You will be amazed to know about lots of significant things that were invented by the good people of Canada. Read further to be pleasantly astonished by many such inventions.
Peanut Butter
The idea behind the invention of peanut butter was to provide nutritious food to people who are not able to chew well. Unlike popular belief, peanut butter was not invented by American botanistGeorge Washington Carver. Rather, a Canadian pharmacist, Marcellus Gilmore Edson, invented peanut butter in 1884. He compared the consistency of his invention to that of ointment, lard or butter.
The Pager
Known as the father of wireless communication, Toronto-born Alfred J. Gross invented the telephone pager in 1949. He is also known as the inventor of a walkie-talkie, the CB radio and cordless phones. He once said, ‘I was born thirty-five years too soon. If I still had the patents on my inventions, Bill Gates would have to stand aside for me’.
The Garbage Bag
In 1950, Harry Wasylyk and Larry Hansen invented the garbage bag in Winnipeg. Union Carbide later bought their invention, the green polyethene garbage bag and sold it under the name, Glad. At the same time, Frank Plomp invented a prototype of the garbage bag, and for this, he is known as a co-inventor.
IMAX
In 1967, the trio of Canadian filmmakers Graeme Ferguson, Roman Kroitor and Robert Kerr invented IMAX. Japan asked them to create a film for its Expo ’70; the men then built Multiscreen Corporation with monetary assistance from Fuji. The first-ever IMAX movie was ‘Tiger Child’ screened at Expo ’70.
Basketball
Canadian James Naismith invented basketball while working as a physical education instructor in YMCA, Massachusetts, in 1891. He was born in Ontario and went to McGill University. He developed the rulebook for the game in the subsequent year. Later, he moved to Kansas and became the first basketball coach at the University of Kansas.
Insulin
In 1921, Toronto based doctorFrederick Banting discovered insulin. The medicine was further advanced by Banting, Charles Best, John Macleod and Bertram Collip at the University of Toronto. Two years later, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Banting and Mcleod.
Java programming language
An Alberta born Canadian computer scientist, James Gosling, developed the Java programming language in California in the 1990s. Gosling is known as the father of Java, but he worked with his Sun Microsystems colleagues, Mike Sheridan and Patrick Naughton, on it. Java remains one of the top programming languages in use to date.
