munitions Limited of Renfrew, Ontario. TNT was produced in Desoronto starting in 1915.
[edit]The Automobile Age: Cars, planes and radios (1920 – 1950)
The post-WWI era saw the introduction of a plethora of technologies including: the car, paved roads, refrigeration, the telephone, radio, air service, air navigation, hard runways, the medical X-ray and wonder drugs and powered farming, mining and forestry equipment.
The Ford Motor Company of Canada, founded in Windsor, Ontario in 1904, was the first major company to introduce the automobile to Canada. It manufactured cars in that city and was the first company to use the assembly line manufacturing technique in Canada. In 1918 the McLaughlin Motor Company, Ltd. of Oshawa, Ontario and the Chevrolet Motor Company of Canada Ltd. merged to form General Motors of Canada and became a subsidiary of the US-owned General Motors Corporation. The company manufactured Buicks, Oldsmobiles and Oaklands on its assembly line in Oshawa. Chrysler Canada, established in Windsor began vehicle assembly in that city in 1936. The car was a hit with Canadians. In 1904 there were 535 cars in Ontario, by 1913 there were 50,000 in Canada, by 1916, 123,000, by 1922, 513,000 and by 1930, 1,076,000. As the car gained in popularity local automobile clubs were founded. In 1913 nine of these clubs from across the country got together to form the Canadian Automobile Association.
Cars required gasoline and the first service station in Canada was built in Vancouver on Smythe Street in 1907. Most early stations were informal curb-side affairs and it was not until the twenties that the filling station as we know it began to appear with Imperial Oil building architect designed stations for its customers. By 1928 Imperial had evolved three standard filling station designs for different locations, business district, urban residential and small town/leased property.
The popularity of the car also had a dramatic impact on urban infrastructure and roads in particular. The dirt, gravel, tar and occasionally cobblestone that characterized most city roads was inadequate for the automobile and towns and cities across Canada began paving projects creating roads of asphalt and concrete that were more suitable. The traffic light was also introduced to help regulate the congestion that began to arise in the twenties especially in larger cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
The car began to compete with the street railway in the thirties and forties and many cities reduced or abandonned streetcar service. New suburbs were built without streetcar lines and urban deisel powered buses were used to provide public transport. Only a handful of cities continued to maintain streetcar service into the fifties and beyond, most notable Toronto which to this day has a very elaborate public streetcar network.
The auto-craze gave rise to a booming do-it-yourself car maintenance and repair movement with businesses specializing in car parts and tools becoming popular. One of the notable firms in this field, the familiar, Canadian Tire, began operations in Toronto in 1922 and has become one of Canada's largest retailers.
In the twenties and thirties the Canadian north was developed with the help of hundreds of small float equipped "bush planes" used to fly men and supplies to mining, forestry, trapping and fishing camps. The first commercial air passenger flight in Canada was made in 1920, when two bush pilots flew a fur a buyer from Winnipeg to The Pas, Manitoba. National passenger air service was introduced by Trans-Canada Airlines beginning in 1937 and Canadian Pacific Airlines starting in 1942.
Of note was the attempt by Britain to establish an airship service between that country and Canada and test flight by the British built dirigible the R-100 was made in July 1930. After a successful crossing of the Atlantic the giant craft moored at a mast especially constructed for that purpose at St.Hubert near Montreal. The ship flew on to Toronto before finally returning to Britain. However technical problems with the craft prevented further flights and the idea of a Trans-Atlantic lighter-than-air passenger service was abandoned.
To facilitate the development of a national aviation service the Government of Canada created a kind of national highway in the sky called the Trans-Canada Airway consisting of airports, radio and weather services and lighting for night flying at various locations across Canada. Construction started in 1929 but was slowed by the depression. The western leg from Vancouver to Winnipeg was completed in 1938. The section from Winnipeg to Toronto and Montreal was inaugurated in 1939 and the extensions to Moncton, Halifax and St. John's completed in 1940, 1941 and 1942 rspectively.
In Montreal, XWA (now CFCF) became the first commercial AM radio broadcaster in the world. The following year CKAC became the first French language AM radio broadcaster in Canada. State operated national radio broadcasting chains were established beginning in the late twenties including: the CNR National Radio Network, 1927, the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission Radio Network, 1932 and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio Network, 1936. Private independent AM broadcast operations sprouted like mushrooms in cities large and small across Canada during the thirties and forties. Canadian Marconi and Northern Electric manufactured radios for home use, the first mass produced electronic equipment in Canada.
With the rail building era coming to an end, the rise of the automotive industry in southern Ontario provided the Hamilton steel mills of the Steel Company of Canada and the Dominion Foundries and Steel Company with a new market. Dofasco introduced the Basic Oxygen Process for steel-making at its mills in Hamilton in 1954. In the latter part of the century, Algoma built coke oven batteries and blast furnaces, the open hearth and Bessemer steel-making processes were phased out and plant for the basic oxygen steel-making process was installed.
Another metal, aluminum also became popular during these years. In 1902, attracted by the availability of cheap hydro power, the Aluminum Company of America established a Canadian subsidiary, the Northern Aluminum Company at Shawinigan Falls, Quebec to produce that metal using the electrolysis technique. Corporate changes lead to the creation of the Aluminum Company of Canada (Alcan)in 1925 and in 1926 the company constructed a giant aluminum smelter at a place it named Arvida, Quebec, that location again being chosen because of the availability of cheap hydro electricity as well as the proximity of a deep-water port at Bagotville for large ships carrying bauxite or aluminum ore. World War II acceleratd the demand for aluminum the principle material in aircraft production and the Arvida facility wasw greatly expanded. In 1958 another huge smelter was built at Kitimat, British Columbia.
The growth in popularity of the car also created a need for rubber for automobile tires. Accelerated by the emergency of World War II a substantial synthetic rubber production industry was established at Sarnia, Ontario in the early forties. The refining of crude oil provided the raw resources for the manufacture of synthetic rubber and the oil refineries in Sarnia provided a ready source of raw materials. In particular, the Suspensiod crackers operated there by Imperial Oil produced large quantities of hydrocarbon gases. These were used by a new Crown enterprise, Polymer Corporation Ltd. created in 1942, and associated private companies, St. Clair Processing Corporation Ltd., Dow Chemical of Canada Ltd., and Canadian Synthetic Rubber Ltd., itself a subsidiary of four Canadian rubber companies, Dominion, Firestone, goodyear and Goodrich, to produce both GR-S and butyl type synthetic rubber. Initially production was destined for war time use on military vehicles but in post-war years output was quickly redirected to civilian automobile production.
Plastics were also introduced during these years. In Toronto, Plastics Ltd., began to produce Bakelite soon after its invention in 1909. Another firm, Canadian Electro Products of Shawinigan, Quebec invented polyvinyl acetate which was used in copolymer resins and water based paints. The wartime production of nitrocellulose naturally lead to the manufacture at Shawinigan in 1932, of transparent cellulose film used for packaging.
The closely related synthetic textile industry appeared in the years just after the First War. The production of artificial silk, more properly known as viscose rayon, made from bleached wood pulp, began in Cornwall, Ontario in 1925, in a factory built by Courtaulds (Canada). A year later Celanese Canada began making acetate yarn in a new plant in Drummondville, Quebec. DuPont Canada was the first to manufacture nylon yarn in Canada at its factory in Kingston, Ontario in 1942. This secret material was initially used for parachutes but following the war was used to make nylon stockings.
The industrial production of bread became notable during these years. At the beginning of the twentieth century it is estimated that only about 8% of Canadian wives bought bread commercially. However the industrial production of bread grew impressively and by the 1960’s, 95% of homemakers purchased bread commercially. One bakery of note The Canada Bread Company Limited was founded in 1911 as the result of the amalgamation of five smaller companies. Industrial bakeries such as this were characterized by large machines for the mixing of dough and the use of slow moving conveyor belts that transported thousands of metal pans of this dough through giant ovens where they were baked. Large automated packaging machines wrapped the finished loaves at great speed. Improvements in transportation and packaging technology throughout the decades allowed a shrinking number of bakeries to serve every larger markets. In 1939 there were about 3200 commercial bakeries across the country but by 1973 the figure stood at 1700, while in 1981 there were 1400.
Meat packing grew to become Canada's most important food processing industry during this period. In Calgary, Alberta, in 1890, Pat Burns established P. Burns and Company which became the largest meat processor in western Canada. In Toronto in 1896 the innovative Harris Abbatoir was established to export chilled sides of beef to the British market. The industry grew rapidly during the war supplying meat to Canadian and British troops overseas. However it underwent a period of consolidation in the twenties. The loss of markets lead to the merger of two major players, William Davies and the Harris Abattoir to form Canada Packers in Toronto. By 1930, "The Big Three", meat packers in Canada were Canada Packers, Swift Canadian and P.Burns and Company in Calgary, Alberta.
The increasing popularity of the electric refrigerator in Canadian restaurants and homes made in practical for manufacturers to make available various frozen foods. The first such offering, a frozen strawberry pack was produced in Montreal and Ottawa beginning in 1932 by Heeney Frosted Foods Ltd.
The Canadian film industry experienced mixed success during the twenties and thirties. Film maker Ernest Shipman produced five features between 1920 and 1923 before meeting with financial failure. The successful Canadian owned Allen Theatre chain attained an important place in the exhibition market but was taken over by Famous Players Canadian Corporation in 1923. Associated Screen News in Montreal produced two notable newsreel series, Kinograms in the twenties and Canadian Cameo from 1932 to 1953. The thirties saw the regular production of short films by the newly created Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau. British law encouraging filmmaking in the Commonwealth lead Hollywood to circumvent the spirit of the concept by establishing film production companies to make American films in Calgary, Toronto, Montreal and Victoria. These companies produced a small number of features but closed operations when the British law was changed to exclude their films. in the late thirties Canadian Odeon opened a new cinema chain to compete with Famous Players.
The making of documentary films grew tremendously during World War II with the creation of the National Film Board of Canada in 1939. By 1945 it was one of the major film production studios in the world with a staff of nearly 800 and over 500 films to its credit including the very popular, The World in Action and Canada Carries On, propaganda series with films released monthly.
The grand hotel continued to make a mark with new structures including: the Bigwinn Inn, Muskoka, Ontario, 1920, the Jasper Park Lodge, Jasper, Alberta, 1922, the Hotel Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland, 1926, the Hotel Saskatchewan, Regina, Saskatchewan, 1927, the Prince of Wales Hotel, Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, 1927, the Lord Nelson Hotel, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1928, The Pines, Digby, Nova Scotia, 1929, the Royal York Hotel, Toronto, 1929, the Chateau Montebello, Montebello, Quebec, 1930, the Nova Scotian Hotel, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1930, the Charlottetown Hotel, Charlottetown, P.E.I. and the Bessborough Hotel, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, 1935.
In 1875 in Montreal a McGill student, J. Creighton, established the basic rules for hockey as we know it today. The world's first facility dedicated to hockey, the Westmount Arena was built in Montreal in 1898 while the first industrial refrigeration equipment for making artificial ice in Canada was installed in 1911 by Frank and Lester Patrick for their new arenas in Vancouver and Victoria. With the development of wide span roof structures the construction of large indoor ice rink stadiums became possible. These two technologies were used to build the Montreal Forum, home of the legendary Montreal Canadiens hockey team, in Montreal in 1924 and Maple Leaf Gardens home of the Toronto Maple Leafs, in that city in 1931. Baseball's facilities were upgraded with construction of the new Maple Leaf Stadium on Lakeshore Drive in Toronto in 1926 and the De Lormier Downs Stadium (Hector Racine Stadium), in Montreal in 1927. Civic Stadium, now Ivor Wynne Stadium, was built in Hamilton, Ontario in 1930, to host the British Empire Games held there that year.
Other notable engineering works of the period included: the R.C. Harris Filtration Plant, Toronto, Ontario, 1926, the Ocean Terminals, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1928, the Ambassador Bridge, Windsor-Detroit, 1929, the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel, 1930, the Broadway Bridge, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, 1932, the Lion's Gate Bridge, Vancouver, British Columbia, 1938, the Queen Elizabeth Way, Ontario, 1939 and the Alaska Highway, Dawson Creek, British Columbia, 1942.
Medical treatment benefited from the introduction of the electrocardiograph, used to diagnose heart problems, in large hospitals in the late twenties. There were also important innovations with respect to the treatment of epilepsy during this period. In Montreal, Dr. Wilder Penfield, with a grant from the US Rockefeller Foundation founded the Montreal Neurological Institute at the Royal Victoria Hospital, in 1934 to study and treat epilepsy and other neurogical diseases.
The military suffered a huge decline in the twenties and thirties. The Royal Canadian Air Force founded in 1924 was largely a bush and float plane operation. Only in the thirties did it acquire a modest combat capability with a handful of British Siskin fighters and a squadron of Hurricanes as the clouds of war grew menacing. The Royal Canadian Navy, perpetually starved for equipment acquired its first custom-built ships, the destroyers HMCS Saguenay and HMCS Skeena on May 22, 1931. In 1929 the army began to retire its horses and was issued four 6-wheeled Leyland tractors in 1929 to tow its 60-pound guns. Four 3-inch 20-cwt anti-aircraft guns were taken on strength in 1937.
As a reflection of this intense and diverse engineering activity, the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers was established in 1936. This organization was renamed Engineers Canada in 2007.
[edit]Killing Machines II: Bombers, tanks, corvettes, radar, and explosives (1939 – 1945)
Under the emergency of World War II and almost from a standing start, the government of Canada acquired an impressive array of war machines and became a major combatant.
Home defence came first. An integrated air-defence system, based on the one built by the RAF during the Battle of Britain was established. Radar chains were constructed on the east and west coasts to guide the squadrons of Hurricane fighters based there, to enemy targets. Fortunately none came! Within the context of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, dozens of airfields were built across Canada and thousands of training aircraft purchased to train aircrew for the commonwealth nations.
Off the east coast the Royal Canadian Navy acquired hundreds of corvettes to hunt for and kill Nazi submarines. The RCAF joined the hunt with Hudson, Canso and later long range Liberator bombers. The merchant marine took possession of hundreds of cargo ships including the versatile Fleet and Fort series of vessels to deliver vital supplies to Britain.
In Britain a squadron of RCAF Hurricane fighters participated in the Battle of Britain. RCAF squadrons equipped with Wellington, Halifax and later Lancaster bombers rained destruction on the Nazis throughout the war.
The Canadian Army, RCAF and RCN were an essential part of the invasion at Normandy on D-Day. Royal Canadian Navy landing craft carried Canadian Army troops, tanks and artillery ashore while RCAF Typhoon fighter-bombers pounded the German 7th Army. RCAF Spitfires patrolled the skies for enemy fighters and RCAF heavy bombers were used for tactical bombing.
Radar and explosives were an essential part of all this.
The war created an urgent demand for medical drugs which were put to vital use in the treatment of wounded soldiers. Mallinckrodt Chemical Works Ltd. of Montreal began to produce sulfa drugs in 1939. The Connaught Laboratories and Ayerst, McKenna& Harrison of Toronto were innovators in the mass production of penicillin using the surface culture method starting in 1943. In Montreal Merck & Company as well as Ayerst, produced the drug using the deep fementation process. Connaught also produced dried blood plasma.
The cinema and radio went to war as well. The National Film Board of Canada produced its, "Canada Carries On", series of propaganda films and the Government of Canada beamed French-language short-wave radio programmes across the Atlantic to the French in the hopes of inciting them to overthrow the Vichy regime.
On the home front Canadian industry using the assembly line techniques pioneered by Ford Canada, General Motors of Canada, Chrysler Canada, Canadian Marconi, Northern Electric and others, produced thousands of aircraft, tanks, guns, vehicles, small arms, ships, radar and radio sets and huge quantities of shells, bullets and explosives.
[edit]The Television Age: TV, nuclear weapons, atomic energy, and computers (1950 – 1980)
The years following WWII introduced even more innovations including: television, the transistor radio, synthetic fabrics, plastic, computers, super highways, shopping centres, atomic energy, nuclear weapons, transcontinental energy pipelines, long range electric transmission, transcontinental microwave networks, fast food, chemical fertilizer, insecticides, the birth control pill, jet aircraft, cable TV, colour TV, the instant replay, the audio cartridge and audio cassette, satellite communications and continental air defense systems.
Television was introduced to Canada by CBC, first in the French language by CBFT in Montreal on 6 September 1952 and two days later, in English, in Toronto by CBLT. By 1958 the CBC had established its transcontinental television network. The CTV network went on the air in 1961 and colour TV came to Canada in the late sixties. Cable TV, which began in the early sixties, as a way of bringing US border TV stations to Canadians living beyond the range of "rabbit ear" reception, rapidly gained popularity as the decade progressed. FM radio was phased in gradually during the sixties and seventies. In the early eigthties Canadian Satellite Communications (Cancom) assembled a package of Canadian and American television channels which it offered to remote communities throughout the northern regions of Canada. The signals were distributed by Anik satellite and made available to the local populace through cable. By the later part of the decade several hundred communities were using this service.
