In 1946, Dr James Marshall of the Summerland Research station (near Penticton, BC) began to look for a better method to apply the new spray materials being developed.

He could see the need for some automatic distribution of these spray chemicals, which would be faster than using a handgun and less labor intensive.

Dr Marshall tested a steam sprayer made by Besler Corporation in California that summer, but found it only worked under favorable conditions. Dr Marshall designed an experimental low volume sprayer, which he had Frank Owen, a technician at the Canadian army machine shops at Suffield Alberta build during the winter of 1946. That spring he delivered the Rube Goldberg “ a truly incredible contraption”. It was a mass of gears, motors, belts, blowers, pumps and valves protruding insanely above the four air wheels on which it sat” according to one observer.

Fortunately, it worked as intended and produced either a steam mist or a hydraulic pressure spray mist which would be propelled into the trees at about one hundred miles per hour by the air stream of a large fan. By varying the temperature of the steam, thus changing the size of the droplets produced, Dr Marshall was able to determine the optimum droplet size for concentrated spray application. The next step was to adjust the hydraulic system by changing the pump pressure and the size of swirl-plates and nozzles to give that droplet size, so spraying could be accomplished without the cumbersome inconvenience of generating steam.

This design information gained was released to potential manufacturers and the first commercial low volume automatic concentrate sprayer; the “Turbomist” was produced in 1949 by Pacific Pipe and Flume. This prototype eventually evolved into the modern day Turbomist produced by Slimline Manufacturing Ltd.