There was one story that our physics sir at school would love to narrate.
There was this waterfall in Mysore and everybody admired it. Poets wrote pages on the beauty of the Kaveri river. But there was one man who saw it and exclaimed “What a waste!!!” That was Sir. M Visvesvaraya. He said that because he saw the potential hydro energy being wasted and untapped.
He went on to become the chief Engineer of the Krishna Raja Sagar(KRS) dam, Mysore built in 1924. This dam remains an engineering marvel and one of the popular tourist attractions till date. It was the first dam to be built with ‘surkhi’ a mixture of limestone and brick powder instead of cement. He built many dams later which are still functional.
He also honoured with the Bharat Ratna for his contributions. It happens to be his birthday today(the 15th of September) that we celebrate as “Engineers Day” as a tribute to the engineering wizard.
Let us hope he inspires lot more engineers to acheive greater heights and come up with more viable and cost-effective solutions for the problems of the real world.
Happy Engineers Day!!! to all the engineers out there…