The arrival of television created a demand for programming. Initially, many shows were produced live and broadcast directly from the camera in the studio. Film was also used. There were large numbers of Hollywood films available for broadcast and the broadcasters, CBC and CTV, also produced some of their programming on film for eventual broadcast. In the mid-sixties video technology became available and programmes were produced using this medium. Video also permitted the, "instant replay", which quickly became popular for the live broadcast of sporting events. It was first used on a regular basis in Canada for the broadcast on the very popular, "Hockey Night In Canada". The portable transistor radio also became fashionable in the early sixties, especially among teenagers who used it to listen to popular music on the local AM radio station.
With the advent of the Cold War, Canada rearmed through the fifties taking steps to defend the homeland from the Soviet bomber threat and to contribute to the NATO defence of Europe. The RCAF acquired a series of successively more capable interceptors, the Vampire, the CF-100 Canuck and the CF-101 Voodoo for the air-defence of Canada. Huge air-defence warning systems, the Pinetree Radar Network, 1954, the Mid-Canada Line, 1957, the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line, 1957 were constructed across Canada's north. The Neptune and Argus long range aircraft entered service with the RCAF. The Royal Canadian Navy took possession of the Magnificent and the Bonaventure aircraft carriers for anti-submarine warfare off the east coast. Embarked aircraft included the Avenger and Tracker ASW machines and the Sea Fury and Banshee fighters. The Navy also acquired modern ASW destroyers and with the innovative Bear Trap landing system pioneered the use of the embarked ASW Sea King helicopter. Three diesel powered Oberon class attack submarines was also acquired. In Europe the RCAF was equipped with several hundred Sabre and subsequently CF-104 fighters based in France and Germany. Army Aviation received a boost at home with the acquisition of the Chinook helicopter and the CF-5 ground support fighter. Canada's Army permanently based in Germany took possession of the Centurion tank, the 155 mm self-propelled howitzer and M-113 armoured personnel carrier.
After considerable political turmoil Canada acquired nuclear weapons from the Americans under a "dual key" arrangement on 1 January 1963. Genie air-to-air rockets armed with atomic warheads were based at RCAF Stations, Comox, British Columbia, Batotville, Quebec and Chatham, New Brunswick as the primary weapon for the newly acquired CF-101 interceptor. The nuclear armed BOMARC (Boeing Michigan Air Research Corporation) anti-aircraft missile was based at RCAF Stations, North Bay, Ontario and Lamacaza, Quebec. In Germany, as part of Canada's NATO commitment, nuclear free fall bombs were acquired for the RCAF CF-104 strike fighter and the Canadian Army in Germany took possession of a battery the Honest John surface-to-surface battlefield rockets armed with nuclear warheads. By 1984 all these atomic weapons had been returned to the US.
It is ironic that for all its peace-loving rhetoric Canada took possession of nuclear weapons before making atomic generated electricity available to the public. A demonstration power reactor, the NPD was built at Rolphston, Ontario in 1962, however it was not until 1971 that electricity first became commercially available from the CANDU equipped Pickering Atomic Electric Power Plant in Pickering, Ontario and the mammoth Bruce Atomic Electric Plant, near Kinkardine, Ontario in 1978. These were followed by the Gentilly Atomic Electric Plant, Trois Rivieres, Quebec and the Point Lepreau Atomic Electric Plant, Point Lepreau, New Brunswick both in 1982.
Computers were introduced in a variety of areas at this time. The National Research Council of Canada experimented with fire-control computers towards the end of the war. In the fifties the Pinetree, Mid-Canada and DEW Line air-defense radar chains built aross Canada relied heavily on computers. Certainly the largest and most powerful computer in Canada at the time was installed in 1957 in the underground complex at RCAF Station North Bay as the "brain" of the DEW Line System. AVRO Canada in Toronto worked unsuccessfully to develop the fire-control computer for the Velvet Glove air-to-air missile for the ill-fated AVRO Arrow interceptor. Other military users included the Royal Canadian Navy with its DATARS system for the command and control of warships. The NRC used large computers in the late fifties for the hydrographic modeling of the Saint Lawrence Seaway then under construction. One of the first commercial users of computers was Air Canada which introduced a computer based reservation system in the early 1960s. The large Canadian banks, Toronto Domminion Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Bank of Nova Scotia introduced large head-office computers for the keeping of records relating to customer accounts in the late sixties. When they introduced the credit card about the same time these records were kept on large central computers as well. It was this experience with large computer systems linking hundreds of branch offices across the country that enabled the banks to introduce the ATM and the debit card, across Canada in the 1980s. Computers were also introduced to control complex industrial processes. Interprovincial Pipe Line Limited of Edmonton was one of the first Canadian companies to employ computers as a means of controlling the flow of gas in its very large pipeline system. Atomic Energy of Canada Limited used computers to control atomic fission in its power reactors.
The field of transportation saw the completion of a number of significant works including: the Toronto Subway, 1954, the Trans-Canada Gas Pipeline, 1959, the St Lawrence Seaway, 1959, Trans-Canada Highway, completed in 1962, the Montreal Subway, 1966, GO Transit, Toronto area, 1967 and Highway 401, Ontario, completed in 1968. Air Canada and Canadian Pacific Airlines introduced jet passenger service with the DC-8, DC9, B727 and B-737. The B-747 was introduced by these companies in the early seventies. In the sixties and early seventies De Havilland Aircraft of Canada in Toronto developed the DHC-7 and DHC-8 STOL aircraft. These were used to provide passenger service to small city centre airports in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. A number of international carriers also acquired these aircraft to provide similar services elsewhere in the world. Of note was the transit of the Northwest Passage in 1954 by HMCS Labrador, Canada's first purpose built icebreaker, which was acquired that same year, in service with the Royal Canadian Navy. Of particular significance was the conversion from steam to deisel by Canada's two great railways. Beginning in the mid fifties the CPR and Canadian National Railways began replacing their steam locomotives with deisel locomotives. By 1960 the conversion was mostly complete.
The modern era of oil production in Canada began in 1947 when Imperial made its major discovery at Leduc, Alberta. The industry has grown tremendously since then, mainly to meet the demand for gasoline created by the popularity of the car and for home heating oil. Major oil refineries have been built in Vancouver, British Columbia, Edmonton, Alberta, Sarnia, Ontario, Montreal, Quebec and Saint John, New Brunswick.
Energy projects included: the Lakeview Generating Station, Mississauga, Ontario, 1962, the W.A.C.Bennett Dam, British Columbia, 1967, the Gardiner Dam, Saskatchewan, 1968, the Churchill Falls Hydro Dam, Labrador, 1971, the Nanticoke Generating Station (largest coal fired plant in North America), Nanticoke, Ontario, 1978 and La Grande 2 Hydro Dam, Quebec, 1979. The energy crisis of 1973 had domestic repercussions with many consumers taking steps to reduce energy costs through the installation of improved home insulation and wood burning stoves.
The forestry industry underwent a notable process of mechanization in the post-war years. The most visible change was the introduction of the chain saw. When originally developed for modern use in the twenties, this heavy gasoline engine driven machine required two men for its operation. However improvements in engine technology eventually made the saw small and light enough to be operated easily by one person. In 1944 one of the first industrial users, Bloedel Stewart and Welch Ltd. in British Columbia had 112 chain saws in operation but their use accounted for only a small part of total forestry tree cutting. In 1950 less that one percent of pulpwood in Canada was cut with chain saws, however by 1955 this figure had grown to more that 50%. Other machines were also introduced during this period. The first feller-bunchers were used by the Quebec North Shore Paper Company in 1957. Hydraulic tree shears were first used in 1966 by the Abitibi Pulp and Paper Company Limited. Snowmobiles and tracked machines replaced animals for the hauling of logs. In 1948 several Bombardier machines were employed to this end by the Ste. Anne Power Company Limited in Quebec. In 1959 Timberland Machines of Woodstock, Ontario developed the Timberbuncher a self- propelled machine which could move through the forest, cut a whole tree at its base (a process known as full tree harvesting) and using a hydraulic arm, place it into a pile for hauling. Machines that stripped the branches from felled trees a process known as delimbing were also introduced at this time. With the help of these technologies the Canadian pulp and paper industry grew to become one of the major suppliers of newsprint in the world through the operations of companies such as Macmillan Bloedel Ltd, Repap Enterprises Inc., Kruger Inc., Great Lakes Forest Products Ltd, British Columbia Forest Products Ltd., Consolidated-Bathurst Inc., Canadian Forest Products Ltd., CIP Inc., Domtar Pulp & Paper Products Group and Abitibi Consolidated.
Business administration underwent technological change. The ball point pen was marketed in the US in October in 1945 and in Canada shortly thereafter. The IBM Selectric typewriter, introduced in 1961 quickly became popular with businesses in Canada as did the Xerox photocopier in the sixties.
The car, cheap gasoline and post war affluence created boom conditions for the expansion of suburbia. Several standard designs for the single family home on a standard lot were reproduced cookie-cutter style row-upon-row in cities across Canada as subdivision after subdivision sprang up radiating from the central core. The designs were thoroughly modern, reflecting the optimism of the era, usually with a peaked roof, asphalt shingles and a brick or wood siding exterior and included a living room, kitchen and occasionally dining room and two, three or four bedrooms and a full basement made of poured concrete or cinder block. Floors were usually made of varnished hardwood planks and the walls and ceilings of gyprock. Copper piping brought running water from the serviced street and copper wiring electricity from the rear lot line. Clay tile pipe carried the sewage from the flush, sit toilet to the main sewer line running under the street. There was usually a driveway beside the house for the family car, and less frequently a carport or garage. Most homes were equipped with a telephone often with a "party" line but these became rare by the sixties. A television set was also common in almost all homes by the end of the fifties and the record player gave way to the hi-fi stereo. Almost all kitchens were equipped with electric refrigerators and electric or less commonly gas, stoves. Where there was gas it was usually piped to the home through a main line running under the street. There were a variety of electrical "labour saving" devices including electrical mixers can openers and carving knives. Central heating was a standard feature and coal, delivered to the home by a diesel powered truck, was the dominant fuel source in the early post-war years. However as the fifties progressed coal gave way to oil and gas heating. Home furnishings were almost all mass-produced and made from wood, fabric and various types of stuffing for cushions. In the kitchen metal chrome tube chairs and formica topped tables were popular. The small front and back yard were maintained with the help of a gasoline powered lawn mower and the hedge and bushes were trimmed with electric clippers. In the early sixties the high-rise appartment building bagan to make its appearance in large cities. The self-supporting steel structures were usually seven stories or more in height and large buildings contained hundreds of dwelling units. Initially they were especially visible along Highway 401 in Toronto, Metropolitan Boulevard in Montreal and the north shore of English Bay in Vancouver.
Detergent, a replacement for soap, introduced in the post war years, was used to keep clothes and dishes clean through the action of its active ingredient, tetrapropylene, a derivative of petroleum.
The booming growth of the suburbs lead to the appearance of the shopping centre, a low rise steel frame, commercial structure housing a number of retail outlets and surrounded by acres of asphalt parking lot for large numbers of cars. The first in Canada included: the Norgate Shopping Centre, Saint-Laurent, Québec, 1949, the Dorval Shopping Centre, Dorval, Québec, 1950, the Park Royal Shopping Centre, West Vancouver, British Columbia, 1950, the Sunnybrook Plaza, Toronto, 1951 and York Mills, Toronto, 1952.
The hospitality industry was similarly effected and fast food drive-in restaurants began to appear. In 1951 the first St. Hubert BBQ restaurant opened its doors on St-Hubert street in Montreal. A&W opened its first Canadian operation in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1957. In 1959 Harvey's opened its first eatery on Yonge Street in Richmond Hill. Hamilton, Ontario saw the opening of the first Tim Horton's restaurant in 1964. The first McDonald's restaurant outside the United States was opened in Richmond, British Columbia in 1967 and the well known Pizza Delight was founded in Shediac, New Brunswick, in 1968.
There was important progress in medical technology during this period. In 1945 Dr. Stuart Stanbury established a National Blood Transfusion Programme for the Canadian Red Cross Society, thus making available to those in need, a dependable source of blood for medical purposes. The associated test for blood typing was introduced at the same time. Blood tests would become increasingly sophisticated in the coming years. The electroencephalograph, used for the diagnosis of neurological disorders was introduced in major Canadian medical institutions in the late forties. Antibiotics such as penicillin were quickly made available to the general public in the post-war years, as were vaccines produced by the Connaught Laboratories. Of particular note was the role played by that company in the mass production of the polio vaccine used for the mass inoculation of young primary school children throughout Canada in the early fifties. There was also progress with respect to the treatment of heart disease. The pacemaker invented with significant Canadian participation was used to treat patients with arrhythmia. For more serious problems open heart surgery became an option for patients and permitted the repair of faulty heart valves, the clearing of blocked coronary arteries and the resolution of other problems. Neurosurgery was introduced in a substantive way in the sixties. Cancer patients were provided with a new option, radiation therapy, through what was popularly known as the "Cobalt Bomb", again developed with important Canadian input. Chemotherapy also became an option. In 1960 the use of a subcutaneous arteriovenous shunt along with the artificial kidney machine allowed hemodialysis for patients with chronic renal failure. Developments in orthodontics made the straightening of the teeth of children with "braces" commonplace. Children were also often on the receiving end of the tonsillectomy a fashionable surgical procedure during these years. The surgical replacement of body parts also became possible and was used to treat ailing kidneys and joints such as knees and hips. The heart transplant was practiced in some instances after the seventies but has remained a rare procedure because of the difficulty in finding donor hearts and the uncertain outcome. Pharmaceuticals attained a high profile. The availability of the birth control pill in 1960 made it possible for women to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy. Stress could be treated with tranquilizers, such as valium, introduced in 1963. The use of vitamins also became widespread and supplements were added to staple foods such as milk and bread and were taken in pill form.
Cinema attendance boomed after the war and with it innovations in cinema design. The first double screen cinema, The Elgin, opened its doors in Ottawa in 1946 and the drive-in cinema became popular after the war. However the long cold Canadian winters discouraged the widespread diffusion of this type of film exhibition. The dramatic Imax large scale cinema format was invented as the result of developments in cinematic technology during Expo'67 in Montreal. The world's first permanent Imax cinema, Cinesphere was built at Ontario Place in Toronto in 1971. Others were built in Vancouver for Expo'86 and at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau , Quebec, in 1989. By 1995 there were 129 Imax cinemas entertaining audiences around the world. The audio cartridge and audio cassette became popular in the early seventies with the cassette eventually winning the battle of the formats. This compact medium lead to the appearance of high quality in-car sound systems.
This was also an era of gigantism and there were both successes and failures. Northwest of Montreal thousands of acres of fertile farmland were expropriated to build the huge new Mirabel International Airport. The facility was to be linked to the heart of Montreal with a fast train. The train was never built and both passengers and air carriers stayed away in droves. The site eventually became a quiet industrial airport, home to the production facilities for Bombardier regional jets. On the other hand the James Bay Hydro Project undertaken in Quebec at the same time was a booming success. Several large dams on the La Grande River with their associated long distance transmission lines provide Hydro-Québec with an important source of electricity.
The Anik series of communications satellites initially built by Hughes Aircraft and operated by Telesat Canada starting in 1972 formed the basis of the world's first domestic satellite communications service.
Place Ville Marie (Royal Bank), Montreal, 1962, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce Tower Montréal, 1962, the Edifice Trust Royal (C.I.L. House), Montréal, 1962, the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower, Toronto, 1967, The Simpson Tower, Toronto, 1968, the Hôtel Château Champlain, Montréal, 1967, the Royal Trust Tower, Toronto, 1969, Royal Centre, Vancouver, 1972, Inco Superstack, Sudbury, Ontario, 1972, First Canadian Place, Toronto, 1975, Harbour Centre, Vancouver, 1976, the Complexe Desjardins, la Tour du Sud, Montréal, 1976, the Scotia Tower, Calgary, 1976, the Scotia Tower, Vancouver, 1977, Royal Bank Plaza, South Tower, Toronto, 1977 and the First Bank Tower, Toronto, 1979, represented significant civil engineering and architectural achievements during this period.
Notable large sports facilities included, Empire Stadium, Vancouver, 1954, McMahon Stadium, Calgary, Alberta, 1960, the Montreal Automobile Stadium (Autostad) 1966, the Olympic Stadium, Montreal, 1976 and Commonwealth Stadium (Edmonton), 1978.
