@RashmiVinay4 ಒಡಲಾಳದ ಪಸೆಯ ಕಚ್ಚಿ
ಆಸರೆಯಾಸರೆಯ ನೆಚ್ಚಿ
ಧರಿತ್ರಿ ಸೊಗಸುತಿರುವಳು, ಮಗಳ ಹರಸುತಿರುವಳು;
ಪರ್ಣವಾದರೇನು ಸೂರು
ವರ್ಣದಲ್ಲಿ ನೀರ ಊರು
ಚಿತ್ತೈಸಿದೆ ಭಿತ್ತಿಲಿ
ಒಡತಿ ಮನದ ಸಕ್ತಿಲಿ
Welcome back ..!! Was eagerly waiting for your hiatus to be over
My grandpa cared about the little things.
He drove an old beater & lived much of his life in a tiny $3,000 RV (that was immaculate inside).
And yet some of the wealthiest and most discerning - even a US President - would wait years so he could be the one to build their personal homes.
Everything he did, he did well. That’s where I learned to care.
I miss him greatly.
Engineering students who visit Shivanasamudra hydroelectric plant are never told the significance of that plant and how India taught the world the long-distance transmission of electricity! It is this plant which made the steam power obsolete!
This is to fix that gap in the knowledge. I wish I had been made aware of this in 1991 when I visited the site as an Engineering student.
In June 1902, something occurred at a remote Indian waterfall that should have shocked the Western world. A transmission line, 92 miles long, carried 30,000 volts of electrical current through the jungle from Shivanasamudra Falls to the Kolar Gold Fields. It was the longest commercial high-voltage power line on Earth.
Nothing comparable existed in America or Europe.
The achievement emerged from the vision of K. Seshadri Iyer, Dewan of Mysore, and Major Alain Chartier Joly de Lotbiniere, a Canadian engineer in the Hindu kingdom's service. De Lotbiniere saw something others had missed: the Cauvery River's 400-foot drop could turn turbines and generate power sufficient to replace steam engines at Kolar's deep mines, where fuel costs had become prohibitive.
Seshadri Iyer understood that a kingdom's survival depended on economic capacity, not military might alone. In 1898, he commissioned engineers to travel to Niagara Falls to study George Westinghouse's alternating current transmission system. When they returned, the plan crystallized. Mysore would not simply purchase foreign solutions. It would understand every component and build the system itself.
The venture carried substantial risk. The capital was considerable for the 1890s. The technology was unproven. The line would stretch across malaria-infested terrain, requiring 5,000 laborers. The court skeptics outnumbered believers. Yet Seshadri Iyer proceeded with methodical confidence.
Construction began in 1899. Generators came from General Electric in America. Turbines came from Escher Wyss in Switzerland. But the transmission system design and execution remained under Indian leadership. Civil engineers designed channels to divert the Cauvery's flow through penstocks. Electrical engineers stepped voltage upward to 30,000-35,000 volts using transformers, transmitted it across 92 miles of copper line, then stepped it downward at Kolar for mining machinery.
The frequency selected was 25 cycles per second, not arbitrary but deliberate. Heavy rotary converters used in mining operated efficiently at lower frequencies than the 50 or 60 hertz that would eventually become standard globally. This reflected sophisticated understanding of end-user requirements.
In June 1902, high-voltage power generated at Shivanasamudra flowed across 147 kilometers to the gold fields. For the first time, machines in one location could be powered by water falling in a completely separate location, separated by jungles and hills. The mining operations transformed. Deep extraction became economically viable. Steam dependence was broken.
This distinction matters. The Shivanasamudra project was not Western technology imposed on an Indian kingdom. It was an Indian administration studying Niagara Falls, acquiring knowledge, and implementing a solution that exceeded what any Western nation had accomplished in this specific domain. Technologies were sourced globally. Vision and execution were profoundly local.
The surplus power enabled Bangalore to become Asia's first city with meaningful electric street lighting in 1905. Nearly 100 streetlights appeared suddenly, not from gradual urban accumulation of infrastructure, but from a distant river harnessed with precision. Within a year, Bangalore had 861 streetlights and 1,639 domestic connections.
The Shivanasamudra project reveals patterns that extend beyond technical accomplishment. It demonstrates that innovation does not flow exclusively from wealthy Western nations. A kingdom positioned as subordinate within the British Indian Empire could perceive a technological opportunity, acquire knowledge globally, and implement a solution exceeding established industrial powers. It shows that engineering excellence is not the monopoly of any nation or culture. And it illustrates what becomes possible when vision, resources, and technical competence align in common purpose.
The subsequent obscuring of credit should not overshadow the original achievement. The Hindu kingdom of Mysore, through Seshadri Iyer's leadership and de Lotbiniere's engineering, seized a technological frontier and transformed the region's future. That accomplishment deserves recognition as evidence of what is possible when aspiration meets capability.
@supreetkashyap Only ruse that I have is I couldn't get some of the colors that I wanted in the sale and dearly missed full sleeves version. So docking half a point for that 9.5/10.
Looking forward to meeting you in Mysore (if that can be accommodated)
@supreetkashyap From birth to berth, bamboo’s got our back in form of ದರ್ಭೆ at birth and bamboo motor at the end🙂
It only made sense to have it cover the in-between as well.
Loved the t-shirts.
Every time you open Google Maps, your phone is talking to at least four satellites orbiting 20,000 km above Earth.
Each one beams down ultra-precise timestamps basically saying, “It was 12:00:00.000001 when I sent this.”
Your phone measures how long each signal takes to arrive, then triangulates your exact position. Simple, right?
Here’s the twist by Einstein.
As those satellites are moving fast (about 14,000 km/h), time slows down for them, a prediction of special relativity.
But because they’re also far from Earth’s gravity, time speeds up … a prediction of general relativity.
Put the two effects together, and their onboard clocks tick about 38 microseconds faster per day than clocks on Earth.
That sounds tiny but if engineers didn’t correct for it, your GPS location would drift by roughly 10 km every single day.
So every step you take, every Uber you call, every “turn left” you follow… all depends on Einstein’s equations quietly running behind the scenes.
Mind bending
@imacuriosguy@curiouswavefn
@SagarAwatade This is such a great way to grab eyeballs. Hearing a lot of good things about Oracura from people like @vinodchendhil.
Keep growing man..!
Thank you @hmvprasanna Sir for inspiring another translation! The evocative quality of the original stood out for me after reading your work🙏✨
Here's my take -