General Information

Serial #

N/A

Part Number

1

Total Parts

1

AKA

N/A

Patents

N/A

General Description

metal casing, support, parts/ synthetic antenna and cord covering

Dimensions

Note: These reflect the general size for storage and are not necessarily representative of the object's true dimensions.

Length

115.0 cm

Width

108.0 cm

Height

231.0 cm

Thickness

N/A

Weight

N/A

Diameter

N/A

Volume

N/A

Lexicon

Group

Meteorology

Category

Precipitation amount, rate & duration measurement

Sub-Category

N/A

Manufacturer

AKA

Environment CA

Country

Canada

State/Province

Unknown

City

Unknown

Context

Country

Canada

State/Province

Ontario

Period

late 1970's - early 1980's; this instrument was apparently in use for 25 years (Ref. 3).

Canada

A prototype instrument designed, built and used by the Meteorological Service of Canada to gather precipitation data. Part of a large collection of meteorological instruments acquired from the Meteorological Service of Canada (previously Atmospheric Environment Service) by the CSTM since 1967. MSC is the government agency responsible for collecting and disseminating meteorological data and forecasts in Canada. It was founded in 1871 in Toronto where it is still headquartered. The MSC was originally on the University of Toronto downtown campus but moved to Downsview in 1971 on land owned by UofT. The headquarters houses laboratories, research facilities and calibration and instrument maintenance facilities (now largely contracted out).

Function

An instrument used to detect the presence of precipitation and determine its type and rate of descent

Technical

An early version of a precipitation occurrence sensor (POSS), a prototype designed and built by AES. This instrument was built by John Cook at the AES Instrument Branch in about 1977 and contains a Philips intrusion alarm. Kenneth Wu added the clear plastic dielectric antenna to improve it's sensitivity. Later a hand held Doppler police was used leading, with assistance from the University of Toronto, to the present bistatic Doppler radar called POSS sold by Andrew. All of these systems use a 10 gHz Gunn diode to generate the radar pulse which is mixed with the Doppler shifted return signal to produce an audio frequency output signal. Snow which falls at 2 m/s and rain which falls at 6 m/s can be easily distinguished aurally. These systems are very sensitive for the detection of precipitation (Ref. 1)

Area Notes

Unknown

Details

Markings

none

Missing

unknown

Finish

metallic grey casing and support, colourless transparent antenna/ black cord covering

Decoration

N/A