However the stand-out architectural and civil engineering achievement of this period was certainly the construction of the CN Tower, the world's tallest free standing structure in Toronto in 1975.
[edit]The PC Age: The Microchip and Mobile Communications (1980 – 2000)
Microelectronics became a part of everyday life during this period. The personal computer became a feature of most homes and the microchip found its way into a bewildering variety of products from cars to washing machines.
In 1977 the first commercially produced personal computers were invented in the US, the the Apple II, the PET 2001 and the TRS-80. They were quickly made available in Canada. In 1980 IBM introduced the IBM PC in response to the Apple II and in 1983 Microsoft began to sell its operating system, through IBM where it was referred to as PC-DOS and as a stand alone product known as MS-DOS. This created two rivals for personal computer operating systems, Apple and Microsoft which undures to this day. A large variety of special use software “applications” have been developed for use with these operating systems. There has also been a multiplicity of hardware manufacturers which have produced a wide variety of personal computers and the heart of these machines the central processing unit has increased in speed and capacity by leaps and bounds. There were 1,560,000 personal computers in Canada by 1987 of which 650,000 were in homes, 610,000 in businesses and 310,000 in educational institutions. Canadian producers of micro-computers included Sidus Systems, 3D Microcomputers and Seanix Technology.
In 1987 there considerable numbers of larger computers in Canada including 25,000 mainframe and mini-computers in Canada but the most powerful of all is the supercomputer. Canada's weather service has been a noted user of large computers and has pioneered the Canadian use of supercomputers. Machines used have included: the Bendix G20, 1962, an IBM 360-95 scientific mainframe computer, 1967, its first super computer a CDC 7600 from Control Data Corporation, 1973, a Cray 1S supercomputer, 1983, a NEC supercomputer, 1993 and an IBM supercomputer in 2003. At the time of its installation this latter machine was the most powerful computer in Canada.
The laptop computer also appeared during these years and achieved notable popularity in Canada beginning in the nineties. In 1981 the first commercially available portable computer the Osborne 1 became available. Other models followed including the Kaypro II in 1982, the popular Compaq Portable and Tandy Corporation TRS-80 Model 100 both in 1983, the IBM PC Convertible, 1986, the Macintosh Portable, 1989 and Power Book, 1991 and the IBM Power PC in 1994. The latter models in particular were popular with both professionals and consumers.
The use of computer controlled robots in manufacturing (computer-aided manufacturing) was pioneered in Canada by the auto manufacturers who introduced these machines to improve the efficiency of their assembly lines. These were found in new auto manufacturing plants were built, by Honda Canada in Alliston, Ontario and Toyota Canada in Cambridge (, Ontario (1988). Bombardier's invention of a new class of aircraft, the regional jet or RJ, allowed airlines to introduce jet passenger service to smaller centres. The design of this machine was facilitated through the use of comupter aided design (computer-aided design) software.
During the eighties the bar code became a familiar feature on consumer products ranging from food to clothes as did the bar code scanner at the retail check-out counter. These two technologies greatly improved the effectiveness of the check-out procedure and improved inventory management as well through the associated computer accounting of stock. This was one of the factors leading to the technique of just-in-time inventory managment for retail, commercial and industrial undertakings.
Canada's major telephone companies introduced digital technology and fibre optics during this period paving the way for more advanced business and customer telecommunications services. In the nineties, Microcell, Cantel, Bell and Rogers begn to offer cell phone service.
Smaller vehicles became popular in response to the oil crisis of 1973. The 18 wheel transport truck which became popular after WW II became the dominant vehicle on the heavily used Highway 401 (Ontario). Containerization, which had made headway in ocean shipping with the construction of terminals in Halifax, Montreal and Vancouver also lead to the eventual elimination of the railway box car and began to make inroads in the trucking industry. Light rail systems were built in Edmonton, Alberta in 1978, Calgary, Alberta, in 1981, Toronto, Ontario, in 1985 and Vancouver, British Columbia in 1986.
Notable energy works included, the ill-fated east coast Ocean Ranger drilling platform, the Nova Scotia Power Corporation tidal generating station, Annapolis, 1984, the Hibernia oil platform off the east coast of Newfoundland, the Terra Nova Platform in the same area and the Sable Offshore Energy Project off the coast of Nova Scotia and the Darlington Atomic Electric Plant, Darlington, Ontario, 1990.
Large civil engineering and architectural works of note included: BC Place, Vancouver, 1983, Petro-Canada Centre, West Tower, Calgary, 1984, the West Edmonton Mall, Edmonton, Alberta, 1986, Scotia Plaza, Toronto 1988, the Canterra Tower, Calgary, 1988, the Sky Dome, Toronto, 1989, Bankers Hall, Calgary, 1989, BCE Place–Canada Trust Tower, Toronto, 1990, the Bay Wellington Tower, Toronto, 1990, Tour du 1000 de la Gauchetière, Montréal, 1991, Tour IBM-Marathon, Montréal, 1992, GM Place, Vancouver, 1995 and the Confederation Bridge, NB-PEI, 1997. New arenas for Canada's National Hockey League teams were built, including GM Place, Vancouver, home of the Vancouver Canucks in 1995, the Corel Centre in Ottawa, home of the Ottawa Senators and Molson Centre in Montréal, new home of the Montreal Canadiens, both in 1996.
Medical treatment advanced during these years. The use of lasers and computers became important parts of medical treatment. Computers were essential in the development of new medical imaging devices such as the CAT scan and the MRI. Minimally invasive surgery, also known as laparoscopic surgery reduced surgical damage to patients. Lasers were used with catheters for clearing blocked arteries and catheters with small cameras provided images of conditions inside the body. Coronary bypass surgery became commonplace. Laser eye surgery became popular in the nineties and was used to improve visual acuity for the near-sighted. New chemical chemotherapy combinations helped prolong the lives of cancer patients. These years also saw the appearance of techniques for the long term application of medication through the use of a skin patch or implants. Male erectile difficulties could be treated with the use of Viagara and other medications.
There were innovations in home design and construction during this period. Houses generally became bigger. New materials such as vinyl siding became common and often replaced the use of more expensive brick for home exteriors. The car port and garage became widespread features and the latter was ofter located close to the curb creating a rather crowded streetscape. The kitchen saw the introduction of the home dishwasher and the microwave oven. Large screen televisions usually of the cathode ray or projection type were found in many homes. The Sony Walkman, introduced in 1979, quickly gained popularity as a means for listening to music on the go.
The slot machine, so dear to gamblers, was introduced during this period. Casinos were built in Windsor, Niagara Falls and Orillia Ontario, Montreal, Gatineau and Baie St. Paul, Quebec, Halifax, Nova Scotia and Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Canada's military suffered a long period of technological decline. Atomic weapons were relinquished. New technologies were acquired, including the CF-18 fighter, the Aurora ASW patrol Aircraft, the Halifax class guided missile frigate, the four ill-fated Victoria class diesel attack submarines, the Leopard tank and the air-defence-anti-tank missile system. The DEW Line was updated and renamed the North Warning System. But these developments were not enough to prevent a general loss of military capability.
Other technologies were introduced during this period: the microwave oven, ATM, the cell phone, genetically modified food, remote sensing, the CD and DVD, medical imaging (PET, MRI, etc.), bar codes, the checkout scanner, tailored production runs, direct to home satellite TV and fuel cell cars to name a few.
[edit]The Internet Age: Wireless Technology, Mega Oil and Ecological Friendliness (2000 – Present)
The internet has become as essential part of daily life and is found in most Canadian homes. In December 2006 there were 22,000,000 Internet users representing 65.9% of the population and 7,675,533 internet broadband connections. By 2006 internet providers began making wireless internet connection available to their customers with companies such as Bell Canada offering their "unplugged" service. This type of service, using the laptop computer and other portable devices has evolved to allow mobile internet connection in many places across Canada. Mobile communications have also been facilitated through the introduction of the widely popular Research In Motion, Blackberry handheld email and telephone machine.
Other communications projects have included the series of 4 Nimiq DBS satellites operated by Telesat Canada since 1999. Using these satellites, Star Choice and Expressvu began offering direct-to-home satellite television service and Sirius and XM Canada direct-to-car satellite radio service. In Toronto the CBC bagan broadcasting digital HD over-the-air TV in 2005. A national government regulatory body, the Canadian Radio, Television and Telecommunications Commission has stated that all over-the-air TV broadcasting will be digital by August 2011.
In 2008 the Government of Canada announced the initiation of two important transportation projects. In the first instance the government stated that it will acquire, for the Canadian Coast Guard, a new $700 million, Polar class icebreaker for patrolling the Northwest Passage. The ship will enter service in 2017. The government also announced the construction of a second international bridge between Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan, to help relieve the pressure on the heavily overloaded, 80 year old Ambassador Bridge. The $5 billion project will include connections from the Canadian ends of both bridges to the nearby Highway 401 (Ontario).
In this new century the largest engineering undertaking by far is the tar sands project in northern Alberta. This has seen the investment of up to $60 billion to develop and build gigantic tar sand mining, transportation, separation and refining facilities to produce oil from the gritty bitumen tar. The project is highly controversial for a number of reasons not the least of which is environmental. As of 2005 operations included the: Suncor Mine, Syncrude Mine, Shell Canada Mine and others producing 760,000 barrels of oil a day. A large number of corporations from a number of countries plan to invest in the tar sands including: Suncor Energy, Syncrude, Shell/Chevron/Marathon, Petro-Canada, EnCana Energy, ConocoPhillips, Japan Canada Oil Sands (JACOS) Japan, Nexen, Canadian Natural Resources Limited, Devon Energy US, Synenco Energy, Sinopec China, Imperial Oil/ExxonMobile US, Husky Energy, Total S.A., Enerplus France, Chevron US, Value Creation Inc., StatoilHydro Norway and the Korea National Oil Corporation, Korea. Recovery techniques include, steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) and cyclic steam stimulation (CSS).
These concerns have inspired the development of wind farms that use modern windmills to generate electricity from this renewable resource. One of the first modern windmills was built at Cap Chat in Quebec in the eighties but most wind farms have been built since 2000. As of 2008, 10 megawatt wind farms in Canada were distributed as follows: Alberta 10, Quebec 5, Ontario 5, PEI, 4, Sasketchewan, 3, Manitoba 2 and Nova Scotia 2. Recently Hydro Quebec has announced the construction of 1000 windmills at 15 new sites located mostly in the St. Lawrence River Valley. By 2015 that utility expects that 10% of the province's electricity will be provided by wind power.
They have also had a large impact on automobile manufacturers. Fuel efficient hybrid vehicles such as the Chevrolet Tahoe, GMC Yukon, Saturn Vue, Toyota Prius, Toyota Camry Hybrid, Toyota Highlander Hybrid, Ford Escape Hybrid, Honda Insight and Honda Civic Hybrid have become available to Canadian consumers since the turn of the century and the rising cost of gasoline is making them increasingly attractive in spite of their generally higher cost. The field of transportation also saw the Premiers of Ontario and Quebec in 2007 talking of yet another study of a high speed train in the Windsor - Quebec corridor.
Efforts to save fuel have also led to efforts to reduce the weight of vehicles through the increased use of composite material. Aircraft manufacturers have been especially notable in this regard and produced new large but relatively light aircraft such as the Boeing B-787 Dreamliner with this new material. Orders for this new machine have been made by a number of major world airlines, including Air Canada.
Lasers made their way into routine dentistry by the middle of the first decade, offering faster treatments, less pain and more precise results. They are used to remove tartar, treat soft tissues such as gums and to prepare cavities for filling. Of particular interest in the latter instance is the fact that this treatment is so painless that the use of a needle to inject a local anesthetic us usually unnecessary. Laser treatment results in little bleeding, a lower risk of infection and a quicker healing. Another innovation was the use of computer milled ceramic implants for repairing cavities.
Domestic construction has witnessed the introduction of improved building techniques and the smart home. Hydraulic lift equipment is now commonly used for home construction, minimizing or eliminating the need for scafolding. Furthermore homes are built with the electronics necessary for internet connection throughout the premises. Household systems, such as heating/cooling, lighting, communications, entertainment and even food storage and cooking are now all linked to each other through the web. In the kitchen the glass topped stove has become popular. The living room has seen the introduction of the very large, plasma TV which has undergone dramatic price reduction in the last few years and has replaced the cathode-ray TV in consumer appliance/electronic stores. Also popular with consumers is the iPod portable music player introduced to Canadians in 2001 and more recently the iPhone which will be made available to Canadians by Rogers Wireless in 2008. The digital camera which was introduced to Canadians in the eighties has for the most part replaced the film camera in recent years.
In the new century Canada's government has shown renewed interest in the acquisition of military technology, especially with its commitment to the war in Afghanistan. Equipments have been improved including the CF-18 fighter with addition of a laser guided bombs and there are plans to update the Aurora patrol aircraft. The airforce has also recently taken possession of the gigantic new C-17 Globemaster III long range transport aircraft and announced plans to renew the fleet of Hercules transport aircraft. The army has acquired the new Leopard tank and C-777 long range gun. Other acquisitions pending include the Cyclone ASW helicopter, the Chinook helicopter, new Arctic patrol vessels for the navy and a new ice breaker for the Canadian Coast Guard. The Canadian Forces have also acquired electronic equipment to face the new cybernetic threat and to conduct cybernetic warfare.
The public has also been introduced to such technologies as bio-metrics, genetically modified foods and RFID to name a few.
In the earlier parts of Canada's history, the state often played a crucial role in the diffusion of these technologies, in some cases through a monopoly enterprise, in others with a private "partner". In more recent times the need for the role of the state has diminished in the presence of a larger private sector.
[edit]Scientific research in Canada
This section outlines the history of the natural sciences in Canada. The social sciences are not treated here.
[edit]The beginnings of science (14,000 BC – 1850)
[edit]Native peoples and nature (14,000 – 1600)
Native peoples of Canada did not undertake scientific research in a formal sense but they did study and have a profound understanding of their natural environment in ways that allowed them to survive and flourish.
[edit]The Europeans: Explorers, universities, and talented amateurs (1600 – 1850)
Marine Science: The early European explorers were responsible for charting much of what would become the east and west coasts of Canada as well as the Arctic. John Cabot, the Italian explorer sailing under the British flag made two voyages to North America in 1497 and 1498 along the coast of what is now called Newfoundland. Gaspar Corte-Real, the Portuguese explorer is thought to have explored the area along the Newfoundland, Labrador and Greenland coasts in 1500 ad 1501. In 1524, Giovanni da Verrazzano sailing under the French flag, explored the east coast of North America from Cape Fear to Newfoundland. During voyages of exploration in 1534 and 1535-1536, the French explorer Jacques Cartier "discovered" and mapped the St. Lawrence River as far inland as Hochelaga (Montreal). Samuel de Champlain is well known for his explorations of the St Larwrence and Acadia, in 1603 and 1604. The search for fabled Northwest Passage to the orient intrigued European explorers for 300 years. The first efforts in this regard were made by British explorers Martin Frobisher in 1576 and by John Davis in 1585. In 1610 Henry Hudson made his ill fated voyage in search of the Passage. William Baffin and Robert Bylot sailed the Arctic sea in the area around what became known as Baffin Island in 1616. While these voyages not successful, in that they did not discover the Northwest Passage, they provided valuable information on the nature of the Arctic ocean. Voyages by Edward Perry in 1819 and John Ross in 1829 added to the growing body of knowledge relating to the north. The Hudson Bay Company also played a role in Arctic exploration and during the period 1837 – 1839, Peter Warren Dease and Thomas Simpson of that company explored the Arctic coast from Point Barrow to Rae Strait. In 1845, Sir John Franklin with two ships the Erebus and Terror set sail to find the Passage. He died in the attempt but is generally credited with its discovery. In 1774, Captain Juan Perez Hernandez, aboard the Spanish ship Santiago, became the first white man to explore the west coast and is reported to have sailed as far north as the Dixson Entrance. The following year Spanish hydrographer, Bodega Y Quadra, drew the first charts to show a part of the west coast of Canada. The renowned, Captain James Cook explored the west coast in 1778 as part of an attempt to find the Northwest Passage from the Pacific, rather than the Atlantic side. In 1791 – 1792 Captain George Vancouver of Britain and Dionisio Alcalá-Galiano and Cayetano Valdés of Spain conducted further surveys in the area.
Universities and Talented Amateurs: The Jesuits, learned men who arrived with the first colonists had some interest in science and their activities complimented the observations of the explorers. In particular they founded Le college de Quebec in 1635, eventually know as L'universite Laval, in Quebec City which would become one of the Group of 13 large research universities in Canada. Other future G-13 members founded during this period, included, Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1818, McGill University in Montreal in 1821, the University of Toronto in 1827, Queens University in Kingston, Ontario in 1841 and the University of Ottawa in 1848.
