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Ancient Indian Technology

Communication neither analog nor digital:

The world today defines telecommunication to be either digital or analog. If we categorize it further then we get wired or wireless technology. We talk about the time where these analogies were absent but still you can relate them to the present day terminologies. I take you to the time when there was no telephone or mobile but still ways of communication were present. The engineering minds of those times had invented their own ways of delivering messages. I just came across such two places and found that they can be compared to modern age technologies.

Primitive Wireline Technology

Gwalior , city with historical importance. The city has few historical places to visit. The fort of Raja Man Singh is on the top of hill. It took 30 years to build this fort and the year was 1476. The main gate or entrance of the fort is around 4 or 5 Kms away from the main fort and it's a steep slope .

In the middle of fort I saw two small hollow openings in the wall. I wonder what purpose they served. I was surprised to know that this was part of communication system of that time. Today they seem like holes in wall but in those times it was a receiver to retrieve what ever information was send from the main gate. From gate to this point they laid pipe kind of thing as we lay copper cable today to connect two end points for communication. The gate was transmitter, any thing said over there used to travel along the pipe and at last reached fort and the message was heard through holes (receiver) in the wall. The pipe served the function what copper wire is doing today. It was like one person talking from phone at one end to a person with phone on the other end.

Primitive Wireless Technology

Mandav is a beautiful place in Madhya Pradesh. Along with natural beauty there are many historical buildings that one can visit. There we came across a place called ‘Echo-Point’. The special thing is that if you speak some thing then sound echoes back to you.

In olden times when Mandav was a kingdom, this point served a different function. It was used as a communication channel, to send messages to the soldiers at the front gate. They used to call from here and the voice used to travel through narrow trench. They had made small open galleries, functioning same as the BTS today. The voice used to hit these galleries and travel along the directional path, as the antenna on BTS in present world. The technique behind this was that these galleries were made at defined angles with respect to each other, so that the voice after striking one was directed to another and so on. Finally the message was conveyed. This way the message was communicated quickly without going there, as calling from mobile and conveying message these days.

I hope to see more of these engineering wonders and if it happens again I’ll share with you all.

Bhanu Pratap
ZTE India R&D Center Pvt Ltd

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