Science and Technology in the Second World War - Historical Sheet - Second World War - History - Veterans Affairs Canada

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• The war was a battle of scientific minds as well as of bullets and bombs and the wartime research programs came up with many important developments to help give the Allies an advantage in the struggle

• heat food in a microwave oven or use washer fluid to clear off a car windshield, to name just two examples, you can credit the groundbreaking work done by Canadian scientists during the Second World War.

• Canada was a great centre of wartime research

• Ionospheric sounding stations, installed during the war to help predict optimum frequencies for long distance communications and for direction finding against enemy submarines, led directly to the development after the war of the Alouette satellite, Canada's entry into satellite technology.

• war's early years, Britain essentially passed all microwave radar development over to Canada.

• developed the Plan Position Indicator, still in use today.

• Early on, Canada had established specialized electronics training initiatives to meet the need for skilled scientists and technicians that forward-thinking leaders realized the new technologically-oriented war would demand. As a result, our country produced a large number of people skilled in electronics during the war, people who helped meet the great need in Britain for electronics technicians. Indeed, many of the radar personnel who worked on large British warships were Canadian.

• pivotal time in history still live on in much of the technology we use daily.