The Canadian Encyclopedia suggests that George J. Klein, a design engineer who spent forty years at the National Research Council of Canada laboratories in Ottawa, may have been “the most productive inventor in Canada in the 20th Century.”

Certainly, his patience, dedication, and skill as a problem solver produced many mechanical devices that were both practical and impressive in their simplicity. The motorized electric wheelchair he built for paraplegic veterans after the Second World War was likely the first of its kind and contained features such as a joy stick and drive system that are still features of electric wheelchairs today.
 

G.J. Klein, “unsung hero of science,” was probably Canada’s most productive inventor of this or any century. A Renaissance Man, he excelled not only as a scientist, but was a genuine lover of the arts, an enthusiastic outdoorsman, an educator with an instinct for inquiry and service. [Photo, courtesy The National Research Council of Canada]

He collaborated on the first microsurgical staple gun used successfully to suture blood vessels; he helped to revolutionize aeronautical research in Canada by designing and building NRC’s first wind tunnels in the 1930s; and he played a critical role in many of Canada’s major scientific and technical contributions in World War II.

He was responsible for a timing device that made it possible to safely deploy Canada’s acclaimed “proximity fuse” antiaircraft system in time to confront Nazi Germany’s last- ditch “buzz bomb” attacks on Britain in the final days of the War in Europe.

His wartime inventions also included stabilizing systems for antisubmarine mortars, fire protection equipment, sighting devices, and features of the tracking system that was adopted for the “Weasel,” the vastly popular U.S. military snowmobile which was eventually mass-produced in the U.S. and used in tropical regions as well as in early Arctic and Antarctic expeditions.

Klein’s role in the “Weasel” was due to his internationally recognized expertise in the mechanics of ice and snow. His research papers in this field, along with NRC’s wind tunnel testing that proved it was practical to put skis on bush planes, indirectly opened up vast areas of Canada to exploration and air transport services.

Klein was admired by his colleagues and relied upon by his superiors from the time he arrived at NRC in the late 1920s. However, he did not receive much national attention until the early 1960s when his retractable STEM antenna (the Storable Tubular Extendible Member) was modified and introduced to the global space program.

The thought of a rolled antenna came to him in July 1951 about two days out of Liverpool while he was having a cigarette on board ship on a return trip to Canada. Rolling foil from the cigarette package between his fingers, he created a tube. A Defence Research Board scientist, who helped adapt Klein’s STEM technology for military purposes in the 1950s, suggested it as the ideal device for Canada’s first spacecraft, the Alouette I satellite which, like other spacecraft, needed antennae that could be recoiled for the rigours of blast-off and then unfurled in space for maximum effectiveness.

The extended STEM antennae became a very visual feature of the Alouette I structure built under government contract by de Havilland Aircraft of Canada. Staff at de Havilland recognized the potential of STEM not only within the growing international space program but also as a technology to be used in products such as masts and antennae for ground and marine transport vehicles. Other STEM products included, for example, an electromechanical arm for elevating the flashing lights on police cars and other emergency vehicles.
 

1.  A genius, G.J. Klein, left, examines an early motorized wheelchair which he designed for paraplegic veterans after World War II. The first of their kind, the wheelchairs came with a joy stick and a drive system. [Photo, courtesy The National Research Council of Canada]  2.  The need for an antennae that could survive the rigours of blast-off led G.J. Klein to invent antennae, viewed here on one of Canada’s earliest communications satellites, Alouette II, that could recoil or unfurl as needed. [Photo, courtesy National Research Council of Canada]

Soon de Havilland’s Spar (Special Products and Applied Research) division had dozens of people working on STEM products with sales of over ten million dollars, notably to NASA which used STEM in a variety of applications. The early manned space programs, both Gemini and Apollo, all used STEM masts or antennae. STEM was even used to assist communications with astronauts in the Apollo spacecraft and to collect and record subsurface data transmitted from the moon.

John D. MacNaughton, an early DeHavilland Spar employee who became President of Spar Aerospace Ltd., said that the growing market and success of STEM products was a key consideration in the decision to move Spar Aerospace out of de Havilland as a separate, spin-off company.