Colonial scientific curricula between 1750 and 1850, included rudimentary studies in astronomy, mathematics, medicine, chemistry, natural philosophy, natural history and moral philosophy. As the colony grew by the beginning of the 1800s, a number of amateur "scientists" , notably in Montreal and Toronto, began to record and study nature as a gentlemanly pursuit and established local learned societies.
Mathematics: Mathematics is the language of science and was introduced very early on in New France. The teaching of mathematics began at the College de Quebec in 1651 and was of a quality that equalled the teaching in France. Students were exposed to arithmatic, quadratic equations, geometry, trigonometry, and integral and differential calculus in the final years of an eight year course. In 1778, the first full professor at the College, Martin Boutet de St-Martin, was appointed by Louis XIV to the newly created Royal Chair of Mathematics and Hydrography in Quebec City. The most notable appointee to this post was Louis Joliette the "discoverer" of the Mississippi River. In 1760 the College de Quebec was closed but the new Seminaire de Quebec, under the leadership of Abbé Jérôme Demers, continued in a vigorous fashion, the science and mathematics tradition of the former institution. However after 1840, for religious and social reasons these disciplines floundered. For example, L'ecole polytechnique de Montréal, Montreal's premier engineering school, founded in 1873, only taught intermediate mathematics until 1910. It was not until the twenties and thirties in Quebec that the importance of science and mathematics was once again recognized, a fact reflected in the establishment of the faculties of science at Laval in 1837 and at L'universite de Montreal.
Astronomy: Astronomy was one of the first scientific disciplines practiced in the northern North America. There are records of astronomical observations made by Arctic explorers dating from 1612 and by French missionaries in New France who noted eclipses as early as 1618 and 1632. The Marquis de Chabert is reported to have built one of the first observatories in North America at Fort Louisbourg in 1750. A small observatory was built by Joseph Desbarres at Castle Frederick, Nova Scotia, in 1765.
Chemistry: Elementary courses in chemistry were introduced into the curriculum of the Seminaires de Quebec by l'abbe John Holmes in 1830 and l'abbe Isaac Desaulniers in Saint-Hyacinthe as well as the Seminaire de Montreal in 1842.
Biology: Interest in biology in Canada dates from the times of European exploration. Botany attracted explorers and scientists such as Cartier 1503, Clusius 1576, C. Bauhin 1623 , J. Cornuti 1635, P. Boucher 1664, M. Sarrazin 1697, J.F. Gauthier 1742, A. Michaud, 1785, W.J. Hooker 1820, A.F. Holmes 1821, L. Provencher 1862 and J. Macoun 1883, who collected and/or named various plants found in Canada. Zoology as well was the subject of much early activity. Reports and studies by J. Cabot 1497, N. Denys 1672, C. Perrault and M. Sarrazin 1660, T. Pennent 1784, J. Richardson 1819, P.H. Gosse 1840 and M. Perley 1849, related to the nature of animals found throughout Canada’s eastern and northern regions.
A reflection of this activity is seen in the founding of the Botanical Society of Canada in Kingston, Ontario in 1860 and the Entomological Society of Canada in 1863. .
[edit]The rise of professional science (1850 – 1900)
Scientific research in Canada as a formal undertaking dates from the 1850s and was the result of the impetus provided by the establishment of government scientific research organizations, new universities and the evolution of academic disciplines.
[edit]Government research organizations
Government organizations specializing in science established during this period included the Geological Survey of Canada, the Dominion Experimental Farms, and the Biological Board (fisheries research).
[edit]New universities and changing curricula
Additional future members of the G-13 were founded, including l'universite de Montreal and the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario in 1878 and McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario in 1887. University science curicula also changed during this period. Natural philosophy evolved into physics and became closely allied with mathematics. Natural history evolved into geology, biology, zoology and botany.
Canada's first, "national" scientific/learned/professional association, the Canadian Medical Association was created during this period, in Quebec City in October 1867. In 1882 the founding of the Royal Society of Canada reflected the maturation of Canada's intellectual development by becoming the first "national" organization to recognize and promote among other things achievement in science.
[edit]Disciplines (1850 – 1900)
Geology: Professional science in Canada began with the founding of the Geological Survey of Canada, by the Legislature of the Province of Canada, in 1841. William Logan was appointed the first Director in 1842 and after establishing headquarters in Montreal in 1843 began field work searching for coal in the area between Pictou, Nova Scotia and the Gaspe Peninsula in Quebec. His assistant Alexander Perry conducted a similar search in the area between Lakes Huron and Erie. Although no coal was found the surveys demonstrated the importance of systematic study of Canada's land mass. The Survey grew during the forties and in 1851 participated in the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London, England, as well as the Universal Exposition in Paris, in 1855. The efforts of the Survey were so successful that in 1863 it was able to publish its first major work, the Geology of Canada. With Confederation the Survey's area of geographic responsibility grew dramatically as did its reputation, being recognized by the government as an important agent in the establishment of a mining industry in Canada. This recongition also resulted in the headquarters being moved to Ottawa in 1881. As Canada grew the Survey studied the routes of the new Canadian Pacific Railway as well as other areas of the west and north. Director Dawson surveyed British Columbia and the Yukon; Robert Bell studied the north and the coastal areas of Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait. Geologist Tyrell found coal and fossils in Alberta and J. Mackintosh Bell studied the area from Lake Athabasca to Great Bear Lake in 1900. Sailing aboard the Neptune geologist Low explored the Arctic archipelago in 1903-04.
Mathematics: English language universities in Canada, had professors teaching mathematics as part of the discipline of natural philosophy from the early years of their founding. The first professorships in natural philosophy were established at Dalhousie in 1838 and at Kings College, later the University of Toronto, in 1843. By 1859 the University of Toronto offered specializations in both fields and formed separate mathematics and physics programmes in 1877, a move that was copied by other universities, notably, Queens, McGill and Dalhousie. By the 1890s most Canadian universities had at least one professor of mathematics on faculty. Mathematicians of repute during this era included Professors J. Bradford Cherriman and James Louden of the University of Toronto, Nathan Fellowes Depuis at Queen's and Alexander Johnson at McGill, all of whom were members of the Royal Society of Canada.
Physics: The first full professorships in physics were established at Dalhousie, in Halifax in 1879, Toronto, 1887 and McGill, in Montreal in 1890. Although these were mainly teaching positions there was some research activity. At Dalhousie, Professor J.G.McGregor, the first to hold the position at that university, published about 50 papers during his tenure from 1879 until 1899. Other prominent researchers in the field at this time included H.L. Callendar and E. Rutherford, Macdonald professors of physics at McGill and J.C. McLennan at U of T.
Astronomy: The discipline experienced modest growth during this period. New but small observatories were built including: the Toronto Magnetic Observatory in 1840, a facility at the Citadel in Quebec City in 1850, one at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton in 1851, in Kingston, Ontario in 1856, in Montreal in 1862 and another in Quebec City on the Plains of Abraham in 1874.
Chemistry: The study of chemistry in Canada began in a modest way in 1829 with courses on the subject at the Montreal General Hospital given as part of medical training. At King's College (University of New Brunswick) in Fredericton, as early as 1837, Dr. James Robb taught a course in natural science that included the study of chemistry within the context ot botany, zoology, mineralogy and geology. Isaac Chipman of Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia introduced chemistry at that institution in 1840 as did Henry How at King's College in Windsor, Nova Scotia. Henry Croft was appointed professor of chemistry and experimental philosophy at King's College (University of Toronto) in Toronto in 1842 where he specialized in toxicology and inorganic chemistry. In 1843 Dr. William Sutherland of the Montreal Medical and Surgical School began teaching chemistry in its own right at the McGill University and the University of Montreal. Growth during the decades that followed was steady but modest. However by the 1890s buildings with well equipped laboratories devoted to the study of chemistry had been built including Carruthers Hall, 1891 at Queen's, in Kingston, the Chemistry Building, 1895 at the University of Toronto, and the Macdonald Chemistry and Mining Building at McGill in Montreal in 1898.
The Geological Survey of Canada also developed expertise in the field, hiring Thomas Sterry Hunt in 1847 as a chemist and mineralogist. He was succeeded in this role by G.C. Hoffmann a charter member of the Royal Society of Canada.
Biology: Professional biology in Canada dates from the creation of departments of natural history, which included the study of biology, at the Universities of Toronto and McGill in 1854 and 1858 respectively. Government interest in biology was reflected in the establishment of the Experimental Farm Service in 1886 with Professor William Saunders as the first Director. A Central Experimental Farm was established in Ottawa that year as well as regional farms in Nappan, Nova Scotia in 1887, and Brandon, Manitoba, Indian head, NWT and Agassiz, BC in 1888. A number of divisions for the study of topics of special interest to Canadian farmers were established including, entomology and botany, horticulture, chemistry, poultry, cereal, agriculture and tobacco.
Public interest in biology lead to the creation of the Botanical Garden at Queen's College in Kingston, Ontario in 1861, the Riverdale Zoo in Toronto, in 1887, the Arboretum and Botanical Gardens in Ottawa that same year and the Stanley Park Zoo in Vancouver in 1888.
Medical Research: Medical research in nineteenth century Canada was modest to say the least. The first medical schools were founded during the early part of the 1800s. The Medical Faculty of the University of Montreal was established in 1824 as was that of the University of Toronto. La faculte de medicine de l’universite de Montreal offered the first French language course in medicine in Canada beginning in 1843. The medical faculties at Queen’s in Kingston, Ontario and Dalhousie in Halifax, Nova Scotia were established in 1854 and 1867 respectively followed by those at the University of Western Ontario in 1881 and the University of Manitoba in 1888. While they were excellent institutions of instruction there was no systematic emphasis on medical investigation. Research began almost “accidentally” with the curiosity of Dr. Beaumont in Quebec who was able to investigate gastric digestion in 1825 through the “fistula” created by injury in the abdomen of Alexis St. Martin a voyageur.
[edit]Scientists of note (1850 – 1900)
Scientists of this period included: William Logan,1798-1875 (geology) and John William Dawson, 1820-1899 (paleobotany), Sir William Osler (medicine), C.H. McLeod (astronomy), W.F. King (astronomy), O.J. Klotz (astronomy) and E.G.D. Deville (astronomy).
[edit]Research laboratories, Nobel Prizes and the NRC (1900 – 1939)
[edit]University laboratories
At the beginning of the twentieth the "research laboratory" was introduced to Canadian universities. The physics laboratory established at McGill in Montreal was home to the discovery of the atomic nucleus by Ernest Rutherford, an achievement for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1908. The University of Toronto established the Connaught Laboratories where Sir Frederick Banting and Best discovered insulin, and won a Nobel Prize as well in 1923. The Dunlap Observatory at the same university was built in 1935. In 1938, l'Institut de microbiologie et d'hygiène de Montréal (l'Institut Armand-Frappier) was founded.
The new century witnessed the founding of other future G-13 schools, the University of Alberta in Edmonton and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, both in 1908 as well as the Canadian Society for Chemistry in 1917. In 1931 the need to recognize and support scientific study and research in the French language lead to the founding of L'association canadienne francaise pour l'avancement des sciences (ACFAS).
In the early twentieth century moral philosophy evolved into what is today recognized as "social science", economics, sociology, political science etc....This new field of scientific research contributed significantly to the efforts of the Rowell-Sirois Commission studying the effects of the depression on Canada's political economy.
The thirties also saw the creation in 1935 of the Fields Medal, the "Nobel Prize" of mathematics, named in honour of its champion, Charles Fields a prominent mathematician at the University of Toronto.
[edit]Government laboratories
The support of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (1903) stimulated the establishment of the Dominion Observatory (1905). The Federal government established the National Research Council of Canada in 1916 and equipped that organization with laboratories in 1932. The Dominion Bureau of Statistics was also created during this period.
The provinces became involved in science as well during these years. The Scientific and Industrial Research Council of Alberta was established in 1921 and the Ontario Reseearch Foundation in 1928.
[edit]Disciplines (1900 – 1939)
Mathematics: The increased importance of mathematics in fields such as engineering, lead to the growth of the number of mathematics departments in universities across Canada in the new century. Specialization also occurred, as seen for example at the University of Toronto with the creation there, of the first programme in actuarial science in North America. The Canadian Institute of Actuaries was subsequentially established in 1907. In 1915 he first Canadian doctorate in mathematics was awarded to Samuel Beatty, again at the University of Toronto, who went on to eventually become the head of the department there. J.C. Fields another mathematician at U of T was instrumental in reviving the annual meetings of the International Congress of Mathematics, suspended because of World War I and the first post war meeting of that organization was held in Toronto in 1924. As mentioned above he was also instrumental in the creation in 1932 of the "Nobel Prize" of mathematics, posthumously named the Fields medal, after his untimely death. The reputation of the department grew with the addition of the geometer and algebraist Harold S.M. Coxeter to the department in 1936.
Physics: The growth of physics was notable during this period.
The landmark event, one of the greatest discoveries in the history of physics and the greatest event in the history of Canadian physics, was the discovery of the atomic nucleus by Dr. Ernest Rutherford, Chairman of the Department of Physics at McGill University from 1898 until 1907.
J.C. McLennan director of the physics laboratory at U of T from 1906 to 1932 undertook studies in atmospheric conductivity and cathode rays, but in 1912 was inspired by the work of Bohr, to conduct research into atomic spectroscopy. He along with G.M.Shrun, constructed the first machine for the liquification of helium in North America, which was used for cryogenic studies of metals and solid gases. Research into colloid physics in the twenties and thirties by E.F. Burton and his students lead to the construction of the first electron microscope in North America. Geophysics research was also undertaken at the U of T at this time by L. Gilchrist. At McGill, L.V.King studied mathematical physics while D.A. Keys and A.S. Eve conducted research into geophysics and J.S Marshall, into atmospheric physics. McGill also established the first theoretical physics group at a Canadian university. At the University of Alberta, R.W. Boyle became the first professor of physics in 1912 and conducted research into ultrasound while F. Allen established the physics department at the University of Manitoba and bent his efforts towards the physics of physiology. At the University of Saskatchewan, E.L. Harrington was the first physics department head from 1924 to 1956, during which time that institution developed expertise in upper atmospheric research, begun by B.W. Currie in 1932. From 1935 to 1945, Gerhard Herzberg studied atomic and molecular physics there. Physics began at Queen's with the work of A.L.Clark and nuclear research was conducted there by J.A. Gray, B.W. Sargent, A.T. Stewart and others. H.L. Bronson, department head at Dalhousie was active in physics research from 1910 to 1956.
Astronomy: The first significant Canadian astronomical facility, the Dominion Observatory, was built in Ottawa in 1905 by the federal government. It featured a refracting telescope and a reflecting solar telescope. This was followed in 1918 by the new Dominion Astrophysical Observatory near Victoria, British Columbia. The 1.88 m (72 inch) reflecting telescope there had been proposed and designed by John Plaskett in 1910 with the backing of the International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research and when it began operation was briefly the largest telesciope in the world. The University of Toronto established the first astronomy department in a Canadian university in 1904 and through the efforts of department head Dr. Chant and the generosity of a private citizen, a large facility, the David Dunlap Observatory was built there in 1935.
Geology: The early twentieth century was a difficult time for geology in Canada. The Geological Survery experienced funding and staffing difficulties as the pressures of the Great War placed the focus of government elsewhere. However field studies continued to emphasize the importance of mineral wealth and the survey's activities proved fruitful in spite of strained resources. In the lean Depression Years annual budgets hovered in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars. In 1935 in an effort to stimulate the economy and create employment the budget of the Survey was dramatically increased to $ 1 million and field work increased tenfold. During these years the Survey made use of aircraft in its activities for the first time.
One of the great geological finds of all time was made during this period. In 1909,Charles Doolittle Walcott, discovered what came to be known as the Burgess Shale, near Field, British Columbia, a rock formation that contained the very well preserved fossil remains of animals from the Cambrian geological era.
