Physical Testing Laboratory : The beginning of the Physical Testing Laboratory may be said to date from 1891, when the Board of Examiners for Dominion Lands Surveys of the Department of the Interior installed what would now be considered primitive equipment for verifying measures of length at 27 Cliff Street, Ottawa. In 1909, the Division of Scientific and Topographical Survey Branch had among its responsibilities the testing and adjusting of survey instruments.
In 1911, an additional small building was erected at 27 Cliff Street, and equipped for testing transits, levels, watches and aneroid barometers. The purpose of this laboratory was to prove and adjust all new instrumental equipment purchased for use in the operations of the Topographical Surveys Branch and other Government services, and to ensure that this equipment was maintained in a condition suitable for accurate and efficient operations.
A special building was subsequently erected in 1913 on McKay Street, Ottawa, for the purpose of standardizing in a more satisfactory manner the certified standard measures which Dominion Land Surveyors were required by law to possess.
As temperature measurements were equally necessary with length measurements in operations affecting length standards, it became necessary to install equipment for verifying thermometers, as no facilities were in existence for this purpose.
A small shop for repairing instruments and constructing special and experimental equipment was added in 1923. In that same year another building, 25 Cliff Street, was taken over and in 1929, 41 Cliff Street was also added. Plans of the latter structure have been forwarded to the National Map Collection.
In 1925, the Surveys Laboratory, as is had been known, was renamed the Physical Testing Laboratory. On August 7, 1931, the Laboratory was transferred from the Topographical Survey to the National Research Council of Canada as a functioning unit, together with its staff, (R.H. Field, Supervisor, 3 Surveys Physicists and 3 instrument makers) equipment and duties (P.C. 1373, 7 August 1931). (Annual Report of the Surveyor General 1912, pp. 8-12; Department of the Interior Annual Report 1932, p. 121; D. Thomson, Men and Meridians, Vol. 3, pp. 1-4).
