Martin Burn Ltd. to Research In Motion - a century of engineers

Those who know me well enough are also quite aware of the fact that I am immensely proud of my ancestral house! By ancestral house I mean a stoic structure in the heart of Calcutta that has continued to shelter five generations of our family for the past 85 years.

The house as it is today

I had read a while back that it does not matter how expensive a house is. What matters is how many people it has sheltered. In that scale our house, lovingly called 125 (because of the house number) would pass with flying colors! Now, 125 was built by my great grand dad, the late Sarat Chandra Ghosh whom we refer to as Appa-Dadu way back in 1926. Appa-dadu was born in around 1880 in Jessore of the then undivided Bengal. After his father, Ramendranath passed away at an early age, his mother Kshiradasundari sent him off to Krishnagar to his maternal uncle's house. It was customary in those days for boys to be brought up with the maternal uncle as a caregiver in the absence of a father. So, Appa-dadu finished his schooling and joined Bihar School of Engineering. He graduated as a civil engineer. I remember hearing this story from my great uncle, that one day Appa-Dadu was overseeing some construction work at Patna Rail Station. He was in his early twenties that time and was very enthusiastic about his work. Climbing the scaffolds, he was busily instructing some laborers when he noticed two men watching him from below. One was a British and the other, an Indian but dressed in western clothes. When he climbed down, the Indian guy beckoned him and asked about who he was and if he wanted to work for their company. Appa-dadu had no idea who those men were, so he asked them what their company was. Those men were Sir Thomas Aquin Martin and Sir Rajen Mookherjee, founders of Martin Burn Ltd. Martin Burn Ltd was one of the most famous construction companies in the British empire at that time! (It is equivalent to Bill Gates asking a fresh graduate if he wants to work for Microsoft Corp.)

Appa dadu with his 2 grand sons

So Appa-Dadu came to Calcutta and started working. In the mean time he got married to Sudhanshubala Deb from a village near Diamond Harbour (southern part of Bengal). They lived in a rented house in Bhawanipur and had seven children. The eldest two kids were daughters so they were married off quite early and then they moved to the "new" house in 1927. Our house is a 3 storeyed building with solid 25" walls and a super strong foundation. The rooms all have plenty (more than enough) doors and windows for cross ventillation and sunlight streams in almost in all the dozen rooms! Appa-dadu is one of those very lucky people who had a long life, a happy family, a grand house and a satisfied life! When he retired it was found that in his entire service life he had only taken 43 days off. He even went to work on the days of his daughters' weddings. Half the day off was fine on those days!

Dadun with his grand son

Keeping up with the engineering tradition, my grand dad Sailendra Nath became a mechanical engineer. His fascination was cars. Talking about our house, I can't miss out our WBD 2946 - the black Austin 40 that my grand dad (Dadun) owned. Even in his late 70s, I have seen Dadun standing on the 2nd floor balcony and saying, pointing to a car on the street below and clearly stating what's wrong with that car's engine. He lived and breathed cars. Driving that Austin 40 was a passion for him as well as for his 3 sons to whom it was not just a car, but a faithful member of our family.

3G

Generation 3, consisting of my dad and his two younger brothers didn't have to build houses for themselves but they are taking very good care of what they have been blessed with. We are popping out engineers in every generation though, my uncles are both mechanical engineers. All three of them are car crazy. They started with specs of Buicks and Austins and Morrises and are continuing to keep them updated with the latest models of Hondas and Nissans. There's no stopping them for sure. Almost every time I talk to them they ask me how my driving is coming along, which cars I have shortlisted and give me tips on how to park parallely within 6 inches of the curb!

My sister and I are the last of the Ghosh-s because we don't have any brothers and our kids would technically not have the last name of Ghosh. However, we are both engineers. My sister is one of those strong willed people who did not get on the IT bandwagon. Rejecting her job at Infosys, she went on to become what she did her bachelors on - to be a good architect! I'm carrying on in the mobile technology/wireless world now finding my way in the kingdom of smartphones. When I just started my first semester in engineering in 2003 and was working on a graphics assignment, my uncle was helping me with that. The set squares were my sisters, the wooden T my grand dad's and the book on engineering graphics had Appa-dadu's name written on the fly leaf with the date 1903! We are maintaining this tradition for a century!