Oceanography:The establishment of two professional scientific organizations, the Hydrographic Survey of Canada and the Biological Board, the precursor of the Fisheries Research Board, at the turn of the century, marked the beginning of modern Canadian oceanography. As the result of a tragic marine accident on Georgan Bay the Government of Canada created the Georgian Bay Survey in 1883 to produce reliable navigation charts for safe navigation on that Bay and Lake Huron. The Survey began the hydrographic charting of the west coast in 1891, tidal and current metering in 1893 and the charting of the St. Lawrence River below Quebec City, in 1905. In 1904 under an Order-in -Council it became the Hydrographic Survey of Canada with an expanded mandate. In 1908, the federal government established permanent biological research field stations at St. Andrews, New Bruncwick and Nanaimo, British Columbia, for the scientific study of the fisheries on the east and west coasts. These operations were managed by the Biological Board created in 1912 and renamed the Fisheries Research Council in 1937. Originally staffed by university summer student volunteers, professional full time scientific staff were hired and laboratories related to the fisheries and food processing established on both coasts, in the twenties. Joseph-Elzéar Bernier aboard the Arctic undertook voyages to the Arctic in 1904, 1907 and 1909. During the latter he unveiled a plaque on Melville Island and claimed the Arctic Islands as part of Canada.
Chemistry: The growth of the discipline continued in the new century. Departments were established in a number of universities including, chemistry and physical chemistry, at Toronto, 1900, the University of Alberta, Edmonton, 1909, Saskatchewan, 1910, a unified chemistry department at McGill, 1912, the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 1915, L'universite de Montreal, 1920, McMaster, Hamilton, 1930, Sir George Williams College, Montreal, 1936, neurochemistry, the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, 1947 and at Bishop's University, 1948.
Graduate programmes in chemistry emphasizing original research were also introduced including: an M.Sc., McGill, 1900, Ph.D., Toronto, 1901, M.Sc., McMaster, 1909, Ph.D.,McGill, 1910, M.Sc., University of Alberta, Edmonton, 1915, M.Sc., University of Saskatchewan, 1923, M.Sc., University of New Brunswick, Fredricton, 1948 and an M.Sc., at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, 1949.
Noted university chemists of the period with their date of departmental appointment, included, A.L.F. Lehmann, University of Alberta, 1909, R.D. MacLaurin, University of Saskatchewan, 1910, R.F. Ruttan, McGill, 1912, Lash Miller, Toronto, 1914, D. McIntosh, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 1915, T. Thorvaldson, University of Saskatchewan, 1919, G.Baril, L'universite de Montreal, 1920 and C. E. Burke, McMaster, Hamilton, 1930. The discipline evolved during these years with specializations in physical chemistry and biochemistry.
The National Research Council became involved in chemistry during these years. In 1929 the Council founded the Department of Industrial Chemistry with G.S. Whitby as the Director. The Department studied the industrial production and uses of magnesium, natural gas, asbestos, wool, maple products and rubber among other things using new laboratories built on Sussex Street in Ottawa in 1932. In 1939 E.W.R. Steacie became the Director of the Division of Chemistry and lead that organization through the difficult war years. He championed the independence of the Council and the importance of pure sciencific research.
Biology: Biochemistry, the chemical basis for biology developed significantly during these years. Departments were established at Toronto, 1907, The Western University of London, 1921, McGill, 1922, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, 1923, Dalhousie University, Halifax, 1923, L'universite de Montreal, 1925, L'universite Laval, Quebec City, 1928, Queen's, Kingston, 1937, University of Saskatchewan, 1946 and the University of Ottawa, 1946. The research in these departments was closely related to that of their associated biology departments.
The Experimental Farm Service grew dramatically in the early part of the new century. A large number of farms were created across the country at locations including, Summerland 1914, Vancouver 1925, Kamloops 1935, Creston 1940 and Prince George 1940, all in British Columbia, Lethbridge 1906, Lacombe 1907 and Fort Vermillion 1907, in Alberta, Rosthern 1909, Saskatoon 1917, Swift Current 1921, Regina 1931 and Melfort 1935, in Saskatchewan, Morden 1918, Winnipeg 1924 and Portage La Prairie 1944 in Manitoba , Harrow 1913, Kapuskasing 1916, Delhi 1933 and Thunder Bay 1937 in Ontario, La Pocatiere 1912, Lennoxville 1914 and L’Assomption 1928, in Quebec, Fredericton 1912, New Brunswick 1912, Charlottetown 1909, PEI and Kentville, Nova Scotia 1911. The Service also established an Entomological Branch in 1914 to study the control of field crop insects, forests insects, foreign pests and stored product insects. A Science Service was created in 1937 which included divisions for bacteriology, biology and plant pathology, animal pathology, chemistry, entomology and forest biology. Of particular note was the development of Marquis wheat by researcher Charles Saunders during this period.
In 1928 the National Research Council created the Division of Biology and Agriculture. Initially working at the University of Alberta the Division moved into the new laboratory in Ottawa in 1932 and studied the biochemistry of wheat rust, gluten proteins and mutation in cereals among other things.
Medical research: Medical Research: Medical investigation grew dramatically in the new century. Almost immediately after Roentgen’s discovery of the x-ray, was used for clinical examination in Montreal on & February in 1896. There were as well, investigations into septicemia at the Montreal General Hospital in 1907. Dr. J.B. Collip isolated the hormone of the parathyroid gland in 1926 and Dr. Maud Abbott of McGill studied congenital diseases of the heart. Drs. Lucas and Henderson of Toronto discovered the anesthetic properties of cyclopropane in 1929 and Dr. Norman Bethune of Montreal developed the first blood bank and battlefield transfusion techniques.
Three institutional pillars of medical research were established during these years. The Connaught Laboratories in Toronto, in 1917, the Montreal Neurological Institute in 1934 and L’institute de microbiologie de Montreal.
In 1914 Dr. John Fitzgerald established laboratories in Toronto to produce vaccines for smallpox, rabies, diphtheria and tetanus. The facility was named the Connaught laboratories in 1917 in honour of Prince Albert, the Duke of Connaught the recently retired Governor General. Beginning in 1922 the laboratories began to mass produce the newly discovered hormone insulin.
The discovery of insulin by Sir Frederick Banting, C. H. Best, J.J.R. MacLeod and J.B. Collip in 1921-22 at the University of Toronto stands as a landmark in Canadian medical research.
With a grant of $1,000,000 from the US Rockefeller Foundation, McGill University established the Montreal Neurological Institute in 1934. In these facilities Dr. Wilder Pennfield undertook research into the surgical treatment of epilepsy and scientific inquiry into the nature of the temporal lobe of the human brain.
In 1938 Dr. Armand Frappier after years of effort obtained $75,000 from the government of Quebec for the establishment of L’institute de microbiologie de Montreal an organization devoted to the teaching of microbiology, research into the field and the industrial production of vaccines. In 1941 after moving into facilities at the newly constructed Universite de Montreal the Institute began producing vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus and typhoid as well as blood plasma for the war effort.
In 1936 the NRC significantly created the Associate Committee of Medical Research to fund medical research in Canada. This organization became the Division of Medical Research in 1956 and the Medical Research Council in 1960.
[edit]Scientists of note (1900 – 1939)
Scientists who made their mark during this period included: Charles Edward Saunders,1867-1937 (botany), Maude Abbott,1869-1940 (medicine), Harriet Brooks Pitcher, 1867-1933 (atomic physics), Steven Leacock (economics), C.A. Chant (astronomy), J.S. Plaskett (astronomy), Frances Gertrude McGill, 1877-1959 (forensic pathology), Alice Evelyn Wilson, 1881-1964 (geology), Frere Marie Victorin, 1885-1944 (biology), Margret Newton, 1887-1971 (biology), Wilder Pennfield, 1891-1976 (neurology), Harold Innis (economics) and Avery (biology, 1944).
[edit]Science at war (1939 – 1945)
[edit]Funding and pure science
The fortunes of scientific research during WWII were mixed.
The social sciences did not do well. The Social Science Federation of Canada (1940) and the closely related Canadian Social Science Research Council and well as the Canadian Federation for the Humanities (1943) and the associated Humanities Research Council of Canada, were all created to counter wartime conditions that threatened the funding of the social sciences and humanities in Canadian universities. Ironically, both research councils relied on funding from US philanthropic organizations, including the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, to administer their programs, until the establishment of the Canada Council in 1957.
Of note is the fact that the demands for war research personnel by the National Research Council during these years threatened to deplete the science staff at Canadian universities.
However it is also important to note that the scale and achievement of wartime atomic research inspired the founding of both the Canadian Association of Physicists and the Canadian Mathematical Society in 1945.
Finally, WWII mobilization, created an acute public familiarity with the breathtaking power of science (the atomic bomb), large organizational structures, complex management techniques and state sponsored funding programmes that would characterize post-war university as well as industrial research.
[edit]Disciplines (1939 – 1945)
Mathematics: Cryptology became an important activity, both ensuring that Canadian codes were secure and could not be broken by the enemy and attempting in turn to intercept and decode the enemy's radio transmissions. The Examination Unit of the National Research Council engaged in the later activity and both intercepted enemy radio traffic and used mathematics to attempt to break these coded signals.
Physics: The use of theoretial and applied physics were an extremely important part of Canada's war effort as reflected in activities involving the development of atomic energy. The Tizard Mission, a delegation of British scientists and military experts, visiting North America to promote wartime allied scientific cooperation, met with NRC nuclear physist George Laurence in Ottawa in 1940. As a result of this meeting, beginning in 1942, a Montreal based British-Canadian project under the aegis of the National Research Council, undertook the construction of a heavy-water atomic reactor. An experimental device with graphite control rods, ZEEP, (Zero Energy Experimental Pile) was built at Chalk River Ontario, before the end of the war and on 5 September 1945 achieved, "the first self-sustained nuclear reaction outside the United States". This momentous event was followed by the construction of a larger full sized reactor the NRX in 1947, also at Chalk River. Studies in radar and optics were also of importance and the practical results of these efforts were seen in the radar sets and range finders, manufactured by Research Enterprised Limited, a crown corporation.
[edit]Explosive growth (1945 – 1985)
[edit]Universities and government research agencies (1945 – 1985)
With the end of the war these factors resulted in the release of a pent-up demand. Universities, the home of academic research, experienced explosive growth as students, the baby boomers and public funds swelled newly created campus science faculties and research institutes. An example of this growth can be seen in the proliferation of learned societies in the field of biology. Their numbers were sufficient to lead to the creation of an umbrella group, The Canadian Federation of Biological Societies in 1957. Similarly the Canadian Geoscience Council, a federation of seven Canadian geoscience societies was founded in 1972, including among its members the Geological Association of Canada formed in 1947. Of special note was the growth of the social sciences in the sixties.
Future G-13 institutions founded during this period included the University of Waterloo, in Waterloo, Ontario in 1957 and the University of Calgary in Calgary, Alberta in 1966.
At the same time a number of federal governmental research organizations were spun off from the National Research Council. These included the Communications Security Establishment(1946), Defense Research Board (1947), Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (1952) and the Medical Research Council of Canada (1966). Provincial governments continued to establish research organizations as well with the BC Research Council being founded in 1944, the Nova Scotia Research Foundation in 1946 and the Saskatchewan Research Council in 1947. The Government of Quebec established L'institute nationale de recherche scientifique in 1967.
A private virtual organization, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research was founded in 1982 and studies topics related to cosmology, nanotechnology and biodiversity among others.
[edit]Funding agencies (1945 – 1985)
In the pre-war era, the NRC had provided meager resources for the funding of university research in natural science, engineering and medicine. The post war-era changed this. Medical research funding became the responsibility of the Medical Research Council founded in 1960. Natural science and engineering funding was passed to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council in 1977. Funding for university social science research handled by the Canada Council created in the 1957, was handed over to the newly established Humanities and Social Science Research Council in 1977.
[edit]Disciplines (1945 – 1985)
Mathematics: The dramatic success of the Canadian nuclear programme during the war acted as a catalyst for the convening of the first meeting of Canadian mathematicians, in Montreal in 1945. This lead to the establishment of the Canadian Mathematical Congress that same year. The Congress began publishing the Canadian Journal of Mathematics in 1949. The Summer Research Institute in mathematics was established at Queens in 1950 under the leadership of Professor R.L. Jeffrey who assembled ten researchers there. This idea has since been copied by other universities. The CJM was expanded to include the Canadian Mathematical Bulletin in 1958 and the Canadian Mathematical Congress Notes in 1968.
In the fifties, professors J.L. Synge and L. Infield at the department of applied mathematics at U of T, conducted research in the field of theoretical physics. This changed however, in 1958, with the appointment of J. Van Kranendonk, who became the director of the new theoretical physics section of the physics department.
The lead in mathematics held by the U of T began to fade in the sixties as other universities across Canada experienced dramatic increases in the quality of their faculties and research, which was boosted in no small measure by the increase in the number of graduate programmes. The growing importance of fields such a statistics, operational research and computer science also gave mathematics a high public profile and lead most dramatically to the creation of separate departments of mathematics and computer science in most universities. Waterloo was a leader in this regard and in 1966 established departments of pure mathematics, applied mathematics, statistics, combinatorics and optimization and applied analysis and computer science. The extent of the growth in mathematics can be seen in the fact that while there were 11 doctorates in mathematics awarded in 1961, there were 94 in 1973. Furthermore, in 1961 there were 250 professors of mathematics but by 1973 that figure had mushroomed to about 1300. At the same time grants for research by the NRC grew from $87,000 in 1961 to $8,400,000 in 1987. This growth is also reflected in the establishment of new societies including, the Statistical Society of Canada, 1971, the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Mathematics, in 1973 and the Canadian Applied Mathematics Society, in 1980.
In post war Quebec science experienced a renaisance of sorts and with it mathematics, which regained equal stature with the discipline in the rest of Canada. The establishment, by Maurice L'Abbe, of the Centre de recherches en mathematiques at L'universite de Montreal in 1970 stood as a testament to this recovery.
Physics: The NRC continued atomic research at Chalk River Laboratories until the scale of activity necessitated its transfer to a newly created organization, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, dedicated exclusively to atomic research, in 1952. It should be noted that although Canada had the scientific, engineering and industrial means to design, built and test nuclear weapons, the government decided not to pursue this option. AECL took over responsibility for the operations of NRX but coincidentally shortly after the transfer that reactor experienced a serious accident. It was repaired and rebuilt. In 1957 AECL commissioned a new research facility, the heavy-water moderated and cooled National Research Universal Reactor (NRU) at Chalk River. In 1963 a new site, the Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment, became operational at Pinwa, Manitoba. Here a new organically cooled and operated research reactor was built and work was undertaken on the development of the Slow Poke reactor and the thorium fuel cycle. In 1978 research on the safe storage of nuclear waste was initiated.
In 1974 India detonated an atomic bomb with plutonium made from a commercial version of the NRX reactor, CIRUS, built in Bombay by AECL in 1956. As a result the government of Canada terminated nuclear co-operation with that country.
The wartime research in physics and in particular the efforts of scientist, J.S. Foster, known for his work relating to the Stark effect, resulted in the establishment at McGill, of the Radiation Laboratory, equipped with Canada's first cyclotron (atom smasher) in 1949. Nuclear physicist J.M. Robson was the physics department head at McGill and R.E. Bell the head of the laboratory.
In the post war years at U of T, M.F. Crawford, H.L. Welsh, Elizabeth J. Allin and B.P. Stoicheff studied spectroscopy, optics and lasers and J. Tuzo Wilson became noted for his leadership in the field of geophysics. The early sixties saw the initiation of studies in atmospheric physics and K.G. McNeill and A.E. Litherland became active in high-energy particle physics research. H.E. Johns gained a reputation as a bio-physicist.
The University of British Columbia developed a notable presence in physics in the post-war years through the activities of professors G.M. Shrum, department head from 1938 to 1961, as well G.M. Volkoff, M. Bloom, R.D. Russell, J.B. Warren and others. Their efforts saw that institution chosen as the site for the Tri-University Meson Facility, Canada's premier particle accelerator, in the seventies.
McMaster in Hamilton, Ontario also gained prominence under the leadership of physics department head, H.G. Thode whose studies in the field of mass spectroscopy and isotopes paved the way for research in nuclear physics by M.W. Johns, H.E. Duckworth and B.N. Brockhouse at that institution. The first university research reactor in the Commonwealth was built at McMaster in 1957, followed by particle-accelerator laboratory in the seventies and McMaster became renowned in fields including spectroscopy, solid state physics, biophysics and theoretical physics through the research of A.B. McLay, M.H. Preston, J. Carbotte and others.
Post-war francophone universities have also become important research centres. Physics at Laval advanced through the efforts of, F. Rasetti, from 1939 to 1947 and his colleague E. Persico, from 1947 to 1950. Others of note included J.L. Kerwin, P. Marmet and A. Boivin who undertook studies in the fields of nuclear and theoretical physics, atomic and molecular physics and optics. P. Demers, P. Lorrain and others at L'universite de Montreal studied nuclear and plasma physics.
