It was a dark, but not a stormy night. The sphere lay drawn and quartered (actually it was sixthed) at Downsview airport. Under the watchful gaze of workmen, policemen, and hydro men, trucks patiently waited their turn while a crane carefully moved sections of the sphere onto the flatbeds one at a time. It was painstaking work that took about 6 hours to complete.

Finally, loaded and ready, the police-escorted convoy set out on the 2-mile procession from Downsview to UTIAS. As the trucks proceeded very slowly, hydro men, armed with poles, were at the ready to lift hydro wires at the intersections so the flatbeds could pass. The 2-mile ride took 4 hours to complete.

You might recall that the sphere caused a bit of a sensation when UTIA officially opened at the Downsview air base in 1950. The “vacuum sphere for supersonic tests” was the first of its kind in Canada and, according to Dr. G.N. Patterson, one of the best in the world. The 40-foot sphere towered above the one-story building and was the star piece of equipment for the newborn institute.

Nine years later when the institute officially opened at its new location, the sphere was still important to the institute. That year, the President’s report stated that the 40 ft diameter vacuum sphere would follow shortly to be reinstalled at UTIAS – but that did not happen. Moving the big sphere was not going to be cheap – or easy!

However, Patterson’s determination paid off and in February 1963, he got word that $400,000 from a Ford Foundation grant would fund the move of the sphere. It had been almost 4 years exactly since the official opening of the new UTIAS facility when the sphere made the slow procession to its new home. Sadly, that was not to be its final resting place.

In 2010 the sphere was drawn and sixthed for the final time. It stood guard over UTIA/UTIAS for 60 years. Even when it was no longer in use as a wind tunnel, it was a beacon for UTIAS (sometimes with a goose on top). But the old had to make way for the new, and the sphere went in pieces to its grave.

RIP noble sphere...

Here is one final sphere anecdote, as related by Dr. G.N. Patterson to Liberty in March 1958:

“To operate the supersonic wind tunnels, air is pumped out of the steel ball until it contains a very high vacuum. Then they pull out the plug. Air from a special storage tank rushes through the wind tunnel back into the steel ball. It will streak past the little model being tested at speeds up to 6000 mph. The tunnel will run 26 seconds – ample time for most experiments, which can be performed, measured, and recorded electronically in fractions of a second.

“At 27 seconds, the roof of the storage tank follows the rushing air through the tunnel. As the tunnel is a few inches wide and the roof about 30 feet wide, the result is a $5000 mess.

‘It's happened twice,’ Dr. Patterson sighed dolefully. ‘Last time it was a member of our own staff who did it. He just turned around, clapped his hat on his head and walked out. He was so sure he’d be fired.’”