PS: In the room which used to be Appa-dadu's bedroom, the latest addition to our family is crawling and trying to walk on unsteady legs... let's see what's in store for her :-)

Wireless 101

The Tech World is going crazy. Apart from medical science I don't know of any field that is advancing at such a supersonic speed. Just about two decades back we had a POT (Plain Old Telephone) which could do nothing more than make and receive calls. It had that dial which took almost 30 seconds to make a call (compare it to: if it takes more than 3 secs to load a webpage now we swear the browser, call it quits and change to another browser), that too might end in a wrong number or a hillarious cross connection! That POT, often in shiny black would have only one ringtone which was NOT customizable, no skins, no fancy headset or holster and it happily served 12 people of a family. No one had any issues with that!

In the last few years we have seen a sea change. With the advent of the internet era, people seem to have gone crazy. PC itself was a revolution but that too seems backdated now. Next were the laptops but the first gen laptops are huge and heavy compared to the ones we have now, say MacBook Air. Having a wire attached to stuff would limit your movement, get rid of that, make it wireless. Even better, have many wireless devices and make a seamless transition from one to another. Put all your stuff up in the cloud and get only that one which you need at the moment. You're not going to lose any data even if you format your hard drive! Devices are getting shipped everyday. You don't even have to go twenty years back for it. In the first few years of 2K when I was in undergrad I was one of the last people in my college to get a mobile phone. It was a Nokia 8100 with a small b/w display. Now, last year I had an iPhone 4 only to find that it has become backdated by now. I don't know where to stop.

Now in the wireless era when one person has multiple smartphones (I have separate ones for personal and business use and a tablet to meet both) - that do everything, check email, surf the web, take pictures, stream video, play games, read books, spend time on facebook, navigate, have millions of apps (some interesting, some utterly useless) and do make calls when you need it it's time we take a quick look at the person whom IEEE has named "The Father of Radio science".

This is definitely not going to be his biography, but it is about Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose as I see him. My first aquaintance with Acharya Bose was with the simple lesson that plants have lives. Sometime in my early childhood I was told not to tear leaves off plants because of this reason. Later, I read "Bhagirathi'r utso sandhane" which also had nothing to do with Radio Science, but I admired the writing and felt awe at the way he has described the Himalayas, the mountains I have always adored. I do not see him just as a scientist, I see him as a philosopher, a patriot and a wise man, like our ancient sages who has the power of knowledge. The way he always demonstrated his experiments and encouraged students to try and see practically what science has to give show how advanced he was for his times. When he became a victim of racism and was not given proper pay or a laboratory to work at, Acharya Bose fought against this by rejecting his pay check for three years! I admire this man for refusing to patent his inventions. Like other scientists like Roentgen and Pierre Curie, Acharya Bose also believed that "knowledge is free". He invented "Wireless telecommunication" but did not want to patent it. Later Marconi received Nobel Prize for the same invention. What value does a Nobel Prize have for someone who was at least 60 years ahead of his time?

So the next time you feel proud to own an iPad2, spare a though for this humble man who is at the base of modern wireless technology. To him, I repeat my favorite poet Satyandra Nath Dutta's poem "মনীষী মঙ্গল" :
"জ্ঞানের মনি প্রদীপ হাতে
ফিরিছ কে গো দুর্গমে
হেরিছ এক প্রাণের লীলা
জন্তু জড়ো জঙ্গম এ
অন্ধকারে নিত্য নব পন্থা কারো আবিষ্কার
সত্য পথ যাত্রী ওগো
তোমায় করি নমস্কার"

Fall

I wonder why fall is my favorite season... apparently there's nothing beautiful in the gloomy days that become dark quite early. The flowers in my yard are all withering away, the grass is soppy all the time due to this endless Washington drizzle... it's kinda depressing, isn't it?

