T
TECHNOLOGY
18 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2015 www.vanguardcanada.com
I
t took approximately 18 years for
carbon fibre to go from lab experi-
ment to the commercial market, and
at that point, if you weren't building
a spacecraft for NASA or making fighter
jets for the U.S. Military, it wasn't part of
your everyday life. That came years later,
when some brilliant mind figured out
how to manufacture it by the ton.
You've probably never stared at the
pricey carbon road bike in your garage,
rubbed your chin and thought, "I won-
der what'll come next?" That's ok. You
don't have to. There's a guy in a lab right
now wearing safety glasses, a long white
coat and little blue booties doing that for
you.
Christopher Kingston is tall, athletic
and smart. As a research officer in the
Emerging Technologies Division at the
National Research Council (NRC), he
can often be found labouring over a giant
stainless steel machine in the basement of
an older building in Ottawa's East End.
There, in his lab, at the end of a white
hallway where every door has a red light-
bulb screwed-in right above it, Kingston
toils away in a space the size of an aver-
age living room, creating masterpieces in
a microscopic world.
Kingston and his partner, Benoit Si-
mard, an older gentleman with short-
grey hair, ready smile and a disarming
personality, work in the Security Materials
YOUR LIGHTEST
ARMOUR IS ABOUT
TO GET HEAVY
These two NRC researchers are revolutionizing
composites used for military applications. Even
NASA wants to know how they're doing it.
NRC researchers Benoit Simard
and Chris Kingston.
by Jason McNaught