The University of Manitoba saw growth after the war. Studies in nuclear physics undertaken by R.W. Pringle lead to further research in that field by B.G. Hogg. Magnetism has been studied by A.H. Morrish. At the U of Sasketchewan, research in photonuclear physics and medical radiation therapy undertaken with Canada's first betatron (25 MeV) facility built in 1948 lead to the development of a cobalt 60 apparatus by H.E.Johns and others. In 1964 the Saskatchewan Accelerator Laboratory (SAL) was completed and remained operational until 1999. It has since been integrated into the Canadian Light Source Synchrotron.
Physics at the University of Western Ontario in London received a boost during the war through the initiation of studies in radar by R.C. Dearle, G.A. Woonton and others. Post-war research in the field, under P.A. Forsyth lead to the establishment in 1967 of the Centre for Radio Science which included research into atmospheric and ionospheric physics. J.W. McGowan has undertaken studies in the scattering of positrons there.
The growth in physics during this period can be measured by the fact that 1075 doctorates in physics, almost a third of which were at the U of T, were awarded by 28 Canadian universities between 1974 and 1985.
Astronomy: Radio astronomy became a prominent feature of post war astronomy in Canada with the construction of the Algonquin Radio Observatory in Algonquin Park, Ontario in 1959. This facility built under the direction of noted astronomer Dr. Arthur Covington, featured a large 150 foot receiving dish. The Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in Penticton, British Columbia, built shortly thereafter, features an interferometric radio telescope, a 26-m single-dish antenna and a solar flux monitor. In 1962 another optical telescope, a 48 inch reflector fitted with a Coude focus and a room sized spectrograph, was added to the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Victoria. The establishment in 1975, of the Herzberg Institute for Astrophysics by the National Research Council of Canada consolidated the work of Canadian astronomy at the institution and this new organization became the prime mover for the construction of the new Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, on Mount Mauna Kea in Hawaii, that saw first light in 1979.
Space Science: Canada's initial achievements in space science came as a result of military initiatives. Because the effectiveness of the huge air defence radar chains across Canada's north, as well as radio communications, were effected by the electrical properties of the ionosphere, studies of those properties were undertaken in the fifties. In 1954 the Canadian Army built a rocket launch facility at Fort Churchill (rocket launch site), Manitoba for the launching of rockets with payloads designed to study the upper atmosphere. There were further launches in 1957 and 1958 as part of Canada's participation in the activities of the International Geophysical Year. The site was subsequently used by the National Research Council in the seventies and eighties for the launching of rockets as part of the Canadian Upper Atmosphere Research Programme.
In 1958 the newly formed NASA in the US sought international partners for its naissant satellite programme. The Canadian response came from the Defence Research Establishment where Dr. John Chapman proposed that Canada build a satellite to study the properties of the ionosphere from above (the rockets from Fort Churchill studied them from below). NASA accepted the proposal and the DRE in Ottawa with the help of RCA in Montreal, and SPAR Aerospace in Toronto, overcame daunting engineering difficulties and built Alouette I, a 145 kg. satellite which was launched by NASA from the Pacific Missile Test Range in California on 29 September 1962. Alouette I was a great success and contributed significantly to the understanding of the electrical properties of the upper atmosphere. As a result of this success Canada and the US signed an agreement relating to International Satellites for Ionospheric Studies, ISIS, and Canada launched Alouette II in 1965, ISIS I in 1969 and ISIS II in 1970.
Geology: Under the pressure of World War II the Survery redoubled efforts to find strategic mineral recources and map the territory of Canada. The exploration of western Canada received major attention with the discovery of oil at Leduc, Alberta in 1947 and Canada's world lead in atomic energy resulted in a successful search for uranium deposits in the north. The Survey's methods became more effective, as seen with the use of the helicopter which greatly accelerated the process of mapping. In 1955 the Survey launched "Operation Franklin" its largest field study up to that time. With air support and under the leadership of Y.O. Fortier the 28 member team mapped 260,000 square kilometers of the high Arctic. The Survey's reputation grew under the leadership of directors G. Hanson from 1953 to 1956 and J.M. Harrison, from 1956 to 1963. In 1966 organizational changes saw the Survey become part of the new Department of Energy, Mines and Resources and as a result new emphasis was placed on the quantitative analysis of Canada's mineral energy wealth. Land use became an important focus in the seventies with the Survey conducting studies of the environmental impact of the proposed Mackenzie Valley Pipeline corridor. During those same years, the extension of Canada's off-shore boundaries to include a new 371 kilometer economic zone increased the Survey's area of responsibility by 40 percent. To deal with the question of energy security the Survey initiated the Frontier Geoscience Program in the eigthties. It also became the agent for Canada's participation in the international Ocean Drilling Program in 1984. That same year the Survey participated in the founding of Lithoprobe, the largest geoscience programme ever undertaken in Canada. This undertaking involving more that 700 scientists from, governments, universities and industry uses state-of-the-art techniques to provide a three dimensional image of the earth's crust to an astonishing depth of 50 kilometers.
Oceanography: In the post-war years the Hydrographic Survey continued its work with an expanded mandate. The entry of Newfoundland and Labrador into Confederation in 1949 saw the Survey's charting activities extended to the new coasts. As the air defence of Canada became of paramount importance in the fifties the Survey extended its research, to the Canadian Arctic, especially between 1954 and 1957 and charted routes for the ships carrying the supplies necessary to build the long range radar stations of the DEW Line. Arctic survey activity was further accelerated starting in 1959, the first year of the Polar Continental Shelf survey. The Fisheries Research Board continued its excellent work after the war and up until 1979 when it was disbanded as the result of government reorganization and its responsibilities passed to other organizations. The defence activities of the NRC during the war years, including anti-submarine warfare research were spun off and handed to the newly created Defence Research Board in 1947. That organization established research facilities in Halifax, Nova Scotia and Esquimalt, British Columbia to conduct studies in support of the ASW mission of the Royal Canadian Navy. Research activities focused on physical oceanography as it related to the transmission of sound underwater, including ocean temperature, salinity, currents, tides, surface noise and biological sound sources.
The signature event in the history of Canadian oceanography was the founding of the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Instrumental in the establishment was Dr. W. E. van Steenburgh, Director-General of Scientific Services of the Department of Mines and Technical Surveys, who recognized the need for scientific organization to deal with questions relating to defence, sovereignty, fisheries and the environment. As a result of his initiative the Institute and was created in 1962 and acquired the new state-of-the-art research vessel, the CCGS Hudson. In many ways the story of the Institute is the story of that ship. Launched in 1962 and commissioned in 1964 the Hudson undertook five geophysical surveys of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, contributing to the understanding of the new theory of continental drift. In the 1966 the Hudson carried out a detailed survey of the Labrador Sea and studies of the Labrador current. The following year it surveyed the Denmark Strait. In 1970 the ship undertook the "Hudson '70' voyage, an 11 month, first ever, circumnavigation of North and South America and in the latter part of the decade carried out the first surveys of the chemistry of Baffin Bay. In the eighties and nineties surveys within the framework of the international Joint Global Ocean Fluxes Study and World Ocean Circulation Experiment were completed by the Hudson.
Chemistry: University chemistry underwent explosive growth in the post-war years, especially in the sixties. The fifies saw the creation of six new universities each with a chemistry department, including, Le College Militaire Royal, 1952, Assumption, 1953, Sherbrooke, 1954, Carleton, 1957, York, 1959 and Waterloo, 1959. But during the sixties, nineteen new universities with their associated departments of chemistry, saw the light of day, including, Sir George Williams, 1960, Laurentien, 1960, Alberta at Calgary, 1960, Saskatchewan at Regina, 1961, Moncton, 1963, Victoria, 1963, Guelph, 1964, Brock, 1964, Trent, 1964, Lakehead, 1965, Simon Fraser, 1965, Lethbridge, 1967, Brandon,1967, Winnipeg, 1967, Quebec, 1969 and PEI, 1969. Laboratory work became more significant and saw the introduction of spectroscopy, mass spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance, flame photometry, and gas chromatography.
Original research blossomed during this period. In 1965 there were 664 doctoral students in chemistry at universities across Canada. This figure had jumped to 771 in 1966 and about 40% of the research was devoted to organic chemistry. By the same token in 1964 there were 19 graduate programmes in chemistry while a mere two years later there were 25. The spectacular growth is reflected in the evolution of graduate chemistry at the University of British Columbia where in 1955, seven professors supervised two graduate students compared to a faculty of 50 supervising 150 graduate students in 1968.
Research efforts of note included the work of R.U. Lemieux, at the University of Alberta, in the field of carbohydrate chemistry (1953), P.A. Giguere at Laval, in the field of hydrogen peroxide spectroscopy and N. Bartlett at the University of British Columbia in compounds of the so called "inert" xenon.
The NRC Division of Chemistry continued its research throughout these years.
Biology: In the post war years the number of universities offering courses of one type or another in biology increased significantly as compared to the pre-war situation and stood at 41 in 1971. The connection between biochemistry and microbiology became more pronounced with 10 universities offering at least both courses, including: Victoria, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan (Saskatoon), Manitoba, Western Ontario, Queen’s, Ottawa, McGill, Montreal, Sherbrooke, Laval and Dalhousie. The NRC offered grants in support of animal, plant, cellular and population biology and in 1967 those universities receiving the most money included: British Columbia, $878,000, Guelph, $644,000, Toronto, $559,000, Alberta, $524, 000 and Manitoba, $519,000.
The excellent work of the Experimental Farms continued in the post war years. However change was in the wind and in 1959 the Experimental Farm Service was united with the Science Service to form the Research Branch of the Department of Agriculture. To compliment the existing network of farms the new organization created a number of research instututes to deal with a variety of research topics including: genetics, microbiology, cell biology, etomology, plants, animals, soils and insect pathology.
Medical Research: The Associate Committee of Medical Research created in 1936 to fund medical research in Canada became the Division of Medical Research in 1956 and the Medical Research Council in 1960. This organization funded medical research at a number of university medical schools and associated teaching hospitals across the country including, Laval/Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, 1639, McGill/Montreal General Hospital, 1819, U of T/the Toronto General Hospital, 1829, Ottawa U/The Ottawa Hospital, 1845, Queen’s/Hotel Dieu Hospital, Kingston, 1845, U of T/Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, 1875, UBC/Vancouver General Hospital, 1886, Dalhousie/Victoria General Hospital, Halifax, 1887 and the U of A/ the University of Alberta Hospital, Edmonton, 1906.
The Connaught Laboratories in Toronto conducted ground breaking research in the fifties with respect to the world’s first polio vaccine. Working with Dr. Jonas Salk in the US the laboratories developed a safe inactive vaccine using a new synthetic base, Medium 199. This permitted large volume production through a technique that came to be known as the “Toronto Method” which in turn allowed the mass vaccination campaigns of millions of Canadian and US children against this horrible crippling disease beginning in 1954. The laboratory also produced the first trivalent Sabin live oral polio vaccine in 1959, as well as influenza, measles and a freeze-dried smallpox vaccine which was of crucial importance in the global elimination of that terrible disease.
In Montreal L’institute de microbologie continued its research in the fifties and with a $1,000,000 grant from the Quebec government began the production of polio vaccine in 1956. In the sixties the organization initiated research into immunology, in particular as related to organ transplants, as well as infectious mononucleosis, leprosy, cancer and measles. In 1975 the institute became part of the Universite de Quebec network and was renamed L’Institute Armand Frappier.
[edit]Big science (1945 – 1985)
The post-war years saw dramatic growth in "big science'. In the fifties large atomic research reactors were built in Chalk River Ontario (NRX and NRU) and smaller ones in many universities across the country. Space research satellites (Alouette and ISIS) were built in Ottawa and launched in the US. Upper atmosphere Black Brant research rockets were launched from Churchill, Manitoba. A large state of the art radio telescope was built in Algonquin Park.
Although plans to build an Intense Neutron Generator and a large astronomical telescope, to be named the Queen Elizabeth II in the sixties were canceled due to financial pressures, (the later in 1968), the seventies saw the construction of the TRIUMF large meson generator at the University of British Columbia, the Canada-France-Hawaii Observatory in Hawaii and the experimental Tokamak fusion reactor in Varennes, Quebec.
[edit]Science policy
The long standing science policy of the Government of Canada has been to consider science and technology as supporting activities for the development of Canadian business and industry. The first government science agencies, the Geological Survey of Canada (1842, minerals), the Dominion Experimental Farms (1886, agriculture) and the Biological Board (fisheries) were established to support their respective industries. The National Recearch Council (1916) was founded to support manufacturing research and to provide science and technology advice to the government. The series of post-war NRC spin-offs saw this advisory role handed over to a newly created agency the Science Council of Canada founded in 1966. It provided scientific advice to the government until it was abolished in 1993 as part of federal budget cutbacks.
Special circumstances, such as war, have seen the government mobilize science to deal with a national emergency.
The government has also for the last fifty years considered the health and more recently the public safety of Canadians to be of great importance and has therefore invested in medical research through the NRC, the Medical Research Board and lately the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Other health and safety science activities include the laboratory investigations of Health Canada and the recently created Public Health Agency of Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
However government policy with respect to what might be described "pure" science has been ambiguous. Early in the twenieth century the government funded the construction of one of the largest astronomical telescopes in the world. Other "big science" projects such as those listed here have also been funded over the last one hundred years. However when the overall funding for this type of activity during the past century is considered there has been a notable lag when Canada's efforts are compared to those of other countries.
[edit]Nobel Laureates and other scientists of note (1945 – 1985)
A number of Nobel Prizes were awarded to Canadian scientists, during this period including: William Giauque, (Chemistry, 1949), Charles B. Huggins, (Physiology or Medicine, 1966, Gerhard Herzberg, (Chemistry, 1971) and David H. Hubel, (Physiology or Medicine, 1981),
Other scientists of note included: Ned Stacie, 1900-1962 (chemistry), Carlyle Beals (astronomy), Marshall McLuhan (sociology/communications), Helen Sawyer Hogg, 1905-1993 (astronomy), John Tuzo Wilson, 1908-1993 (geology), Pierre Dansereau, 1911 (ecology), Douglas Harold Copp, 1915-1998, (medicine), David Suzuki, (genetics, TV personality), Fernand Seguin (scientist, TV personality), Raymond Urgel Lemieux, 1920-2000 (chemistry), Charles Robert Scriver, 1930 (medicine) and Hubert Reeves, 1932 (cosmology).
[edit]Cutbacks and recovery (1985 – Present)
[edit]Universities and government research agencies (1985 – Present)
Growth continued until the mid-eighties when a crisis in public funding curtailed much scientific research at the university and government level. Space activities spread across federal departments were brought under the roof of the Canadian Space Agency, created in 1989. The Defence Research Board was reorganized and emerged as Defence Research and Development Canada. The province of Quebec established the Centre de recherche industriel de Quebec in 1989.
The last two decades have witnessed a slow but steady recovery. The mid-nineties saw the voluntary creation of the Group of Ten, large research universities in Canada. Three members were added to create the Group of 13 in 2006. In 1995 the Social Science Federation of Canada and the Canadian Federation for the Humanities amalgamated to form the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
A recent event, the formation in Waterloo, Ontario, of the Perimeter Institute, for the study of quantum mechanics and relativity, is refreshingly novel in that it represents the initiative of a private individual who has entered a field previously occupied by public institutes.
[edit]Funding agencies (1985 – Present)
In 2000 the Medical Research Council was reorganized and emerged as the new Canadian Institutes of Health Research. At the beginning of the new century the creation of two new funding agencies, the Canada Research Chairs Programme and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, have aided the recovery from government cutbacks.
[edit]Disciplines (1985 – Present)
Mathematics: The continuing importance of mathematics has been reflected in the establishment of organizations such at the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences at Waterloo (later moved to U of T) in 1991. In the new century there are about 2400 mathematicians in Canadian universities and in 2005 the Canadian Mathematical Society celebrated its sixtieth anniversary. Waterloo has surpassed the University of Toronto in stature and in 2008 is a world leader in mathematics with over 5300 students, 200 full time professors and 180 different courses in mathematics, statistics and computer science. Research institutes include: the Business and Industrial Statistics Research Group, the Centre for Advanced Studies in Finance, the Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research,Centre for Computational Mathematics in Industry and Commerce, the Institute for Computer Research, the Institute of Insurance and Pension Research, the Institute for Quantitative Finance and Insurance and the Institute for Quantum Computing.
Physics: Atomic fusion was a significant field of study in this period. From in 1987 to 1999, at Varennes Quebec, Hydro-Quebec operated a Tokomak fusion reactor. Researchers from the Institut de Recherche en Électricité du Québec (IREQ) and the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS) investigated various elements of fusion science at this facility.
