At the beginning of the long dash, following ten seconds of silence "thousands of Canadians each day at 1:00 p.m. EST, check the time on their watches and clocks against the official time signal broadcast by the National Research Council of Canada." Few of them realize that the time signal is generated by the world’s first atomic clock – just one of many discoveries, inventions, and innovations that NRC scientists have brought to Canadians’ daily lives.
 

Originally called the National Research Laboratories when it opened in 1932, the main building of the National Research Council is often cited as "the temple of science." Located in Ottawa, the granite and sandstone ediface is enhanced by 16 Doric columns and huge entrance doors of sculptured  bronze. [Photo, courtesy National Research Council]

In its 80-year history, the National Research Council (NRC) has provided guidance and support to Canadian research scientists in practically every field of human endeavour from agriculture and health care to oceanography and space exploration. Such common items as cooking oil, home furnaces, and most of Canada’s buildings have been improved thanks to the inquiring minds at the NRC. At the same time, its scientific research has helped keep Canada at the forefront of such specialized fields as lasers, aerospace, ultrasonics, and chemical engineering.

That is precisely the role envisioned for the NRC when its forerunner the Honorary Advisory Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, was established by the federal government in 1916, in the middle of World War I. The war’s huge demands on Canada’s industrial research and production capacities had underlined the need for directing and coordinating scientific and technical research on a national basis. The Council’s mandate, by stressing that its research “is absolutely necessary in order to enable us to compete with progressive countries in the great race for national expansion,” also envisioned a role beyond wartime.

The Council’s initial activities were limited to providing scholarships to promising graduate students and research grants to universities. It had no laboratory facilities of its own. Yet within a year, with the development by researchers at McGill University of an effective system of fog signals, the Council’s efforts had resulted in success. After the war, the Council supported projects geared to peacetime needs. In 1920, for example, it sponsored research on preventing the discoloration of canned lobster meat that led to improved revenues for the Atlantic fishery.

By 1924, the Council had established its own library of research and technical journals which today has become the largest collection of its kind in North America. During the next year, it set up its first model laboratory on the top two floors of an office building in downtown Ottawa. One of its first research projects on processing magnesite helped in the development of Canada’s magnesium mining industry.

The Council did not have a home of its own until 1932 when its large central laboratory was officially opened on Sussex Drive in Ottawa. Later referred to as “the temple of science,” this massive granite and sandstone structure was adorned with 16 Doric columns and huge entrance doors of sculptured bronze. A biblical quotation selected by Prime Minister Mackenzie King is carved in stone above the main entrance. It reads:

The outbreak of war in 1939 caused the NRC to switch its entire efforts to wartime research. During the war years, the NRC staff expanded from 300 in 1939 to more than 3,000 by 1945. Several new research laboratories were also built along Montreal Road, east of Ottawa. NRC scientists contributed some of the war’s most significant scientific advances including the development of ultrasonics for antisubmarine warfare, major improvements to aircraft detection by radar, the production of RDX (a new explosive more powerful than TNT), and the nuclear research that led to the development of atomic power. A major breakthrough credited to NRC scientists was the development of the anti-gravity suit that prevented pilots from “blacking out” during violent flight manoeuvres.

One of the more bizarre projects undertaken by NRC scientists was research on creating giant floating airfields of ice that could be used as waypoints for aircraft crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Code-named Habakkuk, the project had been enthusiastically endorsed by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Even though the Habakkuk research resulted in greater knowledge of refrigeration and the properties of ice, the project was abandoned because the cost of building such an airfield would likely cost more than a traditional aircraft carrier!
 

Canada has an array of astronomical instruments for observing the heavens, most of which are available toscientists as national facilities under the aegis of the National Research Council. One of the world's largest optical telescopes, located at the summit of Hawaii's Mauna Kea, is jointly owned by Canada, France, and the State of Hawaii. It took eight years to build and its mirror measures nearly 3.7 metres in diameter. As viewed here, the concave surface, accurate to a few millionths of a centimetre, was ground, polished and prepared by personnel at the Dominion Astro-physical Observatory.

Not all of NRC’s war efforts were as dramatic as its role in developing Canada’s first atomic reactor at its Chalk River facility or as fanciful as its Habakkuk research. Yet much of the NRC’s wartime research in food processing and packaging, aircraft de-icing, the treatment of burns and shock, mineral processing and production placed Canadian scientists in the forefront of many of these fields.