Well no! Not just that. Last year when I was raking fall leaves in my yard I realized how many shades of yellows, oranges (my favorite color) and reds you can see in the dead fall leaves. Aren't these all warm shades? Fall, in spite of its gloominess has a warmth to it. That's what is amazing. When I think of this season, the first thing I see in my mind is our living room, candles lit on the coffee table and on the mantlepiece - smelling of sweet cinnamon pumpkin. A warm yellow glow around the house, made snug with the plush blankies!

This is the time to come home, be with the family. When it's cold and dark outside, get together to carve some pumpkins, decorate the house with fall branches and foliage, or just get a mug of hot coffee and curl up with your favorite book. Happy Halloween and Thanksgiving!

A gynoid speaks - women in science (and technology)

We all know what "Android" is - Google's OS for smartphones and tablets. But what does android mean? Something that looks like a human? Well, yes and no! Yes because that's how the word is used nowadays and no because it is wrong. Android means something that looks like a man, "Humanoid" being the right term for a thing resembling humans in general. There's "Gynoid" but no one has heard that much!

Science and technology has always been ruled by men. How many women scientists do you know of? Marie Curie, and? Umm, well...no I don't know. Well, if you don't know, then YOU are the one to be blamed because many girls grew up to be "women in science and technology". We don't know about them because of the gender bias. As simple as that.

This article is about those women who are less known but not less intelligent and about why there are fewer girls in science.

Wikipedia says of something called a "leaky pipe problem". That means the ratio between girls interested in science/maths in early years to the women who finally take up sci-tech as a career is too large. Why is it so? I think that women, even now have to face the stupid myth that "maths is not for girls" or "a PhD in astrophysics would not help get a husband". Also, studying science or engineering does not always mean that the person loves the subject enough to pursue it as a career. I know many girls who came to study engineering without any idea of why they are studying it. They didn't have any passion for the subject whatsoever. Finally, there are those women who, after spending years studying engineering decide to become home makers or leave careers in technology to become stay at home moms. Guys never become house-husbands or stay at home dads sacrificing their careers for the family.

As far as women in science are concerened, yes, there are fewer women than men, but for a gender who were not allowed inside science institutes, leave alone attending lectures, how do we expect that they would have equal share in success? When Mme. Curie was in Poland, she was not allowed to pursue a career in science, so she had to come to France. She was not nominated for the Nobel Prize at first only because she was a woman and so, not worth nominating. It was only after Pierre Curie insisted that he would not take the prize unless his wife is nominated as well, that Marie got her fair chance. At seminars, they were referred as Professor Curie and Madame Curie even when Marie was a professor too herself!

What about the other distinguished ladies in science? Do you know of Ada Byron? She was the first computer programmer and worked with Charles Babbage? Know of Barbara Jane Liskov either? She is the recipient of the prestigious Turing award (equivalent to a Nobel prize in computer science) in 2008. In between them, there are many others, whom we don't know about, whom we just expect to spend their lives in connection with Kinder, Küche, Kirche (the 3 K’s, is a German slogan translated as “children, kitchen, church”) but who have pursued truth for the advancement of humankind.

Take a look at this link for more details on women in sci-tech. For the leading women who are heads of states, CEOs, secretary of homeland security or leaders in tech companies like Google or Facebook, take a peek at Forbes power-women.

On a personal note, soon after I had my traditional wedding in India, many people asked my husband if he's going to take me along to the US. That means they already assumed that as a wife I was in a "dependent mode". I had to butt in and clearly mention that I am not tagging along with him and have my own independent life to lead in the US or wherever in the world I wish to. That I don't feel like changing my lastname after marriage is still a shock to many!

Girls, pull up your stockings. We have covered a long distance in a very short span of a few decades and we have a good chance of showing our mettle. Keep it up!

[Acknowledgements to many people in my life, especially my Dad, who made me solve maths problems like nothing, my Mom who's a PhD in International Relations and is a University professor and my female role model, my sis first prize winner at IIT in her Masters program in Architecture and my hubby in whom I can see the result of being brought up by a smart and wise Mom.]