Some Canadian History
In Two Parts
PEngineering Education - the Beginnings
PThe Millennium Project
The Origins of Engineering
Education in Canada
With Ray Findlay
King's College, New Brunswick 1854
* First engineering program
* Civil Engineering
* 26 students enrolled
Dating from 1829, this remains the oldest
functional university building in Canada
The following year, 1855, Sir John
William Dawson, newly appointed
Principal of McGill University
announced an engineering program.
The lectures were given by Thomas
Keefer, one of Canada's great builders.
The first electrical engineering
program in Canada was also given at
McGill - in 1890. Prior to that time
electrical engineering had been
included in mechanical engineering
programs.
The shot below is of the electrical machines lab at the University of New
Brunswick about the turn of the century. The two machines in the
foreground are dc machines donated to UNB about 1892 by the Canadian
General Electric Company.
The 32 Volt dc machine used in the lab is still an object of curiosity at
UNB. This shot shows the restored machine sitting in splendour in a
small room at the university, set aside as a museum.
The Annual Fall Survey Camp - UNB -1911
A Rough looking bunch !
We presume the guns
were to guard against
bears, or, perhaps to
catch a rabbit for the
pot!
The camp was required for all engineers, including electricals!
The cook and his helper.
Word has it that students ate
very well! Rabbit, chicken,
grouse, bear steak....
They transported the
piano to the site every
year by rail!
Meanwhile the electrical industry moved in.
The Canadian General Electric plant ca 1890, in
Peterborough, Ontario. At the time this was
wilderness territory.
The CGE plant in the early years.
The Royal Electric Company was among the earliest in Canada.
This shows the Montreal
plant. The company was
incorporated in 1884.
Westinghouse Electric came to Canada somewhat later,
incorporating in 1902, about the date of this photo.
The machine shop, with banks of lathes and electric lighting.
Westinghouse produced the largest
generator then attempted in 1922,
at 45,000 V and 55,000 HP.
The Canadarm
The first space arm,
dubbed the Shuttle
Remote Positioning
System, or Canadarm for
short, was signed over to
NASA in 1981.
This shot shows the
completion of the project,
actually started in 1974 at
the request of the US
Government.
View from the shuttle.
Total weight of approximately 431 kg,
Manoeuvres payloads of up to 14,515 kg at a rate of .06 m/s
Maximum contingency operation payload weight of 265,810 kg.
6 degrees of freedom
The Sudbury Neutrino Obstervatory
2000 m underground near
Sudbury in the Canadian shield, a
new neutrino observatory is
poised to begin its detection of
neutrino's from space.
12 m diameter acrylic vessel to
hold 1000 tonnes of heavy water
as a sensor for the system.
The stainless steel geodesic structure contains 9600 light
sensors
Reginald Aubrey Fessenden
On 23 December 1900 Fessenden made the first human voice transmission
by wireless.
"One, two, three, four. Is it snowing where you are Mr. Thiessen? If it is,
telegraph back and let me know."
The historic event occurred at Cob Point Maryland. Shown are the twin
towers at the Cob Point facility.
Fessenden's 125 m transmission
tower at Brant Rock, Mass where he
made his historic Christmas
broadcast on 24 December 1906 to
ships at sea.
He played "Oh Holy Night," on his
violin. Then he played a recording
of Handel's Largo, and delivered a
Christmas speach.
Inside the Brant Rock Lab.
The components of a turn-of-the
century spark gap alternator
a) Diagramatic cross section
b) Armature winding
c) One half of the completed armature
d) The complete system
* Edward (Ted) Samuel Rogers
The famous 15S, the world's first alternating current
simple rectifier tube.
This development enabled radio power supply from a
110 V household supply, eliminating the need for an
antenna in the process.
Ted Rogers was only 24 when
he developed the 15S in 1924.
The following year he
developed the first all electric
radio.
Rogers' batteryless radios were put
on the market in Canada in
September, 1925. The ad is from
November 1925.
Batteryless radios were offered in
the USA in May, 1926, and the
following year in Europe.
Radar: The Tizard Mission
CANDU
ZEEP was the forerunner of the CANDU reactor
CANDU Power plant at Point Lepreau, New Brunswick
Alcan smelter
Kitimat, BC
Kitimat/Kemano Power Development
The Kemano River Valley
Interior of the Kemano
powerhouse, built some 427
metres inside the base of Mt.
DuBose in a huge, blasted
cavern. Kemano produces a
total of 896 MW of power
from its eight generators.
Began supplying power to the
Alcan plant in Kitimat in
1954.
The Ballard Fuel Cell
The first transmission magnetic electron microscope
was built by two graduate students, James Hillier
and Albert Prebus at the University of Toronto in
April of 1938, under the direction of the Department
Chairman, Professor E.F. Burton.
Prebus (left) and Hillier (right) with their microscope in 1938
John Alexander Hopps and the Pacemaker
In 1950, John Hopps, P. Eng.,
working with Dr. William
Bigelow and Dr. John
Callaghan found that
applying a gentle electrical
stimulus to the heart would
not only duplicate the normal
body nerve stimulation but it
would also not cause any
harm to the heart muscle. In
addition, this technique would
start a stopped heart and
increase or decrease the heart
Hopps, working with the two surgeons, developed the
first pacemaker in 1950. It was large (about 30 cm
long, and several centimetres high and wide), the pulses
were generated by vacuum tubes and the entire unit was
powered by 60 Hz household current.
IMAX, the brainchild of Graeme Ferguson, Roman
Kroitor, Robert Kerr and Bill Shaw premiered in 1970 at
EXPO >70 in Osaka Japan with the film" Tiger Child.
Nestor Burtnyk and Marceli Wein, are recognized as
Fathers of Computer Animation Technology in Canada.
Shown at the NRC computer graphics facility is
Burtnyk.
The technique of key-frame animation used in the NRC system involves
the creation by the animator of isolated frames at key intervals during a
sequence, with the in-between frames to be computed by interpolation.
Since the pictorial content of successive key frames need not bear any
particular relation to one another, a wide variety of transformations is
easily produced.
Shown are selected key frames of a walk sequence. There are five key
frames per cycle of the walk. Each key frame consists of three cells.
Telidon
"Telidon", a second generation
videotex system, was invented
at the Communications
Research Centre, the research
arm of the federal Department
of Communications. Telidon
placed Canada as a world
leader in two-way TV
technology, and offered the
potential to revolutionize
telecommunications in
Canada.
Although videotex was born in Europe, Canada was very
much
interested in the technology and undertook to further improve
it, resulting in Telidon, a second generation videotex system.
Time reckoning and the
Atomic Clock
Beginning with Sir Sandford Fleming,
inventor of the international system of
datelines, Canadians have always
been preoccupied with time
reckoning.
Since its construction in 1973, Cs
V has functioned experimentally
as a frequency standard, but the
changeover to continuous
operation will make it the most
accurate and stable clock in the
world.
The "atomic" clock is so named,
not because it is powered by
atomic energy, but because
certain fundamental properties of
the atom are used to provide a
definition of time.
The Crash Position Indicator
The Crash Position Indicator is a
unique system for locating a downed
plane. Since the inception of the
CPI, some 25 years ago, many people
involved in plane crashes, especially
in the far North and in remote areas
of the world, owe their lives to it.
Elizabeth "Elsie" MacGill (1905-1980) First
female electrical engineer in Canada; first
aeronautical engineer in North America;
probably the only woman to design an entire
aircraft, the "Maple Leaf".