Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Did an Indian Invent the Radio?
I know, I know -- Indians are always pretentiously trying to take credit for inventing this or that, to glorify the civilization, etc. But I came across various articles recently on how it may have been an Indian scientist Jagdish Chandra Bose who invented the wireless radio, and not the Italian Guglielmo Marconi. That's one hell of an accomplishment, if true. Haha, too bad he didn't get the patent rights. Anyway, it's worth reading a little more about the fellow. Instead of making these maligning caricature movies like Guru, perhaps it would have been nice for Indian cinema to make a movie about scientific pioneers like Bose, Raman, or even Ramanujan. Where would we all be without them today?
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2 comments:
i remember reading an article (maybe an interview) perhaps from the brit royal society's annals which makes it clear that jc bose was the inventor of the radio. (this may even be in SABHA's archives). but the person who made the most noise about it was marconi, who was a showman.
sounds familiar, eh, italians stealing indian property? ('eminent historians' will now note that Q stealing money from india is only in the same tradition. therefore, of course, it proves the 'aryan invasion theory'.)
but there is a lot of history that shows how the inventors of something seldom gain from it. it is the *innovators*, those who figure out a way to get revenue out of it, who gain. an excellent example is the transistor. invented by bell labs, but the innovation was the transistor radio, created by sony (who licensed bell labs' technology). or take steve jobs who popularized the GUI, invented by xerox parc.
jc bose, as is clear from the interview, was a retiring and reticent man of science who was not even interested in the limelight. marconi, i suppose, was some gesticulating, blabbering italian who just loved the publiciity.
of course, white people always get the credit for whatever indians invent. case in point, calculus. or astronomy (attributed wrongly to greeks).
This issue has been settled in favor of Bose. See http://www.tuc.nrao.edu/~demerson/bose/bose.html
QUOTE
In 1895 Bose gave his first public demonstration of electromagnetic waves, using them to ring a bell remotely and to explode some gunpowder. In 1896 the Daily Chronicle of England reported: "The inventor (J.C. Bose) has transmitted signals to a distance of nearly a mile and herein lies the first and obvious and exceedingly valuable application of this new theoretical marvel." Popov in Russia was doing similar experiments, but had written in December 1895 that he was still entertaining the hope of remote signalling with radio waves. The first successful wireless signalling experiment by Marconi on Salisbury Plain in England was not until May 1897. The 1895 public demonstration by Bose in Calcutta predates all these experiments.
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