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Recording a 200-year history
S. MUTHIAH
From March 1997 to May 2008 the newsletter of the Alumni Association of the College of Engineering, Guindy, has benefited from essays written by C.S. Kuppuraj, and a few others, on the oldest technical school East of Suez.
Now, as Kuppuraj nears his 90th birthday, those articles have been brought out as a book titled Glimpses of Two Hundred Years History of the College of Engineering, Guindy. Those glimpses, not merely of the evolution of the Survey School in Fort St. George into what was once the premier engineering college in South India, give you not only a fascinating peep into the past but also provide little known facts about a host of people who made significant contributions to engineering in India.
Kuppuraj himself followed in the footsteps of his father, Corattur Sambasiva Mudaliar, who graduated from the College in 1918 — when it was still in Chepauk — and retired from the Public Works Department after 32 years of service. Between 1942 and 1947, Sambasiva Mudaliar also taught Surveying in the College.
One of his students was Kuppuraj, who went on to retire as Chief Engineer, PWD. Kuppuraj's son Balachander is the third generation of the family to have been a student of Guindy Engineering. Balachander's daughter Aparna is a fourth-generation engineer, but she did not go to the College of Engineering, Guindy.
A family which has four generations all graduating from Guindy is that of K.S. Sitaraman, Civil Engineering, Class of 1916.
He joined the College as a lecturer, was appointed Professor of Civil Engineering in 1934 and was acting Principal in 1945-46.
His son K.S. Srinivasan, Class of 1940, retired as Superintending Engineer, Highways. Srinivasan's sons K.S. Swaminathan, Class of 1970, and K.S. Sitaraman, Class of 1971 serve the Chennai Port Trust and Tamil Nadu Electricity Board, respectively, and a great-grandson, R. Srinath, Class of 1998, works in Connecticut, U.S. I wonder whether there are any other families with such a long link with the College of Engineering.
The glimpses Kuppuraj gives of the 200 years and more of the College of Engineering, Guindy, provide numerous such portraits of engineers past and present who helped develop the Madras Presidency, Tamil Nadu and even India.
It's an invaluable foundation for further research into this fascinating window on the development of the State.
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