Which of the following is NOT a Canadian invention?
- The Canadarm
- The cardiac pacemaker
- The printing press
- The snowmobile
Answer: The printing press
The printing press is not on the guide’s list of great Canadian discoveries and inventions. That list includes the snowmobile (Bombardier), the Canadarm (SPAR Aerospace and the National Research Council), the first cardiac pacemaker (Hopps), standard time zones (Fleming) and the BlackBerry.
Learn more: Science, discoveries and inventions
- Marshall McLuhan and Harold Innis were pioneer thinkers.
- Since 1989 the Canadian Space Agency and Canadian astronauts have taken part in space exploration, often using the Canadarm.
- Nobel Prize-winning scientists include Gerhard Herzberg (a refugee from Nazi Germany), John Polanyi, Sidney Altman, Richard E. Taylor, Michael Smith and Bertram Brockhouse.
- Alexander Graham Bell came up with the idea of the telephone at his summer house in Canada.
- Joseph-Armand Bombardier invented the snowmobile. Sir Sandford Fleming invented the worldwide system of standard time zones.
- Matthew Evans and Henry Woodward invented the first electric light bulb and sold the patent to Thomas Edison.
- Reginald Fessenden helped invent radio and sent the world’s first wireless voice message.
- Dr. Wilder Penfield was a pioneering brain surgeon at McGill University, called “the greatest living Canadian.”
- Dr. John A. Hopps invented the first cardiac pacemaker.
- SPAR Aerospace and the National Research Council invented the Canadarm, a robotic arm used in outer space.
- Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie of Research in Motion (RIM), a wireless communications company, are known for its most famous invention, the BlackBerry.
- Sir Frederick Banting of Toronto and Charles Best discovered insulin, which treats diabetes and has saved 16 million lives worldwide.