Canadian inventors have paved the way for many technological advancements in the world. This country has been renowned for more than one million inventions with more to follow in the future.
In this feature we explore some of the top inventions brought to us by those hailing from Canada.
Canadian writer, Roy Mayer, once said:
“Our innovators have given novelty, variety, and color to our lives with their great practical gifts, and the world would be an exceedingly boring and grey place without their vitality.”
This is very true as the country has been responsible for an array of technologies.
From snow mobiles, insulin, to the best games we enjoy on Maple Canadian casinos online , these developments can be observed in medicine and science, communications, entertainment, agriculture, manufacturing, and daily uses.
Rotary Snowplow
Canadians are all well familiar with the hurdles snow can cause.
This country’s winter seasons can amass increasing amounts of the white stuff. For this reason, the local folk sought ways to deal with it. Especially when it had become vital to clear railroad tracks of snow.
Enter the world’s first rotary snowplow. This nifty piece of equipment utilized a rotating mechanism to pick up snow and eject it.
Invented by Toronto dentist J.W. Elliott in 1869, the design was later upgraded with a new patent and used in 1887. The altered version was later used by locomotives to clear snow that had built up on railways.
In 1925, the blower was installed for truck use by Arthur Sicard, a milkman who had grown weary of struggling over snowy terrain during his deliveries. He named this the “Sicard Snow Remover Snowblower.”
Snowmobile
Apart from getting rid of snow, Canadians have also gone to the drawing board in an attempt to figure out how to travel over it. No one seemed more determined to address this problem than Joseph-Armand Bombardier. The mechanic and entrepreneur attempted many techniques to make the remote areas of Canada, more accessible in winter.
The Quebec man sought a solution for this problem as a teen, however he wasn’t entirely satisfied with his machine at the time.
Tragedy struck for Bombardier when a winter blockade hit very close to home.
During a snow storm in 1934, his two-year-old son succumbed from an illness, and he was unable to reach a hospital.
Bombardier put a spanner in the works, and his efforts paid off in 1937 when he created the first functional snowmobile, which was able to carry as many as seven people.
With the clearing of country roads, Bombardier created a miniature snowmobile in 1959. He dubbed the invention the “Ski-Doo”.
Trivial Pursuit
Although not so much of a technological advancement, Trivial Pursuit has been a popular pastime. Back in 1979, Montreal Gazette picture editor Chris Haney and sports journalist Scott Abbott thought of their own game while indulging in a game of Scrabble.
The two newshounds managed to attract the attention of a few investors, and over time, Trivial Pursuit was titled as “the biggest phenomenon in game history,” by Time magazine.
A few other facts you may have not known about Trivial Pursuit include:
- More than 100 million copies of the game have been purchased around the world.
- 50 special editions have been made.
- Co-creator Haney, passed away in 2010 at the age of 59.
Walkie-Talkie
The two-way portable has been credited by Canadian Donald Hings. who designed what he referred to as a “pack set” in 1937.
Walkie-talkies, as they have been named later on, became vital to military communications during the second World War and beyond.
As a predecessor of mobile phones and wireless technology, Walkie-Talkies rose to popularity again when Apple Watch implemented a “walkie-talkie” feature.
Insulin Tbreatment for Diabetes
Insulin was originally found in 1910, however ten years later, Canadian doctor Frederick Banting and his assistant, Charles Best, had been employed at the JJR Macleod’s lab at the University of Toro, where they discovered a method that successfully isolated insulin. They proceeded to inject this formula which regulated their blood sugar.
This experiment made successful treatment in humans possible.
Both medical professionals were awarded with the 1923 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery. Today, this treatment has been developed technologically to simplify ways for people with diabetes to better manage the disease.
Java Programming Language
Alberta-born computer scientist, James Gosling, developed Java in California in the early 1990s.
He has been thought of as the “father of Java”, however this feat may not have been possible without the help of his colleagues, Mike Sheridan and Patrick Naughton.
The language was developed to allow application developers “write once, run anywhere”.
This means that assembled Java code is able to run on platforms that support Java without requiring reassembly. The initial version of Java was released in 1995 and remains one of the top programming languages used.