Major Inventions
- D.D. Palmer was born near Port Perry, Ontario in 1845 and performed his invention - the first chiropractic adjustment - in Davenport, Iowa in 1895.
- Frederick Creed, a native of Mill Village, Nova Scotia, devised a high-speed Morse code printer around 1895.
- The first radio telegraphic message was received by Guglielmo Marconi on Signal Hill in St. John's, Newfoundland in 1901.
- The first long-distance telephone calls were made by Alexander Graham Bell between the Ontario communities of Mount Pleasant and Brantford, and between Brantford and Paris, in 1876.
- The first geostationary domestic telecommunications satellite in the world was the Anik-A1 in 1972.
- The world's first commercial fibre optics telecommunications network was the 3268 kilometres system created by SaskTel in Saskatchewan in 1982.
- The first advertising film ever made, which promoted job opportunities and land on the Prairies to potential emigrants from Great Britain, was made by James Freer of Manitoba in 1897.
- The world's first documentary film was Nanook of the North, which was shot in Canada by Robert Flaherty in 1922.
- Kerosene was developed by Abraham Gesner of Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, and its lighting properties were demonstrated in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, in 1846.
- Henry Woodward of Toronto invented the first electric light bulb in 1874. He later sold a share in his patent to Thomas Edison, who designed a more practical bulb in 1879.
- Arthur Sicard of Saint-LMonard, Quebec, made the first snowblower.
- The green plastic garbage bag was invented by Harry Wasyluk of Winnipeg, and by Larry Hanson at the Union Carbide plant in Lindsay, Ontario, in the 1950s.
- The greatest contribution to nuclear theory at a Canadian university was Ernest Rutherford's theory of atomic structure, which he developed while at McGill University in 1902. It earned him the Nobel Prize in 1908.
- The first practical electron microscope in North America was made at the University of Toronto in the late 1930s by physics professor Eli Franklin Burton and his students Cecil Hall, James Hillier and Albert Prebus.
- Dr. Lorne Elias of the National Research Council invented the explosives vapour detector, capable of sniffing out hidden bombs, in 1990.
- The cobalt "bomb" for cancer treatment was developed by scientists from Eldorado Nuclear in London, Ontario, and by Dr Harold E. Johns of the University of Saskatchewan in 1951.
- The first frozen food sold to the public was Ice Fillets frozen fish, which went on sale in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1929.
- The antigravity suit, a pressurized flying suit and forerunner of the space suit, was invented by W.R. Franks at the University of Toronto in 1940.
- The world's most popular sailboat, the Laser, was designed by Bruce Kirby, Ian Bruce and Hans Fogh in Montreal in 1969. Tens of thousands have been built throughout the world.
- J.J. Wright of Toronto built the first electric railway with overhead wires with an electric pole connected to the car to avoid the rain and snow which frequently short-circuited streetcar rails.
- Hockey is known to have been played in Halifax and Kingston in the 1850s. The first public exhibition of the modern game took place at the Victoria Rink in Montreal in 1875.
- Basketball was invented by James Naismith of Almonte, Ontario, and first played at Springfield, Massachusetts, where Naismith was a physical education instructor, in 1892.
- Five-pin bowling was invented by T.E. Ryan of Toronto in 1909.
- The first football game was played in Montreal, with Montreal beating Harvard.
- The first baseball game was played in Beachville, Ontario, more than a year before Abner Doubleday "invented" the game in Cooperstown, New York. I realize that this issue may be controversial, so read the whole story on this issue.
- Universal Standard Time, which divides the world into 24 time zones, was devised by Canadian engineer Sandford Fleming in 1879.
- Norman Bethune of Gravenhurst, Ontario, devised the first mobile blood transfusion service (in Spain in 1936) and the first mobile medical unit (in China in 1938).
- Since 1981, Canadarm (or Schuttle Remote Manipulator System) has become widely known around the world.
- In the 1930s, three Canadian doctors developed Pablum, the world's first precooked cereal.
- The paintroller was invented by Norman Breakey of Toronto in 1940.
- The world's first electronic organ was invented by Morse Robb of Belleville, Ontario in 1927.
- Doctors Frederick Banting and Charles Best, both of Ontario, discovered insulin in 1921.
- In 1964, Dr. Gustave Gingras perfected the workings of the artificial hand activated by the body's own electrical impluses.
Lesser Known Inventions
- acrylics
- Actar 911 CPR Dummy
- air-conditioned vehicle
- aircraft de-icer
- apple pie
- avro arrow
- Balderdash
- batteryless radio
- bovril
- butter substitute
- carbide and acetylene
- cardiac intensive care unit (first)
- cardiac pacemaker
- CL-415 firefighting amphibious aircraft
- Coffee Crisp
- commercial radio station (first)
- compound revolving snow shovel (trains)
- computerized braille
- Crispy Crunch
- dental mirror
- disintegrating plastic
- ear piercer
- electric cooking range
- electrical car (North America's first)
- film developing tank
- goalie mask
- hair tonic
- heart valve operation (first)
- helicopter trap (for landing on ships)
- helium as a substitute for hydrogen in airships
- hydrofoil
- IMAX
- instant potato flakes
- Jetline
- jolly jumper
- liposomes
- machine gun tracer bullet
- MacPherson gas mask
- measure for footwear
- Muskol
- newsprint
- panoramic camera
- Phi (position homing indicator for aircraft)
- pizza pizza telephone computer delivery services
- portable high chair
- Puzz-3D
- radio compass
- retractable beer carton handle
- rollerskate
- screw propeller
- ski-binding
- Smarties
- snowmobile
- spring ice skate
- steam foghorn
- Stanley Cup
- Stol
- submarine telegraph cable
- Superman
- table hockey
- Trivial Pursuit
- variable Pitch Propeller
- washing machine
- wirephoto
- zipper
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