The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) studied the nature of the sub-atomic particle known as the neutrino from 1999 until 2006. The facility is located about 2 km underground in the former Creighton nickel mine of CVRD Inco in Sudbury, Ontario and was designed to detect solar neutrinos by sensing their interaction with deuterium nuclei and atomic electrons. Observations resulted in a major discovery, demonstrating among other things that solar neutrinos oscillate as they travel through space and therefore have mass. The facility is presently undergoing an upgrade that will result in SNO+ that will permit new experiments. These will involve the study of the proton proton chain reaction, geo-neutrinos (neutrinos produced by natural phenomena in the earth) and neutrinoless double beta decay.
One of the largest science projects in Canadian history, the Canadian Light Source Synchrotron at the University of Sasketchewan in Saskatoon began operation in 2004. Covering an area the size of a football field and built at a cost of $175 million it is operated by CLS Inc. a U of S not-for-profit corporation. It is used to investigate the nature of matter at very small scales.
Small scale physics is also the focus of the National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT) at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Alberta. Operated by the NRC the institute was created in 2001 and moved into a state of the art facility which is among the largest and quietest of its type in the world, in 2006. It will study a wide range of nanoscale phenomena including, the synthesis of nanocrystals and nanowires and of supramolecular-based nanomaterials, the fabrication of molecular-scale devices, the development of nano-scaled materials for chemical reactions at semiconductor surfaces, protein design and genetic engineering and nanoelectricalmechanical systems.
The University of Toronto is the most prominent member of the G13 Canadian research universities and remains one of Canada's premier physics research organizations. In 1997 the physics department celebrated the centenary of its graduate programme. In 2007 it conducted research in a wide ranging number of fields including: planetary physics, quantum optics and condensed matter physics and subatomic physics. A number of research institutes play an important part in this activity including: the Center for Quantum Information and Quantum Control, the Institute for Optical Sciences, the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (C.I.T.A.), Photonics Research Ontario, IsoTrace, the Institute for Aerospace Studies, the Institute of Particle Physics (I.P.P.) and the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
The University of British Columbia continues to play an important role in physics research. Fields of study include: applied physics, atomic, molecular and optical physics, biophysics, condensed matter, medical physics, particle, subatomic and string theory and theoretical physics. Important research institutes include, the Advanced Materials and Process Engineering Laboratory, the Pacific Institute of Theoretical Physics and of course TRIUMF, Canada's National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics.
TRIUMF is also Canada's centre for participation in the construction and eventual operation of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva. Canadian universities and Canadian industry have contributed components to ATLAS, one of that accelerators large particle detectors. TRIUMF also hosts a Tier 1 Computing Centre for ATLAS, one of ten in the world.
Canada's number three research university, the University of Alberta in Edmonton, maintains its strong position in physics research in Canada in 2008. Fields of stude include: the astrophysical sciences, condensed matter physics, geophysics and particle physics. Research institutes of note include: the Center for Nanoscale Physics, the Centre for Particle Physics (Center for Subatomic Research), the Institute for Geophysical Research, the Mitpan International Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory, the Space Physics Laboratory and the Theoretical Physics Institute.
The reputation of physics research at McGill in Montreal continues to be strong. Fields of study include: astrophysics, condensed matter physics, high energy physics, nuclear physics and nonlinear physics. Research centres of note include: the Centre for the Physics of Materials, the Centre for High Energy Physics, the Interuniversity Centre for Subatomic Physics, and the McGill Institute for Advanced Materials.
Arguably Canada's most significant theoretical physics research organization is the newly created Perimeter Institute associated with the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario. Founded in 1999 by Mike Lazaridis, inventor of the Blackberry, and under the leadership of Founding Executive Director Howard Burton, the 60 resident researchers have, since 2001 conducted research in a number of fields including: cosmology, particle physics, quantum foundations, quantum gravity, quantum information and superstring theory.
Astronomy: Cutbacks in funding hit Canada's premier astronomical research organization the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics hard. Money could not be found to resurface the Algonquin Park Radio Telescope and it along with the solar telescope near Ottawa were closed in 1986. However that same year, the HIA did establish the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC) which created special software for the archiving of astronomical date. In 1987, the HAI took a 25 percent stake in the 15-m James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (submillimetre radio) and in the nineties a 15 percent stake in the optical 8 metre Gemini Telescope which became operational in 1999. Headquarters for the HIA moved from Ottawa to Victoria in 1995. In the new century the Institute designed instruments for its international telescope programme including the CFHT adaptive optics bonnette, the Gemini multi-object spectrograph and the JCMT auto-correlation spectrometer and imaging system. The HAI is also the principle player in the 1998 – 1999 Long-Range Plan for Astronomy and recently has moved towards a more supportive role for Canadian university astronomy.
In 2003 the Canadian Space Agency launched Canada's first astronomical satellite, the Microvariability and Oscillations of STars telescope or MOST, developed by the Agency, Dynacon Enterprises Limited and the astronomy departments at the University of Toronto and British Columbia.
Astronomy in the new century at the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the U of T is wide ranging in scope and makes use of some of the world's greatest observatories. Fields of study include: cosmology, the early universe, galaxy clusters, galaxy, star and planet formation, the interstellar medium, high energy astrophysics and stellar structure and evolution. Researchers at the department have access to a number of high quality telescopes including: Gemini North and South, 8.1m , Magellan 6.5 m, the CFHT, 3.6 m, Dupont, 2.5 m and the JCMT, sub-mm as well as other optical, radio and satellite facilities and the use of stratospheric balloons for galactic and cosmological research.
Astronomy research in the twenty first century is combined with the work of the physics department at the University of British Columbia. The 22 staff researchers there engage in an active programme of investigation and have access to cutting edge facilities including the CFHT and Gemini telescopes. The Dominion Astrophysical Observatory near Victoria and the two radio telescopes of the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory near Penticton are also used. Furthermore department members have built several liquid mirror telescopes the biggest being the 6 metre Large Zenith Telescope near Vancouver.
Other Canadian universities including, Queen's, York, Calgary, the U of Alberta, the U of Victoria, Montreal, Laval and the University of Western Ontario offer graduate astronomy programmes and have their own observatories.
Space Science: During this period Canadian space science developed a manned component in addition to unmanned activities. In the early eighties the government of Canada signed an agreement with the US regarding participation by Canada in the NASA space shuttle programme. Canada would design, build and donate four Remote Manipulator System devices, (popularly known as the Canadarm), used to handle cargo and equipment in the bay of the shuttle when it was in orbit, in exchange for the training of a Canadian astronaut corps by NASA and the assignment of Canadian astronauts as crew members aboard space shuttle flights. Shuttle flights have included those by, Marc Garneau, Canada's first astronaut, 1984/1996/2000, Roberta Bondar, 1992, Steve MacLean, 1992/2006, Chris Hadfield, 1995/2001, Robert Thirsk, 1996, Bjarni Tryggvason, 1997, Dave Williams, 1998 and Julie Payette, 1999. Science studies during these missions involved investigations of human physiology including space sickness, intracorporal fluid displacements, spacial orientation and the loss of bone and muscle mass during prolonged periods of weigthtlessness. There were also experiments in materials science and biology amongst others.
Canada's unmanned programme included the first launching of a Canadian earth observation satelllite, RADARSAT-1 in 1995 and an improved version RADARSAT-2 in 2007. Placed in polar orbits each of these satellites images almost all of the earth's surface, every 24 days using a powerful synthetic aperature radar, SAR. The images have both operational and sciencific applications and their data is of use in geology, hydrology, agriculture, cartography, forestry, climatology, urbanology, environmental studies, meteorology, oceanography and other fields.
The Canadian Space Agency launched the Microvariability and Oscillations of STars (MOST) astronomical and SCISAT-1, satellites in 2003. A year later MOST observed that the star, Procyon, did not oscillate, a finding that has importance with respect to theories relating to the formation and aging of the sun and other stars.
Canadian instruments have also flown aboard a number of international satellites. Akebono, a Japanese satellite launched in 1989, to study the earth's magnetosphere, was equipped with the Canadian suprathermal ion mass spectrometer. In 1996, the Canadian auroral ultra-violet imager, flew aboard the Russian satellite Interball-2. FUSE, an international ultraviolet space observatory, launched in 1999, has aboard, the Canadian designed and built Fine Error Sensor camera system for tracking the telescope. Canada provided the $37 million "weather station" aboard the Phoenix Mars unmanned mission scheduled to land on that planet in 2008.
In 2008, the Agency plans to launch a bybrid satellite, Cassiope, which includes a scientific package equipped with the "enhanced polar outflow probe", that will study the ionosphere. The Agency has also coordinated Canada's contribution to the HIFI and SPIRE instruments aboard the Herschel Space Observatory and to the Low Ferquency Instrument and the Hight Frequency Instrument aboard the Planck Surveyor astronomical/cosmological satellite both of which which will be launched in 2008. Finally Canada is contributing the Fine Guidance Sensor and Tuneable Filter Imager for the James Web Space Telescope scheluled for launch in 2013.
A rather imaginative recent undertaking is one by the Mars Society, an international non-profit space advocacy organization and its Canadian branch, the Mars Society of Canada, which established, as part of their Mars Analogue Research Station Programme, the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS), near the Haughton Meteor Impact Crater on Devon Island, Nunavut in 2002. Designed to develop procedures for an eventual manned mission to Mars, the "crew members", inhabiting a simulated Mars base and wearing simulated space suits conducted microbiological and geological studies and simulated Mars field explorations.
Geology: The Geological Survey has continued its research during this period. In 1986 the Survey merged with the Earth Physics Branch of the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources and acquired the national seismology and geomagetic observatory networks of that organization. In the nineties this new organization took the lead in the development of the National Geoscience Mapping Program (NATMAP)with other governments, universities and industry to optimize the use of funding for the new mapping of bedrock and surface geology of Canada. Activity in environmental studies has involved establishing norms for the geochemical profiles of naturally occurring substances and work with respect to climate change as well as hydrogeology and natural radioactivity and the risks associated with natural dangers including earthquakes and tsunanis. The Intergovernmental Geoscience Accord, signed in 1996, clarified the role of the Survey with respect to relations with provincial and territorial governments. As the result of a reorganization the Survey became part of the Earth Sciences division of Natural Resources Canada in the mid-nineties. In recent years the evolution of digital electronics and the internet has seen the Survey undertake the development of the Geoscience Knowledge Network with the aim of making geological information available on line.
The budget of the Survey is now about $60 million a year and the staff of 550 are located at headquarters in Ottawa and regional offices in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, St. Foy, Quebec, Calgary, Alberta and Sidney and Vancouver, British Columbia. Present fields of study include: geological hazards and environmental geoscience, marine geoscience, minerals, hydrocarbons and bedrock and surficial geoscience.
Oceanography: Because most oceanographical activity in Canada is federally funded, the cutbacks of 1985 effected scientific research in this field. For example the Pacific ocean research facilities of the Defence Research Board were closed. However in spite of this the key player, the Bedford Institute has maintained its status as Canada's premier oceanographical institution. Consolidation over the years recent has brought the oceanographic activities of four departments under the roof of the Institute and at the present time over 400 scientists, engineers, technicians, support staff and others, conduct targeted research in a number of fields. National Defence activities support ocean surveillance through the Maritime Forces Atlantic's Route Survey Office and focus on surveys of the sea floor in areas of military interest. The Shellfish Section of Environment Canada conducts ocean water quality surveys and microbiological studies of shellfish. The Geological Survey of Canada is also present and has established itself as Canada's principle marine geoscience facility with emphasis on geophysics, geochemistry, marine and petroleum geology and the coastal/off-shore landmass. The Science Division and Canadian Hydrographic Service of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans are also represented. Associated researchers study the marine climate and environment, marine and diadromous fish, shell fish, mammals and plants. The Institute presently operates four research vessels, CCGS Matthew acquired in 1990 along with the famous CCGS Hudson (1964), CCGS Navicula (1968) and CCGS Alfred Needler (1982).
Chemistry: Although there have been funding difficulties the Group of Thirteen Canadian research universities have been engaged in cutting edge chemistry research during thie period. Not surprisingly the University of Toronto has a very elaborate graduate research programme with specialties in, analytical chemistry, biological and organic chemistry, environmental chemistry, inorganic chemistry, physical chemistry, chemical physics and polymer chemistry. The University of British Columbia has a similarly well developed chemistry research programme in fields such as, analytical chemistry, biochemistry, envirenmental chemistry, inorganic chemistry, material, organic chemistry, physical-theoretical chemistry and nuclear and radiochemistry.
The University of Alberta has a number of advanced laboratories supporting research in chemistry. These include: the Analytical and Instrumentation Laboratory, the Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Laboratory and the X-ray Crystallography Laboratory which support, analytical chemistry, chemical biology, chemical physics, inorganic chemistry, materials and surface chemistry, nanotechnology, organic chemistry, physical chemistry and theoretical and computational chemistry.
In recent years McGill has emphasized the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of chemical research in fields such as analytical/environmental chemisty, biological chemistry, chemical physics, materials chemistry and synthesis/catalysis.
Advanced laboratories combined with a multidisciplinary approach characterize chemistry research at the University of Waterloo. Of note is the new Waterloo Advanced Technology laboratory or WATlLab, a facility that offers researchers, microscopy and lithography, spectromicroscopy and spectroscopy and nanofabrication and materials science tools. Also available is the Waterloo Chemical Analysis Facility which included NMR and mass spectrometry machines. Research institutes include the Guelph-Waterloo Centre for Graduate Work in Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
The NRC continues its work in chemistry notable at the Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences with laboratories in Ottawa (Sussex Drive) and Chalk River, Ontario.
Biology: After significant cutbacks and reorganization, biological research at the National Research Council has recovered and is reflected in the activities of a number of sub-organizations including: the Institute for Biological Sciences (NRC-IBS)in Ottawa, Montreal Road and Sussex Drive Campuses, the Biotechnology Research Institute (NRC-BRI)in Montreal, Quebec, the Institute for Biodiagnostics (NRC-IBD)with facilities in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Calgary, Alberta and Halifax, Nova Scotia, the Plant Biotechnology Institute (NRC-PBI)in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and the Institute for Marine Biosciences (NRC-IMB)in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Genomics and the closely related proteomics have become the leading fields for biological research in recent years. In 2000 the government of Canada created Genome Canada to conduct research in these important fields. This organization is composed of six centres, Genome British Columbia, in Vancouver, Genome Alberta in Calgary, Genome Prairie in Saskatoon, the Ontario Genomics Institute in Toronto, Genome Quebec in Montreal and Genome Atlantic in Halifax. These centres conduct genomic and proteomic research in such fields as human health, agriculture, forestry, the environment and the fisheries
The Canadian Forest Service a branch of the federal Natural Resources Canada conducts biological research at the Pacific Forestry Centre, in Victoria, British Columbia, the Northern Forestry Centre, in Edmonton, Alberta, the Great Lakes Forestry Centre in Sault St. Marie, Ontario, the Laurentien Forestry Centre, in Quebec, Quebec and the Atlantic Forestry Centre in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
Medical Research: The Canadian Institutes of Health Research, which replaced the Medical Research Council in 2000 and consist of a number of virtual institutes fund medical research in a variety of fields including aboriginal peoples' health, aging, cancer, circulatory and respiratory health, gender and health, genetics, human development, infection, musculoskeletal health, diabetes, neuroscience, and public health. Research is conducted in cooperation with the pharmaceutical industry and medical schools across Canada.
The Public Health Agency of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario is also a significant player in health research and has a number of facilities that conduct medical research including: the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Control and the Centre for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control, both in Ottawa, and the Laboratory for Foodborn Zoonoses in Guelph, Ontario. Of particular note is the National Microbiological Laboratory in Winnipeg, Manitoba, with its level 4 biohazard containment and research facilities.
After a number of complex corporate changes over a period of 30 years Connaught Laboratories emerged in 2004 as Sanofi Pasteur Canada with modern facilities focusing on vaccine research, in Toronto. Ongoing projects include the $350 million 10 year Cancer Vaccine Programme with possible treatments for melanoma, colorectal cancer and breast cancer as well as investigations into vaccines for HIV, pheumococcal infection and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
Extensive medical research programmes are also undertaken by a number of other private companies including: Pfizer Canada Inc. (fs) 147.5 GlaxoSmithKline Inc., Merck Frosst Canada Ltd., Biovail Corporation, AstraZeneca Canada Inc., QLT Inc., MDS Inc., Vasogen Inc., Novartis Pharmaceuticals Canada Inc., Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and Neurochem Inc.
International cooperation in medical research has become important technique in dealing with the understanding of severe diseases such as cancer. Starting in 2008, Canada, through the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research in Toronto, will lead the International Cancer Genome Consortium, a research project involving nine other countries, that will hunt for the genetic mutations that are the basis for 50 types of cancer. The Canadian contribution includes the investigation of the genetic basis for pancreatic cancer as well and the computer storage and manipulation of the data for the project.
