Tuesday, February 18, 2020

India's Forgotten Legend Shankar Abaji Bhise Created More Inventions Than Anyone Else

Source: 
https://www.indiatimes.com/technology/science-and-future/shankar-abaji-bhise-indias-forgotten-legend-who-created-more-inventions-than-anyone-else-506181.html


India has seen so many inventors that have created revolutionary things to help humanityand make lives simpler, like the Padma Shree ‘jugaad king’ of India Uddhab Bharali, who has over 140 patents to his name.
But before him, there was an Indian from Bombay who created a multitude of revolutionary gadgets in the 19th century. Meet Shankar Abaji Bhise.
Born on 29 April 1867 in Bombay -- part of the British colony, India, he learnt about creating things from Scientific American magazines. During his early 20s, he even formed a club for the scientifically curious, while also designing crazy gadgets like an electrical bicycle, a signal indicator for Bombay suburban railways etc. 
These were created at a time when due to the British Raj, independent creators weren’t offered constant funding and attention for them to thrive with their creativity. 
But soon Bhise got his big break, through a competition organised by a British Inventor’s Journal to design a machine for weighing groceries, in the 1890s. Getting inspired early morning, his revolutionary blueprint won the competition, defeating British participants.
 

The big break to London

This brought him under the radar for administrators in Bombay, who decided to help him get to London to get investors on board and share his creations with the world. He came to London with a letter of introduction by the legendary Dinsha Wacha himself.
He delivered this to Dadabhai Naoroji -- a nationalist colleague with a flourishing business in England. He was impressed to see Bhise’s skills and soon formed a partnership.

Creating crazy cool inventions 

He worked out of a small workshop in London, which was usually very cold. But he managed to create some really innovative inventions here too, including a cool electronic signboard that was adopted by chain stores across Britain and Europe.
He also created an automatic flushing toilet, a telephone, and several kitchen gadgets. However, what was the most revolutionary from the lot was Bhisotype -- a printing press that was forever going to change the ways of printing.
However, he was unable to procure investment for creating the same in time, resulting in the machine to not get adopted commercially. Extinguishing his monetary resources, later decided to come back to India in 1908. 

Meeting Ratan J. Tata

On his way back to Bombay, he met Gopal Krishna Gokhale -- a freedom fighter -- who was truly mesmerised with the Bhisetype. Gokhale introduced Bhise to Ratan J Tata of the Tata group and formed a larger partnership to manufacture some of his other cool creations, including the Bhisotype. After a few years, this partnership too came to an end, but this launched Bhise into a new Western market -- the United States of America.

Travelling to America

Once in the US, he shot to fame with an iodine solution that he created to enhance people’s psychic abilities, which was also promoted by Edgar Cayce -- an American Psychic and Mystic. Followers of Cayce continue to use this solution. Post this, however, Bhise’s trajectory shifted from science to occultism -- that eventually tarnished his reputation -- creating objects like a ‘spirit typewriter’ which was a different take on the mystical Ouija Board.  He passed away on 7 April 1935, in New York at the age of 68.