This week, remembering some of the tech that came from Canadians, and a look at the spectacular explosion of a spacecraft.

Celebrating Canadian tech innovation

Happy Canada Day, so a perfect opportunity to remember some of the amazing technological inventions developed here.

• IMAX: The first company to deliver a “large-screen film experience”, IMAX began at Expo ’67 in Montreal. The first presentation used multiple screens and required syncing nine film projectors to run seamlessly. Now the company has special cameras that can be used to shoot the high-resolution, 70 mm film and has come up with a digital remastering process to convert other films for its hundreds of domed theatres around the world.
• Video games: One of the first entertainment video games developed was Evolution, designed and programmed by Vancouver high-school students Don Mattrick and Jeff Sember. The pair would create Distinctive Software which became Electronic Arts Canada.
• BlackBerry: The company may be on the skids now, but the smartphone as we know it wouldn’t exist without the invention of BlackBerry mobile devices. And its BlackBerry Messaging service still has great value for the company, as it’s still the industry leader for encrypted communication.
• Telephone: Alexander Graham Bell moved to Canada when he was 23. He had already been experimenting with sound and electricity, but it would be another six or so years before the telephone came to be. Bell split his time between Boston and a summer home in Brantford, Ontario.
• Walkie-talkie: Development of the portable radio is credited, in part, to Donald Hings (others, including Toronto-born inventor Alfred Gross, and engineers at Motorola, were working on similar devices). Hings was working for a Canadian mining company that would become Teck Cominco (now Teck Resources). It became an essential communications tool during the Second World War. After the war, Hings settled in Burnaby and founded Electronic Labs of Canada. He died in 2004.
• Pacemaker: Invented by Winnipeg electrical engineer John Hopps, the first artificial pacemakers were external. They help regulate the beating of a patient’s heart by delivering electrical impulses.
• Canadarm: Originally designed for NASA’s space shuttle program, five “arms” were delivered to NASA between 1981 and July 2011, when the final shuttle mission was completed. Canadarm2 is currently being used on the International Space Station.

That rocket “blowed up real good”

While we’re on the topic of space…

Last week, SpaceX attempted a launch of its Falcon 9 craft to take its Dragon cargo vehicle to the International Space Station. The Falcon 9 exploded — spectacularly — just as the first stage was about to shut down.

It’s a reminder that going to space is difficult and dangerous. Things can and do go wrong, and when they do the consequences are catastrophic.

The hope is that the data SpaceX gathered during the flight will help them resolve the problem and get closer to success.

Governments can’t do space exploration efficiently. Industry can, and that’s why NASA is supporting the efforts of commercial space development (to the tune of some $500 million to SpaceX, for example).

Other U.S. companies trying to get into the spaceflight business include Bigelow Aerospace, Blue Origin, Orbital ATK, and Sierra Nevada.

And then there’s Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.

You can watch the SpaceX Falcon 9 liftoff and subsequent explosion below. I love the phrasing used by the NASA engineer narrating at 2:33. He says, “Data coming back shows vehicle on course, on track.”

That’s the point at which it seems like something goes wrong with the Falcon 9.

There is 30 seconds of silence, then he says, “We appear to have had a launch vehicle failure.” What an understatement.