INDIAN NATIONAL SCIENCE ACADEMY INSA PLATINUM JUBILEE By: Arvind Gupta Pix: Karen Haydock

Ardaseer
Cursetjee
( 1 8 08 - 1 877)

Few Indians would have ever heard the name of Ardaseer Cursetjee. Even
fewer would know that this marine engineer from Bombay was the first Indian
to become a fellow of the Royal Society - on 27 May, 1841. The next fellowship
conferred on the famous mathematician - S. Ramanujan came only 75 years
later!
The British needed modern technology
to consolidate their commercial and
political interests in India. For this
they used steam navigation to reduce
the distance between England and
India. They laid a network of
telegraphs and railways to maintain
law and order and increase revenue
collection. A handful of British could
not control a vast India. They needed
the help of Indians in this task. They
initially hired Indians as informers to
educate them about the land.
Later, the British set up
schools to train Indians as
clerks and calculators. But
this modern education
also laid the seeds of a
national awakening in
Indians.
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 INDIAN NATIONAL SCIENCE ACADEMY INSA PLATINUM JUBILEE By: Arvind Gupta Pix: Karen Haydock
took his servants along, because he only ate food cooked by Parsis. In matters
of religion, Cursetjee was a severe traditionalist. He did not approve of a
young Parsi not donning the traditional cap in England. He was invited to
attend a meeting of a House of Commons committee.
For all his hyperactivity though, Cursetjee was not too impressed by London.
He found the royal mint considerably inferior to the one at Bombay. And he
castigated Londons dirty roads, comparing them unfavourably with
Cursetjees family had a long history of service to the British in the field Bombays.
of shipbuilding. His ancestor Lowjee Nusserwanji (Wadia) was a Professionally, however, Cursetjees British sojourn was very successful. He
carpenter at the Surat dockyard. Later the British brought him to Bombay became an associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a member of the
to build a dockyard. The British built ships using oak logs. But soon Society of Arts and Science, and of the mechanical section of the British
the expansionist Empire ran out of oak trees. They found a better Association for the Advancement of Science. He was appointed chief engineer
substitute for oak in the Malabar teak it was strong and decay-resistant. and inspector of machinery in the Companys steam factory and foundry at
With abundance of teak and skilled workers, Bombay emerged as a Bombay. The post carried a salary of Rs 600 per month, more than seven
major ship-building centre. Shipbuilding brought great prestige to the times his then salary as an assistant builder.
Cursetjee family.
In 1841, while in England,
The use of the steam engine in navigation virtually coincided with Cursetjee was nominated to
Cursetjees birth in the early 19th century. However, Cursetjee was more the fellowship of the
interested in steam machinery than in ship-building. He soon showed prestigious Royal Society. His
his mettle by building a 1-HP engine. It was installed in a well to pump name was proposed by
water to a small fountain. This was the first engine built in India. In influential persons. They
1833, Cursetjee obtained a 10-HP marine engine from England and included two future
installed it in a vessel named Indus. In October 1833, he was made presidents of the Institution
assistant builder at Mazagaon. Cursetjee maintained a small private of Civil Engineers, the future
foundry at his residence where he fabricated wrought-iron tanks for chairman of the East India
ships. Company, and the future
president of The Royal
Society.
His next engineering feat was the installation of gas lighting.
By 1834, he lighted his bungalow and gardens at Mazagaon,
using gas.
Soon he was invited to teach practical sciences at the newly
established Elphinstone Institute. He assisted the Institution
in instructing the natives, especially in mechanical and chemical
sciences. Three years later, he was elected a non-resident member
of the Royal Asiatic Society of England.
Cursetjee soon decided to spend a year in England. He wanted
to learn the latest about marine steam engines. On this trip he
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 INDIAN NATIONAL SCIENCE ACADEMY INSA PLATINUM JUBILEE By: Arvind Gupta Pix: Karen Haydock
Today The Royal Society has a reputation of being an association of eminent disbanded in 1863. Consequently, the Flotilla was broken up. Cursetjee resigned
scientists. But in the early decades of the twentieth century, The Royal Society his post in 1863 and went to England, settling down at Richmond, where he
was also a club of gentlemen curious in natural history, well acquainted with died on 16 November 1877.
mathematics and engineering, or conversant in various branches of
It is surprising that for all his achievements, he remains virtually unknown.
experimental philosophy. In terms of the norms then in vogue, the Society
Calcutta by then had become the hub for scientific activity and those leading
would have characterised Cursetjee as a distinguished engineer and as a
the renaissance knew little about Cursetjee. This is perhaps the reason why
promoter of science.
Indias first modern engineer never became a role model for his countrymen.
Cursetjees fellowship of the Royal Society remained strictly a private honour. The Government of India did bring out a postal stamp to commemorate the
It did not advance his professional career in any way, nor did it impress his memory of this master ship builder.
countrymen. In the meantime, he returned to Bombay, and took his new
charge on 1 April 1841, becoming the first native to be placed over Europeans.
His staff consisted of one chief assistant, four European foremen, 100
European engineers and boiler makers, and about 200 native artificers. It
burned many a European heart. The Bombay Times, a newspaper with a bias in
favour of colonial rulers, did not approve of his appointment. It wrote, We
doubt the competency of a native, however able or educated, to take charge of such an
establishment as the Bombay Steam Factory with a body of Englishmen to be directed,
superintended and controlled.
But Cursetjee made a success of the job. He visited America in 1849 and
selected woodcutting machines to be sent on to Bombay. The manner in
which Indians were stereotyped by Americans can be seen in the following
memoir by a member of a family he visited in the USA:
Among the strange foreign visitors of those days, we were somewhat
startled one evening by a friends bringing a real live Parsee, with a tall
calico headdress, to take tea with us. It was rather a revelation to me that
a fire worshipper could take tea like ordinary mortals. But he was a
harmless lion, and roared very gently, and drank his tea and ate his
bread and butter quite like other folks and told us many interesting
things about his life in Bombay. I remember we all spoke very distinctly,
as if we were talking to a child, and that he answered us in a very low
cultivated refined voice, using much better English than we did.

In February 1851, Cursetjee launched a steamer called Lowjee Family. Every part
of this ship was indigenously fabricated at Ardaseer Cursetjees own foundry
located at his residence. He was the first to introduce Bombay to the sewing
machine, photography and electroplating.
In 1861, he was appointed Superintending Engineer of the Indus Flotilla
Company, and took charge of the Companys steam branch and workshops at
Kotree in Sind. The Flotilla was at that time under the Indian Navy, which was
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