BE PROUD TO BE AN INDIAN:
Shivkar Bapuji Talpade at Chowpathy Mumbai
An interesting claim about the Indian science of aeronautics and and the ancient research by the rishi-scientist, Acharya Bharadwaj is that an Indian successfully tested them actual practice 112 years ago.In 1895, fully eight years before the Wright Brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, USA, Mr. Shivkar Bapuji Talpade of Bombay and his wife (reportedly) gave a thrilling demonstration flight on Chowpatty beach, Bombay.
Talpade’s aircraft used an ion engine in 1895 working on mercurial pressure (Paarad-Rasa).
A Mercury vortex ion engine works by emission of heavy charged particles.
Both mercury and iron were available to ancient civilizations. It is not hard to imagine that they could figure out that heating mercury and pouring it out from a small nozzle would ionize it and create rocket thrust.
The white man credits something like this to Robert Goddard, who invented liquid-fuel rocketry in 1906.
Talpade of Bombay, was an erudite scholar of Sanskrit literature, especially of the Vedas, an inventor and a teacher in the School of Arts.
His deep study of the Vedas led him to construct an aircraft conforming to their descriptions. The aircraft was displayed in an exhibition arranged by the Bombay Art Society in the Town Hall.
For, the 190th richa (verse) of the Rig Veda and the aeronautical treatise of Bharadwaj mention that flying machines came into full operation when solar energy, mercury and another chemicals called naksha rasas were blended together.
This energy was, supposedly, stored in something like an accumulator or storage batteries. The Vedas mention eight different engines in the plane, all electrical in nature.
In his experiments, Talpade was aided by his wife, also a deep Vedic scholar, and an architect-friend. The aircraft combined the constructional characteristics of both Pushpaka and Marut Sakha, the sixth and eighth types of aircraft described by Acharya Bharadwaj.
Talpade named it "Marut Sakhaa" -- friend of the wind.
In 1895, this pioneering Indian aeronautical product attained a height of about 1,500 feet above the Chowpatty beach, Bombay and landed safely.
This flight was witnessed, by Shrimant Maharaj Sir Sayajirao III Gaekwad (1863-1939) and Justice Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842–1901) among many others. The Kesari, a leading Marathi daily newspaper reported it in 1895. The Maharaja of Baroda and Justice Ranade were impressed and rewarded the talented inventor.
Unfortunately, Talpade lost all interest in things after his wife’s death.
After Talpade's own death in 1917 at 53, his relatives sold the aircraft to the Rally Brothers, Bombay, a leading British exporting firm.
Thus, the first ever attempt at flying in modern India, undertaken and made successful by an Indian, in an airplane of Indian manufacture built to Indian scientific specifications, was relegated to the dustbin of oblivion.
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The Aeronautical Research Development Board, New Delhi commissioned the Academy of Sanskrit Research in Melkote, near Mandya, to take up a one-year study on ‘Non-conventional Approach to Aeronautics’, on the basis of Vaimaanik Shastra.
As a result of the research, a glass-like stealth material invisible to radar has been developed by a certain Prof. Dongre, a BHU research scholar. An airplane coated with this unique material is immune to radar.
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