These applications merely hint at the impact Klein’s STEM technology had on the space program. When Spar, NRC, DSMA-Acton, CAE, and other Canadian organizations came together to secure the coveted “remote manipulator system” project within the NASA Space Shuttle program, they succeeded in part because of Spar’s track record in business and technology established with NASA through the STEM product line.

The “remote manipulator system” project became known as “the Canadarm,” and the Canadarm’s eventual success helped prompt decisions to establish the Canadian Astronaut Program at NRC in the early 1980s and later to create the separate Canadian Space Agency in 1989.

When the Canadarm project was launched in the mid-1970s with NRC as the overall project manager and Spar as the prime contractor, both organizations contracted George Klein to act as a consultant on issues such as the design of the special gears crucial to the Canadarm’s effectiveness as a responsive, yet gigantic extension of the human arm. By this time, Klein was in his 70s and a decade past his retirement from NRC.

Although important both economically and technically, Klein’s contributions through STEM and the Canadarm are in the end only illustrations of his approach to his work and life in general. He seemed to have enormous enthusiasm for everything he did.

He had a great love of classical music and was a violinist in both the Hamilton and Ottawa Symphony orchestras. In the early 1930s, Klein built his own 15-foot sailboat, made its hollow mast, and fabricated all of the hardware. He also enjoyed decades of cross-country skiing and after retirement took up bicycling, enjoying many of Ottawa’s cycling paths well into his 80s.
 

One of G.J. Klein’s technological gifts to global space exploration was the retractable STEM antenna which became, among other matters, a communication device for astronauts aboard the Apollo missions. [Photo, courtesy The National Research Council of Canada]

For a number of years, he shared his enthusiasm for woodworking with young students at Crichton Street Elementary School in Ottawa where he helped them make birdhouses and undertake other simple projects. After his retirement, he became extremely interested in tracing his family history. He was devoted to Florence, his wife of 52 years, his daughter, son, their spouses and his five grandchildren.

It is likely that his enthusiasm for life was molded in his youth when he was fortunate to be surrounded by the machines, mechanical devices, and workshops of his father’s turn-of-the-century watch and jewellery store, Klein and Binkley Jewellers of Hamilton, Ontario. This allowed young George to discover his talents and interest in mechanical design early in life. Although he received honorary doctorates and other honours including appointment as a Member of the Order of the British Empire and appointment as an Officer of the Order of Canada, George Klein did not pursue postgraduate studies in university but ended his formal education with a Bachelor’s Degree in Applied Science from the University of Toronto in 1928. He had studied previously at the Hamilton Technical Institute.

John H. Parkin, one of Klein’s professors at the University of Toronto and an aeronautical engineer who would eventually be appointed as a Director of Mechanical Engineering at the National Research Council, recognized the genius of his young undergraduate. Soon after Parkin arrived at NRC in the late 1920s, he brought his former student on board for the wind tunnel project. Eventually he came to regard Klein as a close friend and as the saving grace in many difficult technical challenges.

Although George Klein has been called an unsung hero of science and his name is not widely known in Canada, Parkin’s memoirs and later the citation in The Canadian Encyclopedia with its superlative of “most productive inventor” drew attention to the range of inventions and devices that had come from Klein’s years at NRC.

In 1993, a year after his death at the age of 88, George Klein was inducted into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame, now at the National Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa, and in 1996, the George Klein Medal was established as an overall prize for high school students participating in an industrial design competition sponsored by Carleton University, where Klein served as an adjunct professor in his retirement.

His widow and other family members have said that this particular honour would be the most touching for George Klein because he related so well with students and young children.

George Klein did not reap great financial rewards from his many inventions. However, his public comments on his career and those made by others who knew him suggest that he had a very rewarding life in a venue that allowed him to earn a living doing what he loved most. Klein said of his early years, “I was young and full of beans. It was wonderful to have been at the lab because it was fun. Serious fun.”

Dick Doyle