User:Latheist/Shivkar Bapuji Talpade

Shivkar Bāpuji Talpade (1864–1916) and Subbarāya Shāstry were two Indian scientists and Maharashtrian members of the Pathare Prabhu community who, some believe, constructed and flown India's first unmanned airplane in the year 1895 to a height of 1500 feet. This event is supposed to have occurred 8 years before the Wright brothers' Wright Flyer, the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight. However, this claim is not supported factually since the technical basis for this flight has been deprecated by researches into the technological feasibility of such a flight Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore,. Talpade's airplane was named Marutsakhā, a term used for the goddess Sarasvati in the Rigveda (RV 7.96.2) -- a portmanteau of Marut meaning stream of air and Sakha meaning friend. Talpade lived in Mumbai and was a scholar in Sanskrit literature and Vedas.

Talpade is supposed to have constructed Marutsakhā under the guidance of Pandit Subbarāya Shāstry. However, according to a study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore,, it is not possible to construct such a flying machine. Talpade's claim is highly disputed since contemporary accounts of a successful flight or evidences of such an achievement are scarce and the technical feasibility is highly dubious. Shāstry was the author of the Vaimānika Shāstra, an early 20th century Sanskrit text on aeronautics supposedly obtained by Vedic studies and automatic writing. Marutsakhā may have been constructed based on Vimāna, mythological flying machines from Vedic literature. This is suggested by D. K. Kanjilal's 1985 Vimana in Ancient India: Aeroplanes Or Flying Machines in Ancient India, as well as reports contemporary to Talpade in the Marāthi-language newspaper Kesari. One of Talpade's students, P. Satwelkar, wrote that Marutsakhā sustained flight for a few minutes. Again Deccan Herald in 2003 cited "scholarly audience headed by the famous Indian judge/ nationalist/ Mahadeva Govin-da Ranade and H H Sayaji Rao Gaekwad had the good fortune to see his un manned aircraft named as ‘Marutsakthi’ take off, fly to a height of 1500 feet and then fall down to earth". The presence of Mahadev Govind Ranade and Sayajirao Gaekwad III during the flight is also cited in "Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute". A former Indian defense officer stated in 2004 that Marutsakhā failed to operate to its full design limits due to technical reasons.

After the experiment, Marutsakhā apparently was stored at Talpade's house until well after his death. Velakara quotes one of Talpade's nieces, Roshan Talpade, as saying the family used to sit in the aircraft's frame and imagine they were flying. A model reconstruction of Marutsakhā was exhibited at an exhibition on aviation at Vile Parle, and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited has preserved documents relating to the experiment.