Airplane is one of the biggest and the most challenging inventions that human beings have achieved. It was December 17, 1903, when the most awaited and the most wondrous thing took place in the history of mankind. The Wright Brothers (Wilbur and Orvile) did something that is believed to be the first of its kind, and that human beings could not even think of it prior to that. They invented the first aircraft that was a breakthrough towards the start of air travel that was about to change the course of human travelling from one place to another.
Image Source : MagnificentMaharashtra.Files
However, there is one theory that suggests that the Wright Brothers were not the first ones to invent a flying machine. 8 years before December 17 1903, something had happened on the Chowpatty Beach in Mumbai, India that makes everybody believe the airplane invented by Wright Brothers was not the first object that enabled human beings to fly in space.
Shivkar Bapuji Talpade
Image Source : hindujagruti.org
Born in 1864 in Mumbai, Shivkar Bapuji Talpade lived in Mumbai and was a scholar of Sanskrit literature. You must be thinking what is with this man and that too in an article where we are mentioning Wright Brothers and the invention of the first airplane. Well, people he is the man, the Indian scholar who is believed to have constructed the first airplane that flew successfully in 1895, and it was unmanned.
Marutsakhā – first Indian unmanned plane
Image Source : TheForthRight.Com
As Talpade was a Sanskrit scholar, he named his first invention, the first Indian unmanned plane “Marutsakha,” Marut means air or steam in Sanskrit, and Sakha means friend, together Marutsakha means the “Friend of the Wind.”
Flying machines were nothing new for India and Talpade probably took inspiration from the “Vimanas” (flying vehicles) that have their description in Hindu scriptures. The fortunate date was December 17, 1903 when Talpade, his wife, his student Pt. S.D. Satawlekar, Mahadeva Govinda Ranade and H.H Sayaji Rao Gaekwad (famous Indian judge and a nationalist), and many other people were present to see a miracle that was about to take place at the Chowpatty Beach. They all saw the first unmanned airplane take off, flew up in the sky for about 1500feet and then fell down on earth.
Shivkar Bapuji Talpade was a Sanskrit scholar and had read all Vedas, so probably he used the knowledge from Vedas to create a flying machine that was just like the “Vimanas” mentioned in Hindu Mythology.]]>