[edit]Big science (1985 – Present)
Major post war science facilities were closed down during this period, notably the Algonquin Park Radio Observatory and the Tokomak reactor. In spite of cutbacks a number of big new science projects were realized including, the Canadian Astronaut Programme, the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Sudbury, Ontario, the National Microbiological Laboratory in Winnipeg, the Canadian Light Source Syncrotron at the University of Saskatoon in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and the National Institute for Nanotechnology in Edmonton, Alberta.
At the beginning of the 21st century due to financial restraints, token funding efforts were made to give Canada a place with the construction and operation of the Gemini astronomical telescopes and the soon to be opened Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. Canada's participation in the international fusion reactor project was canceled. Funding restraints also disrupted the supply of medical isotopes produced at Chalk River in 2007 and Canadian astronaut and former head of the Canadian Space Agency, Marc Garneau called for the creation of a national space policy to revive Canada's flagging space programme.
[edit]Nobel Laureates and other scientists of note (1985 – Present)
A number of Nobel prizes were awarded to Canadian scientists during this time of restraint including: John C. Polanyi, (Chemistry, 1986), Sidney Altman, (Chemistry, 1989), Richard E. Taylor, (Physics, 1990), Rudolph Marcus, (Chemistry, 1992), Michael Smith, (Chemistry, 1993), Bertram N. Brockhouse, (Physics, 1994), William Vickrey, (Economic Sciences, 1996), Myron Scholes, (Economics, 1997) and Robert Mundell, (Economics, 1999).
Other scientists of note include Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute,
Today university research accounts for about 40% if all research spending in Canada while scientific research in government laboratories accounts for about 10%.
[edit]Innovation, invention, and industrial research in Canada
The terms chosen for the "eras" described below are both literal and metaphorical. They describe the technology that dominated the period of time in question but are also representative of a large number of technologies introduced concurrently.
[edit]The Stone Age: Fire 14,000BC – 1600
The first innovators and inventors in Canada were, not surprisingly, the native peoples who arrived here 14,000 years ago. They innovated techniques to survive in a very new and mostly hostile environment. This involved new ways to obtain food, create clothing and travel across a huge territory. Notable inventions included the canoe, snowshoe, igloo and pemmican. The west coast natives innovated construction techniques that included the use of heavy timber and eastern tribes developed sedentary agricultural techniques.
[edit]The Age of Sail: Ships, symbolic language, and the wheel (1600 – 1830)
The arrival of the Europeans provided a new impetus for innovation and invention. Techniques to improve fishing and the cutting and the transport of timber were refined. The first metal works, Les Forges de St. Maurice developed metal products for colonial use. There were innovations in cultivation techniques to deall with the cold climate.
In 1844, in Nova Scotia, Charles Fenerty invented newsprint made from woodpulp and Abraham Gesner invented kerosene in Halifax in 1846.
[edit]The Steam Age: Trains, telegraphs, water, and oil (1830 – 1880)
This era ushered in experimentation with the design of steam powered locomotives and ships. The building of large wooden ocean going sailing vessels became a hugely successful undertaking in the maritimes in the latter half of the nineteenth century due to innovative construction techniques and designs. Sandford Fleming invented standard time. In the field of agriculture, machines were developed to farm the vast prairie grasslands. One of Canada's best known industrial innovators, the Massey Harris company, became famous for its farm equipment. New strains of wheat were developed to deal with the harsh prairie climate.
Thomas Willson innovated techniques for the production of acetylene. Experiments in X-ray technology were conducted at RMC in Kingston Ontario. Henry Ruttan improved techniques for the heating and ventilation of buildings and railway cars. In the US Canadian James Lee invented the rifle magazine.
[edit]The Electric Age: Light, street railways, telephones, skyscrapers and central heating (1880 – 1920)
Canadian inventors made huge contributions to the electric era.
Matthew Evans and Henry Woodward (inventor) invented and patented the incandescent electric light in Toronto in 1874 and later sold the patent to Edison. This would become the basis for his renowned endeavours with electric lighting. Thomas Willson invented the electric arc light during this period.
The year 1876 saw Alexander Graham Bell invent the telephone. He would share credit for this achievement between the US and Canada. World shaking experiments in trans-oceanic wireless communication conducted by Guglielmo Marconi in Newfoundland and Cape Breton. In the US, Canadian Reginald Fessenden conducted investigations into what is now called FM radio. Canadian Frederick Creed invented the teleprinter in 1902.
Inventive Canadian chemists specializing in the field of electrochemistry during this period included W.T. Gibbs, T.L.Wilson and E.A. LeSeur.
The turn of the century witnessed large scale innovation in heavy engineering with the construction of hydro generating facilities at Niagara Falls and at other sites across Canada including the Gatineau River near Ottawa in the twenties.
Alexander Graham Bell undertook experiments in aviation and high speed water craft on Lake Bras D'or in Nova Scotia. It was here that Canada's first heavier than air machine, the Silver Dart, took to the air in 1909.
The parched could quench their thirst with the newly created Canada Dry ginger ale. Peter Robertson invented the square headed screwdriver in Milton, Ontario in 1908.
[edit]Killing Machines I: Artillery and machine guns (1914 – 1918)
Peter Nissen invented the "Nissen Hut", military shelter in 1916. Other WWI innovations included the variable pitch propeller, the gas mask, the Curtiss Canada bomber and the ill-starred Ross rifle.
[edit]The Automobile Age: Cars, planes and radios (1920 – 1950)
In the early twentieth century, several dozen individuals and small businesses located mostly in southern Ontario experimented with automobile innovation. One of these, Samuel McLaughlin of Oshawa, eventually became the basis for General Motors of Canada. It was within this context that Joseph Bombardier in Quebec invented his automobile for the snow or "snowmobile" and founded the Bombardier company. This corporation would become a giant of Canadian industrial research in the latter part of the century.
In Montreal Alexis Nihon invented the tubeless tire. Also in Montreal, during the twenties and thirties, Canadian Vickers developed a very successful series of flying boats.
Experiments with electrical sound recording by microphone were undertaken by Horace Owen (born Hamilton, Ontario, 1888 died Ottawa 1972) and Lionel Guest in 1919.
This period also saw the development of the "batteryless" radio in Toronto by Edward S. Rogers, Sr. and further innovations in radio by Canadian Marconi in Montreal. Experiments in television transmission were conducted there by Ouimet and the wire photo was invented. In 1937, Donald Higgs invented what would become the "Walkie Talkie".
On the domestic scene, Herbert McCool invented Easy-Off Oven Cleaner in Regina in 1932 and other Canadians invented, pablum and the zipper.
As a student James Hillier invented the electron microscope at the University of Toronto in the early forties and Hugh Le Caine invented the music synthesizer in 1945. The forties also saw Frank Forward invent techniques for refining nickel and cobalt.
However it terms of scale, nothing could match the giant of Canadian innovation throughout the late 19th and first half of the 20th century, the Canadian Pacific Angus Locomotive Works of Montreal. This huge enterprise designed, developed and built most of the steam engines for the great Canadian Pacific Railway Company.
[edit]Killing Machines II: Bombers, tanks, corvettes, radar and explosives (1939 – 1945)
WWII saw science and industry harnessed to fight the enemy. The National Research Council (NRC), created during WWI to advise the government on industrial research, grew exponentially as did Canadian war industries. A tight bond was formed between the two.
The NRC itself helped develop radar, the proximity fuse, the explosive RDX, high velocity artillery, fire control computers and submarine detection equipment among other things. The NRC Examination Unit innovated in the field of cryptology.
Enterprises such as the Ford Motor Company of Canada developed and built special purpose military transport vehicles. Polymer Corporation of Sarnia, Ontario pioneered new types of synthetic rubber. Canadian Industries Limited in Montreal formulated new types of explosive and Canadian Marconi innovated in the new field of radar. A Canadian version of the US Sherman tank was developed and manufactured at the Angus Works. Canadian versions of British and US combat aircraft, in particular, the Lancaster and the Hurricane, were built in Toronto and Fort William, Ontario. Northern Electric developed telecommunications equipment. Ship building companies on the east and west coast adapted US and British designs and construction techniques for the mass construction of ships. Frank invented the aviation anti-blackout suit in Toronto and experiments in germ and chemical warfare were conducted at Grosse-Isle, Quebec and what is now CFB Suffield, Alberta.
Specialized government businesses such as Research Enterprises Limited ( 1940) developed and manufactured what we would now call "high tech" products, including optical systems and communications devices.
Secret arrangements with Britain and the US, including the Tizard Mission, saw Canadian industry participate in the development of the atomic bomb, notably through the innovation of uranium refining techniques.
[edit]The Television Age: TV, nuclear weapons, atomic energy, and computers (1950 – 1980)
After the war a number of innovators including Electrohome of Kitchener, Ontario, offered televisions and entertainment systems to consumers. In the fifties Anthony Barringer invented INPUT, an electromagnetic device used for the aerial detection of mineral deposits.
The Toronto area saw the creation of a naissant military industrial complex around the design of jet aircraft. AVRO Canada developed the AVRO Jetliner and then the CF-100 jet fighter. The Orenda jet engine factory developed jet power plants for the new aircraft. The scale of this undertaking grew dramatically with the development of the huge CF-105 long range high altitude interceptor and its associated Velvet Glove air-to -air missile and came crashing to the ground just as quickly when the project was cancelled in 1959. At the same time, with financing from the US, AVRO was developing a supersonic fighter based on a flying saucer design. However the project collapsed when the US withdrew funding.East coast shipbuilders continued to innovate with the construction of new classes of warship. In Ottawa, the Defence Research Board, with the support of industry developed Canada's first satellites and the Black Brant sounding rocket. In the sixties and seventies Gerald Bull experimented with long range artillery. Agent Orange (the herbicide) was tested by the US Army at Gagttown New Brunswick from the early fifties to the nineties.
There were also developments in the innovation of civil aviation and space. In the fifties De Havilland Canada developed bush planes and later in the sixties and seventies STOL aircraft. Pratt and Whitney Canada developed its signature PT-6 series of aircraft engines. Telesat Canada pioneered the development of domestic satellite communications. In the field of nuclear energy, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, developed its CANDU series of atomic power reactors.
John Hopps invented the pacemaker in Toronto in 1951 and Harold Elford Johns invented the cobalt-60 cancer therapy unit that same year. The Connaught Laboratories in Toronto innovated techniques for the mass production of the Salk vaccine. Nordion developed medical radio isotopes.
Gerald Heffernan invented what is known as mini-mill steel manufacturing. In the US, Canadian Lewis Urry working for the Eveready Company invented the alkaline battery and lithium battery. Also in the US, Canadian Willard Boyle working at the Bell Labs invented the charge-coupled device (CCD) which became the key technology for digital photography and improved astronomical telescopes.
Innovations in the pulp and paper industry have been made by the Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada and the Pulp and Paper Research Institute of Canada, both located in Pointe-Claire, Québec, Canada.
[edit]The PC Age: The Microchip and Mobile Communications (1980 – 2000)
The latter part of the twentieth century has been notable for developments in information technology, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals. Canadian companies were early innovators in the PC field with models like the Hyperion. AES developed the word processor. Chip makers, such as ATI, have developed powerful graphics chips for computer games. Business intelligence, and cinematic special effects software products have enjoyed great success, as have a number of consumer oriented offerings including Corel Draw, software by Delrina Corporation of Toronto and many electronic games. Northern Electric maintained its innovative pace, becoming Northern Telecom, and leading the world in the digital switching and other communications technologies.
Pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer Canada Inc., GlaxoSmithKline Inc., Merck Frosst Canada Ltd., Biovail Corporation, AstraZeneca Canada Inc. and Sanofi Pasteur Limited invested hundred of millions in drug research.
Aviation and space research has seen industry develop the highly successful regional jet passenger aircraft, the Canadarm 1 and 2 for NASA and Radarsat 1 and 2. The NRC and Hughes developed and build MSAT, the mobile communications satellite in 1995. Creative Canadians have also invented the IMAX cinema and improved deep diving submersibles. Ballard Power Systems in Vancouver has produced a number of innovations in fuel cell technology. Michael Brook invented the "Infinite Guitar" in 1987. AECL invented the Slowpoke atomic reactor.
Military innovations have included the Halifax Class missile frigate, LAV III light armoured vehicle, air-defense and anti-tank missiles, the CRV-7 rocket and secure communications systems. The US Air Force tested cruise missiles in western Canada in the eighties.
[edit]The Internet Age: Wireless Technology, Mega Oil and Ecological Friendliness (2000 – Present)
Early in the 21st century the internet reached its stride and contributed significantly to industrial research efforts through the formation of such networks as CANARIE. Industrial software makers such as Cognos have had continued success in the field of business intelligence software and other firms have innovated in such areas as in internet cryptology. In the field of pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, Apotex has become a world leader in the development of generic drugs. The beginning of the 21st century is also notable for the rise of research in nanotechnology. About 140 small to medium sized firms based in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal are researching products in this field, supported by the National Institute for Nanotechnology in Edmonton. There are studies of quantum computing in Waterloo, Ontario and two contestants in the X-Prize competition have made attempts to construct manned sub-orbital space craft. To date these vehicles have not flown. Since 1998, the Mars Society has experimented with procedures related to life on Mars at its simulated base located at Haughton Lake on Devon Island. In 2008, Odessey Moon, based on the Isle of Man announced plans to build the Moon I (M-1)space craft with MacDonald Detwiller and Associated Ltd. of Richmond BC, as prime contractor, as a competitor in the Google Lunar X Prize Challenge. Also in 2008, Bombardier announced plans to introduce the new C-Series of 100 passenger wide-bodied regional jets and AECL introduced the ACR-1000 atomic power reactor.
The best known Canadian invention of recent years is surely the Blackberry, by Research in Motion of Waterloo, Ontario, which has become the fashionable communications tool of businessmen around the world.
The government of Canada has put into place tax programmes to encourage industrial R&D. Today industrial research accounts for about 50% of all research spending in Canada.
[edit]See also
Canadian government scientific research organizations
Canadian university scientific research organizations
Canadian industrial research and development organizations
List of bridges in Canada
Former tallest buildings in Canada by province and territory
Group of Thirteen (Canadian universities)
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Maginley, Collin, The Ships of Canada's Marine Services, Vanwell, St. Catherines, 2001.
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Mouat, Jeremy, Metal Mining in Canada, 1840 -1950, Transformation Series 9, National Museum of Science and Technology, Ottawa, 2000.
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Silversides, C.Ross, Broadaxe to Flying Shear: the Mechanization of Forest Harvesting East of the Rockies, Transformation Series 6, National Museum of Science and Technology, Ottawa, 1997.
Smallman, B.N., et al., Agriculture Science in Canada, Science Council of Canada, Ottawa, 1970.
Spalding, David, Into the Dinosaurs' Graveyard, Doubleday Canada, Toronto,1999.
Stewart, R.W., Dickie, L.M., Ad Mare: Canada Looks to the Sea - A Study on Marine Science and Technology, Science Council of Canada, Ottawa 1971.
Taylor, Baskerville, A Concise Business History of Canada, Oxford University Press, Toronto, 1994.
Thomson, Don W., Men and Mericians Volumes 1,2,3, Information Canada, Ottawa, 1966.
Thomson, Malcolm, M., The Beginning of the Long Dash: A History of Timekeeping in Canada, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1978.
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Williams, Michael, Massey-Ferguson Tractors, Blandford Press, London, 1987.
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Scientia Canadensis
The Canadian Encyclopedia
[edit]External links
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research: Science
Canadian Encyclopedia: Science
Canadian Science and Technology Historical Association
Innovation in Canada
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Science and technology in North America
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Antigua and Barbuda · Bahamas · Barbados · Belize · Canada · Costa Rica · Cuba · Dominica · Dominican Republic · El Salvador · Grenada · Guatemala · Haiti · Honduras · Jamaica · Mexico · Nicaragua · Panama1 · Saint Kitts and Nevis · Saint Lucia · St. Vincent and the Grenadines · Trinidad and Tobago1 · United States
Dependencies and
other territories
American Samoa2 · Anguilla · Aruba1 · Bermuda · British Virgin Islands · Cayman Islands · Greenland · Guadeloupe · Guam2 · Martinique · Montserrat · Navassa Island · Netherlands Antilles · Northern Mariana Islands2 · Puerto Rico · St. Barthélemy · St. Martin · St. Pierre and Miquelon · Turks and Caicos Islands · United States Virgin Islands
1 Territories also in or commonly reckoned elsewhere in the Americas (South America). 2 Territories also in or commonly reckoned to be in the Pacific basin.
Categories: Science and technology in Canada
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