The National Museum of Science and Technology was established in 1967 as a Centennial project by the Canadian Government. In October 1966 the government appointed David McCurdy Baird as the first director of the museum; because it was intended that the museum would open during the centennial year, Baird's first task was to find an existing building that could be repurposed without delay to house the museum. He found and arranged the purchase of a large former bakery on St. Laurent Boulevard with truck bays and high ceilings. The government already had an aeronautical collection and a collection of railroad artifacts, and within a few months these were installed in the building. A collection of farm equipment from Massey Ferguson arrived soon after.
During routine maintenance on a leaky roof in September 2014, workers discovered that the roof was in danger of collapse and that mould was spreading from the building's south wall. The museum closed to visitors, and the staff offered to lend out some of the exhibits to other museums while renovation and repairs were made to the building. Most of the original building was demolished, leaving only the "crazy kitchen" and the hall of trains. $80 million was spent to create a modern replacement on the same site. The museum reopened on November 17, 2017.
Facilities, collections and displays
Main building
The main museum building on St Laurent Boulevard houses a number of permanent displays, as well as temporary exhibits of the museum's collection and visiting exhibitions. The most famous of these exhibitions is the crazy kitchen, a room that is built on a tilted surface, thus causing gravity to pull visitors towards the wall, but has all its furniture nailed to the floor so they won't fall, thus creating the illusion that the room is on an ordinary, flat surface. This competing information confuses visitors' brains which makes them feel nauseous. Artifact Alley, which runs diagonally across the building, displays about 700 historical objects at any one time.
Collections Conservation Centre
The Ingenium storage facility, located at 1867 St. Laurent Blvd, it includes more than over 268,000 artifacts, such as a prototype for the Bombardier Innovia ART 100, a driverless rail car, an Iron Lung once used at the Ottawa Civic Hospital, and the FIU-301, and the Ontario Provincial Police's first Unmanned Aerial vehicle.
Governance
The museum is operated by Ingenium, a Crown corporation that reports to the Department of Canadian Heritage, which is responsible for preserving and protecting Canada's scientific and technical heritage. The Corporation has a staff of about 275 and is responsible for three museums: the Canada Science and Technology Museum, the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum and the Canada Aviation and Space Museum.