The NRC’s successes in wartime assured its future by 1945 when peace came. Instead, the postwar years saw rapid expansion of the NRC’s scientific divisions and facilities as the Council turned its attention to the needs of Canada’s new-found industrial capabilities. The scientific discoveries and innovations supported by NRC research during this period range from the exotic to the everyday.

For instance, its expertise in radar helped Trans-Canada Air Lines (TCA) set up the world’s first civilian radar installation for air traffic control. Its nuclear research also led to the first-ever use of Cobalt-60 radiation in the treatment of cancer. On the home front, the NRC played a key role in the development of canola (rapeseed), which is used to produce cholesterol-free cooking oil and margarine. Its scientists also discovered a natural substance that keeps cocoa suspended in chocolate milk, milkshakes, and puddings – to the delight of children everywhere!

In the field of aeronautics and space science, NRC’s research has resulted in significant improvements in aircraft and rocket design and in the development of highly specialized instruments such as the crash position indicator (CPI) used to locate lost aircraft. Its astronomers have also played key roles in the measurement of quasars (gigantic star clusters), the discovery of the second “black hole” in space and in identifying the billion-year age differences between star clusters in the universe.

Through its health care research, the NRC’s research and technologies have led to several new procedures and instruments for diagnosing and treating diseases and injuries. It has also been responsible for the development of vaccines against meningitis and for the use of genetic engineering to have bacteria produce human insulin. The Council’s new technologies created to help disabled persons include one of the first wheelchairs for quadriplegics, an ultrasound object detector for the blind, and a portable speech synthesizer for severely disabled children.

In 1942, Britain's High Commissioner approached Dr. C.J. Mackenzie, then acting president of the National Research Council, with a top secret proposal: if Canada would provide a laboratory, the team of physicists working on the nuclear research project at Cambridge, England, would be transferred to Canada and a joint British-Canadian research effort established. Mackenzie immediately recognized that Canada could be on the ground floor of a great new technological advance. He took the proposal to C.D. Howe, the powerhouse behind Canada's wartime industrial effort. When "The Minister of Everything" approved the idea to build a pilot plant on the Chalk River for the production of plutonium from uranium using heavy water as a moderator, he launched Canada into the nuclear age. The Chalk River complex, viewed here, circa 1949, became the site of the first reactor built outside the United States. The cooling tanks are seen in the foreground. [Photo, courtesy National Research Council]

In the field of transportation, NRC’s research has solved a wide variety of problems that include the siltation of harbours, the freezing over of railway switches in winter and the need for increased energy efficiency of transit buses. It even developed, for the repair of potholes, a much more durable substance comprised of asphalt, liquid sulphur, mica flakes, and polyester fibre.

Agricultural research has, since its inception, been one of the NRC’s mainstays. This work has involved creating new disease- and cold-resistant strains of various crops, the cloning of plant tissues through deep freezing, and the development of better packaging and transportation for such perishable foods as meat and fish.

Society’s growing concerns about the environment have also led the NRC to focus its research on pollution control and abatement in such areas as PCB incineration and the treatment of toxic waste from pulp mills.

Not all NRC’s research is dedicated to solving humanity’s most difficult problems; some projects are simply interesting or fun. For example, NRC had a hand in developing the first, all-fiberglass hockey stick, in building a bobsled for the Canadian Olympic Team, and in designing the massive torch for the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.

Developing methods of extremely precise measurement has always been one of the NRC’s strengths. In 1967, it developed the world’s best potentiometer, a device for measuring electrical current that is so accurate and stable that it could not be calibrated against any similar device at that time. About the same time, the NRC began developing gauges that would be used by the Apollo astronauts to measure gases in the moon’s atmosphere.
 

National Research Council has ten wind tunnels to simulate effects of wind on aircraft in flight. What wind tunnels do for manufacturers of aircraft is measure the aerodynamic forces operating on model aircraft, especially the effects of wind on both lift and drag. Scale models, as viewed here, are subjected to man-made wind velocities up to 250 km per hour. [Photo, courtsy National Research Council]

But it is the so-called atomic clock, developed by the NRC in 1974, that exemplifies the high scientific standards and down-to-earth practicality of the Council’s researchers over the past 80 years. Capable of measuring time to within an accuracy of three parts within one hundred billion, this super clock is not used just for esoteric scientific experiments: it also enables Canadians to answer the question “What time is it?” as accurately as anyone in the world. Richard Levick